Battleship Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein

One of the most celebrated scenes in the film is the massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps (also known as the Primorsky or Potemkin Stairs). This sequence has been assessed as a "classic"[28] and one of the most influential in the history of cinema.[29][30] In the scene, the Tsar's soldiers in their white summer tunics march down a seemingly endless flight of steps in a rhythmic, machine-like fashion, firing volleys into a crowd. A separate detachment of mounted Cossacks charges the crowd at the bottom of the stairs. The victims include an older woman wearing pince-nez, a young boy with his mother, a student in uniform and a teenage schoolgirl. A mother pushing an infant in a baby carriage falls to the ground dying and the carriage rolls down the steps amid the fleeing crowd.

The massacre on the steps, although it did not take place in daylight[31] or as portrayed,[32] was based on the fact that there were widespread riots in other parts of the city, sparked off by the arrival of the Potemkin in Odessa Harbour. Both The Times and the resident British Consul reported that troops fired on the rioters; deaths were reportedly in the hundreds.[33] Roger Ebert writes, "That there was, in fact, no tsarist massacre on the Odessa Steps scarcely diminishes the power of the scene ... It is ironic that [Eisenstein] did it so well that today, the bloodshed on the Odessa steps is often referred to as if it really happened."[34]

• The boots of the soldiers shown marching down the Odessa Steps
• A baby in a carriage falling down the Odessa Steps
• A wide shot of the massacre on the Odessa Steps

Treatment in other works of art

The scene is perhaps the best example of Eisenstein's theory on montage, and many films pay homage to the scene, including

• Terry Gilliam's Brazil,
• Brian De Palma's The Untouchables,[35]
• George Lucas's Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith,[36]
• Tibor Takacs's Deathline,
• Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box,
• Chandrashekhar Narvekar's Hindi film Tezaab,
• Shukō Murase's anime Ergo Proxy,
• Peter Sellers' The Magic Christian,
• The Children Thief,
• Johnnie To's Three,
• Ettore Scola's We All Loved Each Other So Much,
• Denis Villeneuve's Dune.

Several films spoof it, including

• Woody Allen's Bananas and Love and Death;
• Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker's Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult (though also a parody of The Untouchables);
• the Soviet-Polish comedy Deja Vu;
• Jacob Tierney's The Trotsky;
• The short film Mr. Bill Goes to Washington;
• The German–Turkish film Kebab Connection;
• The 1999 direct-to-video film An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster;
• and the Italian Fantozzi comedy film Il secondo tragico Fantozzi.

Non-film shows that parody the scene include

• a 1996 episode of the American adult animated sitcom, Duckman, entitled "The Longest Weekend";
• and a 2014 episode of Rake (see, Season 3, Episode 5, 37 minutes in).

Artists and others influenced by the work include

• The Irish-born painter Francis Bacon (1909–1992). Eisenstein's images profoundly influenced Bacon, particularly the Odessa Steps shot of the nurse's broken glasses and open-mouthed scream. The open mouth image appeared first in Bacon's Abstraction from the Human Form, in Fragment of a Crucifixion, and other works including his famous Head series.[37]
• The Soviet Union-born photographer and artist Alexey Titarenko was inspired by and paid tribute to the Odessa Steps sequence in his series City Of Shadows (1991–1993), shot near the subway station in Saint Petersburg.[38]
• The popular culture periodical (and website) Odessa Steps Magazine, started in 2000, is named after the sequence.
• The 2011 October Revolution parade in Moscow featured a homage to the film.[39]
• Episode 2 of Japanese animation "Ergo Proxy" titled "Confessions of a Fellow Citizen" shows a very similar scene in a mall. Here many are slaughtered by a being known as a Proxy, who also knocks a baby carriage down a flight of stairs, taking the life of the mother and baby.