Greatest Silent Film Ever?

Rating: 10/10 (25 May 2011)

A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resulting street demonstration which brought on a police massacre.
What can I say about this film? It has earned the rare 10 out of 10 from me. I have now rated over 1600 movies, and maybe five have earned a ten. That puts this film in an elite group, in the top 0.5% It is beautiful, and I have to thank the good people at Kino for that. They keep taking old films and making them like new. Every film they have restored has impressed me. This one even more so... it may be Soviet propaganda, but it is glorious propaganda (and allegedly Charlie Chaplin's favorite film).
Oddly, Ivan Butler wrote about this film in his history of horror book. This is not a horror film by any stretch of the imagination, but he mentions it for the "macabre" moments. An old woman whose eye is shot out, meat that is crawling with maggots (beating Lucio Fulci by many decades). It is real in its disturbing nature, which means something by 1920s standards.
Where does this fit in the history of cinema? It is the odd one out. Germany had some great silent films, as did America. We rarely hear of Russia in this context, and no Russian director is a household name like Buster Keaton or Fritz Lang. But "Potemkin" is that rare film that defied the bigger film industries of Hollywood and Ufa... and may be the greatest silent film ever made.