Sergei Eisenstein
Encyclopedia
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet
Russian film director
and film theorist
, often considered to be the "Father of Montage". He is noted in particular for his silent film
s Strike
(1924), Battleship Potemkin
(1925) and October (1927), as well as the historical epics
Alexander Nevsky
(1938) and Ivan the Terrible
(1944, 1958).
Sergei Eizenshtein was born to a middle-class family in Riga
, Latvia but his family moved frequently in his early years, as Eisenstein continued to do throughout his life. His father Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein
was of German
-Jewish and Swedish descent descent, and his mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, was from a Russian Orthodox family. His father was an architect and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous merchant. Julia left Riga the same year as the Russian Revolution (1905), bringing Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Her son would return at times to see his father, who later moved to join them around 1910.Divorce followed and Julia deserted the family to live in France.
At the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, Sergei studied architecture and engineering, the profession of his father. At school with his fellow students however, Sergei would join the military to serve the revolution, which would divide him from his father. In 1918 he joined the Red Army
, although his father Mikhail supported the opposite side. This brought his father to Germany after defeat, and Sergei to Petrograd, Vologda
, and Dvinsk. In 1920, Sergei was transferred to a command position in Minsk
, after success providing propaganda
for the October Revolution
. At this time, he studied Japanese
, learning some 300 kanji
characters, which he cited as an influence on his pictorial development. and gained an exposure to Kabuki
theatre; These studies would lead him to travel to Japan
.
. His productions there were entitled Gas Masks, Listen Moscow, and Wiseman
. Eisenstein would then work as a designer for Vsevolod Meyerhold
. In 1923 Eisenstein began his career as a theorist, by writing The Montage of Attractions for LEF
. Eisenstein's first film, Glumov's Diary (for the theatre production Wiseman
), was also made in that same year with Dziga Vertov
hired initially as an "instructor."
Strike
(1925) was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film. The Battleship Potemkin
(1925) was acclaimed critically worldwide. But it was mostly his international critical renown which enabled Eisenstein to direct October (aka Ten Days That Shook The World) as part of a grand tenth anniversary celebration of the October Revolution
of 1917, and then The General Line
(aka Old and New). The critics of the outside world praised them, but at home, Eisenstein's focus in these films on structural issues such as camera angles, crowd movements, and montage brought him and like-minded others, such as Vsevolod Pudovkin
and Alexander Dovzhenko
, under fire from the Soviet film community, forcing him to issue public articles of self-criticism and commitments to reform his cinematic visions to conform to the increasingly specific doctrines of socialist realism
.
and cinematographer Eduard Tisse
. Officially, the trip was supposed to allow Eisenstein and company to learn about sound motion pictures and to present the famous Soviet artists in person to the capitalist West. For Eisenstein, however, it was also an opportunity to see landscapes and cultures outside those found within the Soviet Union. He spent the next two years touring and lecturing in Berlin, Zurich, London, and Paris. In 1929, in Switzerland, Eisenstein supervised an educational documentary about abortion directed by Tissé entitled Frauennot - Frauenglück.
, on behalf of Paramount Pictures
, offered him the opportunity to make a film in the United States. He accepted a short-term contract for $100,000 and arrived in Hollywood in May 1930. However, this arrangement failed. Eisenstein's idiosyncratic and artistic approach to cinema was incompatible with the more formulaic and commercial approach of American studios.
Eisenstein proposed a biography of munitions tycoon Sir Basil Zaharoff and a film version of Arms and the Man
by George Bernard Shaw
, and more fully developed plans for a film of Sutter's Gold
by Jack London
, but on all accounts failed to impress the studio's producers. Paramount then proposed a movie version of Theodore Dreiser
's An American Tragedy
. This excited Eisenstein, who had read and liked the work, and had met Dreiser at one time in Moscow. Eisenstein completed a script by the start of October 1930, but Paramount disliked it completely and, additionally, found themselves intimidated by Major Frank Pease, president of the Hollywood Technical Director's Institute. Pease, an anti-communist, mounted a public campaign against Eisenstein. On October 23, 1930, by "mutual consent," Paramount and Eisenstein declared their contract null and void, and the Eisenstein party were treated to return tickets to Moscow at Paramount's expense.
