Everett Collection
Marc Bernardin
50. BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
Directed by Sergei Eisenstein (1925)
The picture quality is poor, the sound is nothing to speak of, the actors are pretty homely looking. Yet this story of a mutiny on the titular Russian naval ship, and the ensuing chaos that spills onto the streets of Odessa, is a landmark in action cinema — because it all but invented it. This is the film that codified most of the tools at a thriller director's disposal. It's as if Eisenstein carved the art of montage, of editing itself, from a block of marble, and left it for later generations to polish.
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