De film vertelt het waargebeurde verhaal van Vassili Zaitzev, een Russische sluipschutter die tijdens de Slag om Stalingrad in de Tweede Wereldoorlog in z’n eentje honderd Duitsers vermoordde. Hij wordt door z’n officier gebruikt als propaganda. Ze worden beiden verliefd op dezelfde vrouw.
 
Bron: moviemeter.nl

In modern history theres never been a battle so dominated by snipers, as was Stalingrad, the 1942 high-water mark of German conquest in Russia. By October 1942, the Germans had seized nine-tenths of the city, which artillery had so reduced to rubble that the Reichs weary soldiers called the fighting “Rattenkrieg,” or the “War of the Rats.” Combatants on both sides tunneled, scurried, and hid in the ruins of once enormous industrial plants and whole blocks of collapsed apartment buildings. It was a snipers haven.
 
The premier Soviet sniper at Stalingrad was Vassili Zaitsev, who had been a shepherd in the Ural Mountains. In his first 10 days of shooting, Zaitsev killed 40 Germans. When his tally neared 100, he became the focus of a Soviet propaganda campaign as the living epitome of Russian resistance.It was inevitable that Berlin would strike back. Dispatched to Stalingrad was the commandant of the Sniper School at Zossen, Major Koning/Konig to kill Vasili. Vasili was alerted. Focusing his search along a narrow front in his area of operation, the Red October factory district, he and his spotter, Nikolai Kulikov, finally observed the top of a German helmet creeping along a trench. Vasili realized it was a trick, because the helmet some how moved unevenly.
 
Bron: snipersparadise.com

A master of the early Soviet cinema, Eisenstein was responsible for a group of imaginative and exciting silent films employing rapid, rhythmic montage and a feverish visual invention. Once universally acclaimed, Eisenstein’s reputation has suffered in recent years, with many finding his propaganda too strident, but Strike and Battleship Potemkin, at least, remain films of extraordinary energy and power. Eisenstein’s later career was inhibited by ill health and his work suffered official disapproval under Stalinism, but his last film, Ivan The Terrible, remains a decadent masterpiece brimming with grotesque invention.
 
The Battleship Potemkin originally released: 1925
Eisenstein’s most famous film displays his strident visual invention at its early peak, and ranks as one of the most intense of all silent films. Unquestionably the power lies above all in the editing, which remains extraordinary for its dynamism and power; the Odessa Steps sequence is shattering in its tension and imagery of explosive violence. The propagandistic aspects of the piece are a little wearing, and Eisenstein tends to sacrifice subtlety for force. But the film’s demented visual invention is nevertheless stunning.
 
Bron: thecontext.com