Eisenstein was thus faced with returning home a failure. The Soviet film industry was solving the sound-film issue without him and his films, techniques, and theories were becoming increasingly attacked as 'ideological failures' and prime examples of formalism
. Many of his theoretical articles from this period, such as Eisenstein on Disney
, have surfaced decades later as seminal scholarly texts used as curriculum in film schools around the world.
Eisenstein and his entourage spent considerable time with Charlie Chaplin
, who recommended that Eisenstein meet with a sympathetic benefactor in the person of American socialist author Upton Sinclair
. Sinclair's works had been accepted by and were widely read in the USSR, and were known to Eisenstein. The two had mutual admiration and between the end of October 1930, and Thanksgiving of that year, Sinclair had secured an extension of Eisenstein's absences from the USSR, and permission for him to travel to Mexico. The trip to Mexico was for Eisenstein to make a film produced by Sinclair and his wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair
, and three other investors organized as the "Mexican Film Trust".
By 4 December 1930, Eisenstein was en route to Mexico by train, accompanied by Aleksandrov and Tisse. Later he produced a brief synopsis of the six-part film which would come, in one form or another, to be the final plan Eisenstein would settle on for his project. The title for the project, ¡Que viva México!
, was decided on some time later still. While in Mexico Eisenstein mixed socially with Frida Kahlo
, and Diego Rivera
. Eisenstein admired these artists as much as Mexican culture in general, and they inspired Eisenstein to call his films "moving frescoes".
After a prolonged absence, Stalin sent a telegram expressing the concern that Eisenstein had become a deserter. Under pressure, Eisenstein blamed Mary Sinclair's younger brother, Hunter Kimbrough, who had been sent along to act as a line producer, for the film's problems. Eisenstein hoped to pressure the Sinclairs to insinuate themselves between him and Stalin, so Eisenstein could finish the film in his own way. The furious Sinclair shut down production and ordered Kimbrough to return to the United States with the remaining film footage and the three Soviets to see what they could do with the film already shot, estimates ranging from 170,000 lineal feet with Soldadera unfilmed, to an excess of 250,000 lineal feet.
For the unfinished filming of the "novel" of Soldadera, without incurring any cost, Eisenstein had secured 500 soldiers, 10,000 guns, and 50 cannons from the Mexican Army, but this was lost due to Sinclair's cancelling of production. When Eisenstein arrived at the American border, a customs search of his trunk revealed sketches and drawings of Jesus
caricatures amongst other lewd pornographic material. His re-entry visa had expired, and Sinclair's contacts in Washington were unable to secure him an additional extension. Eisenstein, Aleksandrov, and Tisse were allowed, after a month's stay at the U.S.-Mexico border outside Laredo, Texas
, a 30-day "pass" to get from Texas to New York, and thence depart for Moscow, while Kimbrough returned to Los Angeles with the remaining film.
Eisenstein toured the American South, on his way to New York. In mid-1932, the Sinclairs were able to secure the services of Sol Lesser, who had just opened his distribution office in New York, Principal Distributing Corporation. Lesser agreed to supervise post-production work on the miles of negative — at the Sinclairs' expense — and distribute any resulting product. Two short feature film
s and a short subject
— Thunder Over Mexico based on the "Maguey" footage, Eisenstein in Mexico, and Death Day respectively — were completed and released in the United States between the autumn of 1933 and early 1934.
Eisenstein never saw any of the Sinclair-Lesser films, nor a later effort by his first biographer, Marie Seton
, called Time in the Sun. He would publicly maintain that he had lost all interest in the project.
in July 1933, ostensibly a result of depression born of his final acceptance that he would never be allowed to edit the Mexican footage, turned over by Sinclair to Hollywood editors, who would irreparably alter the negatives.
