Battleship Potemkin, directed by Eisenstein, was made in 1925 and remains one of the ultimate movies ever made. The famous stairs scene in Odessa where the soldiers arrive and the people are fleeing is a perfect illustration of the power of mise-en-scene.
Eisenstein is known for his mastery of montage. The scene’s pacing is very abrupt as the shots are very short and terse. They show people in fear and running away. Soldiers are attacking them, and Eisenstein uses scenes from the port in rapid successions to illustrate the tension. About montage, Eisenstein said, “Any two sequences, when juxtaposed, inevitably combine into another concept which arises from that juxtaposition of two events, two facts, two objects.”
Lastly, the stroller rolling down the stairs is one of the iconic moments of this movie. The whole picture is a giant metaphor. The baby represents prototypical innocence. The soldiers are going down the stairs and terrorizing the people. They have no pity or compassion. The stroller rolling down the stair demonstrates the ripple effect of collateral damage. The mise-en-scene is very important in this movie and especially during this scene. Eisenstein’s movie is a model that has been inspiring to the entire film industry.
D.W Griffith invented the concept of montage in 1915 with his movie The Birth of a Nation. The image of his movie is syncopated because there are 16 frames/second as oppose to the traditional 24 frames/second. But Eisenstein perfected it and also wrote several essays about the theory behind the idea of montage.