The Battleship Potemkin

After the success of [[Feature~V66846~Strike~strike]] (1924), Sergei Eisenstein was commissioned by the Soviet government to make a film commemorating the uprising of 1905. Eisenstein's scenario, boiled down from what was to have been a multipart epic of the occasion, focussed on the crew of the battleship Potemkin. Fed up with the extreme cruelties of their officers and their maggot-ridden meat rations, the sailors stage a violent mutiny.

This, in turn, sparks an abortive citizens' revolt against the Czarist regime. The film's centerpiece is staged on the Odessa Steps, where the Czar's Cossacks methodically shoot down rioters and innocent bystanders alike.

Known as "The Odessa Steps sequence," this is often considered the most famous scene ever filmed; it is certainly one of the most imitated, perhaps most overtly by Brian De Palma in [[Feature~V51947~The Untouchables~t