He was subsequently assigned a teaching position with the film school GIK (now Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography
) where he had taught earlier and in 1933 and 1934 was in charge of writing curriculum. Eisenstein married filmmaker and writer Vera Atasheva (1900–65) in 1934 and remained married until his death in 1948, though there is some speculation about his sexuality.
In 1935, he began another project, Bezhin Meadow
, but it appears the film was afflicted with many of the same problems as Que Viva Mexico— Eisenstein unilaterally decided to film two versions of the scenario, one for adult viewers and one for children; failed to define a clear shooting schedule; and shot film prodigiously, resulting in cost overruns and missed deadlines. Even though Soviet film executive Boris Shumyatsky
encouraged Sinclair in undermining Eisenstein it was derailed not as much as Bezhin Meadow by the Soviet film industry, but by its American backers.
The thing which appeared to save Eisenstein's career at this point was that Stalin ended up taking the position that the Bezhin Meadow catastrophe, along with several other problems facing the industry at that point, had less to do with Eisenstein's approach to filmmaking as with the executives who were supposed to have been supervising him. Ultimately this came down on the shoulders of Boris Shumyatsky
, "executive producer" of Soviet film since 1932, who in early 1938 was denounced, arrested, tried and convicted as a traitor, and shot. (The production executive at Film studio Mosfilm
, where Meadow was being made, was also replaced, but without further executions.)
, with music composed by Sergei Prokofiev
. This time, he was assigned a co-scenarist, Pyotr Pavlenko
, to bring in a completed script; professional actors to play the roles; and an assistant director, Dmitri Vasilyev, to expedite shooting.
The result was a film critically received by both the Soviets and in the West, which won him the Order of Lenin
and the Stalin Prize. It was an obvious allegory and stern warning against the massing forces of Nazi Germany, well played and well made. The script had Nevsky utter a number of traditional Russian proverb
s, verbally rooting his fight against the Germanic invaders in Russian traditions. This was started, completed, and placed in distribution all within the year 1938, and represented not only Eisenstein's first film in nearly a decade but also his first sound film.
Within months of its release, the Stalin entered into a pact with Hitler, and Nevsky was promptly pulled from distribution. Eisenstein returned to teaching and was assigned to direct Richard Wagner
's Die Walküre
at the Bolshoi Theatre
. After the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941, Nevsky was released into wide distribution and earned international success. With the war approaching Moscow, Eisenstein was one of many filmmakers evacuated to Alma-Ata
, where he first considered the idea of making a film about Czar Ivan IV. Eisenstein corresponded with Prokofiev from Alma Ata, and was joined by him there in 1942. Prokofiev composed the score
for Eisenstein's film and Eisenstein reciprocated by designing sets for an operatic rendition of War and Peace
that Prokofiev was developing.
as a national hero, won Joseph Stalin
's approval (and a Stalin Prize), but the sequel, Ivan The Terrible, Part II was criticized by various authorities and would go unreleased until 1958. All footage from the still incomplete Ivan The Terrible: Part III was confiscated, and most of it was destroyed (though several filmed scenes still exist today).
Eisenstein's health was also failing: he was struck by a heart attack during the making of this picture, and soon died of another at the age of 50. He is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery
in Moscow.
, a specific use of film editing
. He and his contemporary, Lev Kuleshov
, two of the earliest film theorists, argued that montage was the essence of the cinema. His articles and books — particularly Film Form and The Film Sense — explain the significance of montage in detail.
