Battleship Potemkin

Sergei Eisenstein's electrifying account of the 1905 mutiny aboard a Russian battleship — and arguably the most influential film ever made about revolution. When sailors refuse to eat maggot-infested meat, a confrontation with their officers spirals into full-scale revolt, spreading to the civilian population of Odessa. The film's centerpiece — the massacre on the Odessa Steps, where Tsarist soldiers march methodically downward firing into a fleeing crowd — is one of the most analyzed, imitated, and parodied sequences in cinema history, from The Untouchables to Naked Gun. Eisenstein's rhythmic editing, which he called "montage of attractions," creates an almost musical structure of tension and release that remains as viscerally powerful today as it was a century ago. No film school education is complete without it.