"Battleship Potemkin"
Kino International
$29.95
#5. Battleship Potemkin
There's a five-minute passage in Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 Soviet classic that is perhaps the most influential movie scene of all time. It's the Odessa steps sequence, in which bayonet-brandishing soldiers march down, firing away, as the rebellious people (most of them women) stand against them in heroic protest. The sequence's signature elements — the careering baby carriage, the woman shot in the eye, the broken spectacles — have inspired scenes in literally hundreds of films. Potemkin revolutionized moviemaking. This two-disc edition, pieced together by Enno Patalas for the German Film Archive, restores the movie's immediacy and grandeur.