His writings and films have continued to have a major impact on subsequent filmmakers. Eisenstein believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through a "linkage" of related images. Eisenstein felt the "collision" of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He believed that an idea should be derived from the juxtaposition of two independent shots, bringing an element of collage into film. He developed what he called "methods of montage":#Metric
Eisenstein taught film-making during his career at GIK where he wrote the curricula for the directors' course; his classroom illustrations are reproduced in Vladimir Nizhniĭ's Lessons with Eisenstein. Exercises and examples for students were based on rendering literature such as Honoré de Balzac
's Le Père Goriot
. Another hypothetical was the staging of the Haiti
an struggle for independence as depicted in Anatolii Vinogradov's The Black Consul, influenced as well by John Vandercook's Black Majesty.
Lessons from this scenario delved into the character of Jean-Jacques Dessalines
, replaying his movements, actions, and the drama surrounding him. Further to the didactics of literary and dramatic content, Eisenstein taught the technicalities of directing, photography, and editing, while encouraging his students' development of individuality, expressiveness, and creativity. Eisenstein's pedagogy, like his films, were politically charged and contained quotes from Vladimir Lenin
interwoven with his teaching.
In his initial films, Eisenstein did not use professional actors. His narratives eschewed individual characters and addressed broad social issues, especially class conflict
. He used stock characters, and the roles were filled with untrained people from the appropriate classes; he avoided casting stars
. Eisenstein's vision of communism
brought him into conflict with officials in the ruling regime of Joseph Stalin
. Like many Bolshevik
artists, Eisenstein envisioned a new society which would subsidize artists totally, freeing them from the confines of bosses and budgets, leaving them absolutely free to create, but budgets and producers were as significant to the Soviet film industry as the rest of the world. Due to the fledgling war, the revolution-wracked and isolated new nation didn't have the resources to nationalize its film industry at first. When it did, limited resources — both monetary and equipment — required production controls as extensive as in the capitalist world.
In Russian, and available online, Избранные статьи.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
Russian film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and film theorist
Film theory
Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large...
, often considered to be the "Father of Montage". He is noted in particular for his silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
s Strike
Strike (film)
Strike is a 1925 silent film made in the Soviet Union by Sergei Eisenstein. It was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film, and he would go on to make The Battleship Potemkin later that year. It was acted by the Proletcult Theatre, and composed of six parts...
(1924), Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin , sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm...
(1925) and October (1927), as well as the historical epics
Epic film
An epic is a genre of film that emphasizes human drama on a grand scale. Epics are more ambitious in scope than other film genres, and their ambitious nature helps to differentiate them from similar genres such as the period piece or adventure film...
Alexander Nevsky
Alexander Nevsky (film)
Alexander Nevsky is a 1938 historical drama film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, in association with Dmitri Vasilyev and a script co-written with Pyotr Pavlenko, who were assigned to ensure Eisenstein did not stray into "formalism" and to facilitate shooting on a reasonable timetable...
(1938) and Ivan the Terrible
Ivan the Terrible (film)
Ivan the Terrible is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia made by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Part 1 was released in 1944 but Part 2 was not released until 1958 due to political censorship...
(1944, 1958).
Early years
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, Latvia but his family moved frequently in his early years, as Eisenstein continued to do throughout his life. His father Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein
Mikhail Eisenstein
Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein, , was a Russian architect and civil engineer. His paternal grandparents being German Jews, had converted to Orthodox Christianity, and his maternal grandparents were Swedes. He graduated from the Institute of Civic Engineering in St. Petersburg in 1893. He was the...
was of German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
-Jewish and Swedish descent descent, and his mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, was from a Russian Orthodox family. His father was an architect and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous merchant. Julia left Riga the same year as the Russian Revolution (1905), bringing Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Her son would return at times to see his father, who later moved to join them around 1910.Divorce followed and Julia deserted the family to live in France.
At the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, Sergei studied architecture and engineering, the profession of his father. At school with his fellow students however, Sergei would join the military to serve the revolution, which would divide him from his father. In 1918 he joined the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
, although his father Mikhail supported the opposite side. This brought his father to Germany after defeat, and Sergei to Petrograd, Vologda
Vologda
Vologda is a city and the administrative, cultural, and scientific center of Vologda Oblast, Russia, located on the Vologda River. The city is a major transport knot of the Northwest of Russia. Vologda is among the Russian cities possessing an especially valuable historical heritage...
