4. Battleship Potemkin (1925)
This is another, slightly more well known film, although less so than Citizen Kane, which has dual seats in cinematic history as being both a striking piece of political propaganda, and also inventing the montage. Director Sergei Eisenstein had a theory that, as opposed to the traditional editing of movies in that day, a procession of images could be shown for greater emotional effect. This wouldnt have worked if the images in the montage werent striking or notable, but they are for their cruel, cold brutality and impact. One of the abiding images of the film, of the woman having been shot in the eye, with the blood pouring out, is a nasty one even today. It approaches you on a visceral level. There are plenty of other such images in this film, such as the maggots on the meat and the angry soldiers lining up on the ship, and the way the film has been spoofed and referenced over the years, most famously in the montage in the Untouchables as Kevin Costner tries to save the baby in the pram, mirroring the scene in this where the babys pram falls down the Odessa steps. The film might be propaganda, and as such highly distorted (there was no real attack on the steps, for example), but when one considers the brute impact of this film, and the technical innovation on display from Eisenstein, this pales into insignificance. As a piece of art wrangled from difficult circumstances and a less than noble aim, it is nearly unmatched See it, be excited, and know that youve witnessed the very first example of one of the basic techniques of cinema.