Crowds flee in terror down cement steps. Armed troops advance and shoot. Bodies fall. Victims are trampled. Pandemonium. An anguished mother holds the limp body of her dead child, defiant to the oncoming slaughter. Bloodied faces plead and cry in agony. Soldiered feet jackboot forward aggressively in unison. More shooting. A baby carriage careens out of control, taking its infant passenger to an uncertain end.

The “Odessa Steps” sequence from the 1925 silent classic Battleship Potemkin is one of cinema’s most famous, and deservedly so.

In a taut six-and-a-half minutes or so, Soviet filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein pushed the limits of cinema using rhythmic editing and unconventional camerawork to create pure chaos, violence and tension. Eisenstein’s use of montage pushed the limits of the then-young art form, showing that emotional, psychological and intellectual responses could be attained via the manipulation of time and the juxtaposition of images on-screen.

The technological revolution in Potemkin was apropos considering the film’s subject — the failed 1905 mutiny by the warship’s crew against its oppressive officers that served as a stepping-stone towards the Russian Revolution of 1917. Commissioned by the Soviet government to memorialize the uprising, Eisenstein seized the opportunity to create an exhilarating, though somewhat fictionalized, experience that both advanced his montage theories and altered cinema history.

Battleship Potemkin’s reception was contentious. Banned in many countries (even in the Soviet Union for a spell) for its propagandistic bent, the film was hailed for cinematic achievements nevertheless. Its influence stretches into the present, with filmmakers Brian De Palma, Terry Gilliam, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Woody Allen and more paying direct homage in their works.

Long in the public domain, numerous versions of Potemkin — many of varying quality — have been in circulation since the film’s release 86 years ago. A beautiful 35mm restoration, complete with a new score, opens at the Music Box Theatre on Friday, March 4. It’s an event to celebrate.

The restoration, spearheaded by German film historian Enno Patalas, Russia’s Goskinofilm, The British Film Institute, Bundesfilm Archive Berlin, the Munich Film Archive and the Filmmuseum Berlin-Deutsche Kinematek, premiered at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Potemkin uprising and the film’s 80th anniversary. It restores much footage lost to decades of re-cutting and censorship, bringing the masterpiece much closer to its director’s original vision.

The new score, performed by the Deutsches Filmorchestra Babelsburg and conducted by German composer Helmut Imig, is an update of Edmund Meisel’s original. Imig’s arrangements and expansions lock into Eisenstein’s visual constructions perfectly and make them even more rousing.

Considering events currently surging from the Midwest to the Middle East, the Music Box’s programming of Battleship Potemkin was particularly prescient. Revolution is in the air. Witnessing it on the screen in such a powerful form is essential.