, and Dvinsk. In 1920, Sergei was transferred to a command position in Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
, after success providing propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
for the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
. At this time, he studied Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, learning some 300 kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
characters, which he cited as an influence on his pictorial development. and gained an exposure to Kabuki
Kabuki
is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...
theatre; These studies would lead him to travel to Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
From theatre to cinema
In 1920 Eisenstein moved to Moscow, and began his career in theatre working for ProletkultProletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...
. His productions there were entitled Gas Masks, Listen Moscow, and Wiseman
Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man
Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man is a five-act comedy by Aleksandr Ostrovsky. The play offers a satirical treatment of bigotry and charts the rise of a double-dealer who manipulates other people's vanities...
. Eisenstein would then work as a designer for Vsevolod Meyerhold
Vsevolod Meyerhold
Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a great Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre.-Early...
. In 1923 Eisenstein began his career as a theorist, by writing The Montage of Attractions for LEF
LEF (journal)
LEF was the journal of the Left Front of the Arts , a widely ranging association of avant-garde writers, photographers, critics and designers in the Soviet Union. It had two runs, one from 1923 to 1925 as LEF, and later from 1927 to 1929 as Novy LEF...
. Eisenstein's first film, Glumov's Diary (for the theatre production Wiseman
Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man
Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man is a five-act comedy by Aleksandr Ostrovsky. The play offers a satirical treatment of bigotry and charts the rise of a double-dealer who manipulates other people's vanities...
), was also made in that same year with Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...
hired initially as an "instructor."
Strike
Strike (film)
Strike is a 1925 silent film made in the Soviet Union by Sergei Eisenstein. It was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film, and he would go on to make The Battleship Potemkin later that year. It was acted by the Proletcult Theatre, and composed of six parts...
(1925) was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film. The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin , sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm...
(1925) was acclaimed critically worldwide. But it was mostly his international critical renown which enabled Eisenstein to direct October (aka Ten Days That Shook The World) as part of a grand tenth anniversary celebration of the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
of 1917, and then The General Line
The General Line
The General Line aka Old and New is a 1929 Soviet film directed by Sergei Eisenstein.The General Line was begun in 1927 as a celebration of the collectivization of agriculture, as championed by old-line Bolshevik Leon Trotsky. Hoping to reach a wide audience, the director forsook his usual...
(aka Old and New). The critics of the outside world praised them, but at home, Eisenstein's focus in these films on structural issues such as camera angles, crowd movements, and montage brought him and like-minded others, such as Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage...
and Alexander Dovzhenko
Alexander Dovzhenko
Aleksandr Petrovich Dovzhenko , was a Soviet screenwriter, film producer and director of Ukrainian descent. He is often cited as one of the most important early Soviet filmmakers, alongside Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin.- Biography :...
, under fire from the Soviet film community, forcing him to issue public articles of self-criticism and commitments to reform his cinematic visions to conform to the increasingly specific doctrines of socialist realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
.
Travels to Europe
In the autumn of 1928, with October still under fire in many Soviet quarters, Eisenstein left the Soviet Union for a tour of Europe, accompanied by his perennial film collaborator Grigori AleksandrovGrigori Aleksandrov
Grigori Vasilyevich Aleksandrov or Alexandrov was a prominent Soviet film director who was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1947 and a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1973...
and cinematographer Eduard Tisse
Eduard Tisse
Eduard Kazimirovich Tisse April 1897 - 18 November 1961) was a Soviet cinematographer born to a Swedish father and Russian mother in Liepāja, Courland. He grew up in Liepāja and started his career as a newsreel cameraman during the Russian Civil War...
