20 Great Films You Won't Believe Aren't On IMDb's Top 250
4. The Battleship Potemkin
Rating: 8.0
Many pre-1950 films that deserve a spot aren't on the list. Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin is the one which hurts the most, given that none of the 250 films currently on the list would be the same without it.
Battleship Potemkin could stake a claim to being the most influential film ever. It remains a genuinely flawless technical construction and a perfect work of editing, making for one of the best bits of visual storytelling in the history of the medium and it absolutely has to be seen by every single film student. This film will always be an essential part of their film education.
Given that it's a propaganda film, the film's lack of story is irrelevant since it's not meant to be a narrative film. Anyhow, the images tell the story and manipulate the viewers' emotions better than 10 pages of screenplay ever would. If nothing else, watch the Odessa Steps scene. That's a perfect movie scene if there ever was one.
There are few, if any, classic movies that live up to the hype more than this one and it is a masterpiece in every sense of the word.
Why It Was Right: #100-#150