There are some films that loom so large in a cinephile’s imagination that they are almost impossible to watch. These are films that have been so well-praised, that are so influential, so important that they sometimes seem less like movies than cinematic gods.

Or something. I’m getting a little carried away with my bloviations. Battleship Potemkin is considered one of the greatest movies ever made. It is famed for its use of editing, creating montages to elicit an emotional response. Director Sergei Eisenstein believed that you could juxtapose two unrelated images and create an entirely new idea. What he did in Battleship Potemkin was revolutionary and those techniques are still used today.

The “Odessa Steps” sequence is one of the most influential scenes in all of cinema. It has been paid homage to, and outright stolen from, and parodied countless times. I first heard about it from Brian DePalma’s film The Untouchables which has a very similar sequence involving a baby carriage on some steps.

All of this hung over my head years before I ever watched it. I put off watching it because its reputation was too great, its influence too wide for me to ever be able to sit down and take it all in.

To be honest, I really just thought it was going to be dull. I’m learning to appreciate silent films, but it is a struggle.

Turns out Battleship Potemkin is a real banger. It is fast-paced, full of incident and action, and an utterly enjoyable watch.

It is about a historical event in which some sailors revolted against the officers of the ship and took it over. They then port in Odessa where the citizens celebrate the liberation of the ship and bring them food, all before being slaughtered by the Army. It was an important part of the 1905 Revolution and the film was made as a bit of propaganda celebrating the 20th anniversary of the event.

It is propaganda. It is utterly designed to make you side with the revolution and ultimately the Communist State. I find that modern reviews of the film ultimately fall on where one’s political views are. None of that matters to me. It is a magnificent, wonderful film with never a dull moment. It is a movie I’d show to people who have never seen a silent movie.