. Officially, the trip was supposed to allow Eisenstein and company to learn about sound motion pictures and to present the famous Soviet artists in person to the capitalist West. For Eisenstein, however, it was also an opportunity to see landscapes and cultures outside those found within the Soviet Union. He spent the next two years touring and lecturing in Berlin, Zurich, London, and Paris. In 1929, in Switzerland, Eisenstein supervised an educational documentary about abortion directed by Tissé entitled Frauennot - Frauenglück.
American projects
In late April 1930, Jesse L. LaskyJesse L. Lasky
Jesse Louis Lasky, Sr. was a pioneer Hollywood film producer. He was a key founder of Paramount Pictures with Adolph Zukor, and father of screenwriter Jesse L...
, on behalf of Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, offered him the opportunity to make a film in the United States. He accepted a short-term contract for $100,000 and arrived in Hollywood in May 1930. However, this arrangement failed. Eisenstein's idiosyncratic and artistic approach to cinema was incompatible with the more formulaic and commercial approach of American studios.
Eisenstein proposed a biography of munitions tycoon Sir Basil Zaharoff and a film version of Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin:"Arma virumque cano" ....
by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, and more fully developed plans for a film of Sutter's Gold
Sutter's Gold
Sutter's Gold is a 1936 fictionalized film version of the aftermath of the discovery of gold on Sutter's property, spurring the California Gold Rush of 1849. Edward Arnold plays John Sutter...
by Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
, but on all accounts failed to impress the studio's producers. Paramount then proposed a movie version of Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
's An American Tragedy
An American Tragedy
-Plot summary:The ambitious but immature Clyde Griffiths, raised by poor and devoutly religious parents who force him to participate in their street missionary work, is anxious to achieve better things. His troubles begin when he takes a job as a bellboy at a local hotel. The boys he meets are...
. This excited Eisenstein, who had read and liked the work, and had met Dreiser at one time in Moscow. Eisenstein completed a script by the start of October 1930, but Paramount disliked it completely and, additionally, found themselves intimidated by Major Frank Pease, president of the Hollywood Technical Director's Institute. Pease, an anti-communist, mounted a public campaign against Eisenstein. On October 23, 1930, by "mutual consent," Paramount and Eisenstein declared their contract null and void, and the Eisenstein party were treated to return tickets to Moscow at Paramount's expense.
Eisenstein was thus faced with returning home a failure. The Soviet film industry was solving the sound-film issue without him and his films, techniques, and theories were becoming increasingly attacked as 'ideological failures' and prime examples of formalism
Formalist film theory
Formalist film theory is a theory of film study that is focused on the formal, or technical, elements of a film: i.e., the lighting, scoring, sound and set design, use of color, shot composition, and editing...
. Many of his theoretical articles from this period, such as Eisenstein on Disney
Eisenstein on Disney
Eisenstein on Disney is a book by film critic Jay Leyda that collects and reprints the various literature that Sergei Eisenstein produced about Disney. Eisenstein composed the majority of the text in 1941 after his introduction to the Hollywood culture industry...
, have surfaced decades later as seminal scholarly texts used as curriculum in film schools around the world.
Eisenstein and his entourage spent considerable time with Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, who recommended that Eisenstein meet with a sympathetic benefactor in the person of American socialist author Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
. Sinclair's works had been accepted by and were widely read in the USSR, and were known to Eisenstein. The two had mutual admiration and between the end of October 1930, and Thanksgiving of that year, Sinclair had secured an extension of Eisenstein's absences from the USSR, and permission for him to travel to Mexico. The trip to Mexico was for Eisenstein to make a film produced by Sinclair and his wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair
Mary Craig Sinclair
Mary Craig Sinclair was a writer and the wife of Upton Sinclair.-Early life and education:She was born Mary Craig Kimbrough in Greenwood, Mississippi on February 12, 1882, the oldest child of Mary Hunter and her husband Allan McCaskill Kimbrough, a judge...
, and three other investors organized as the "Mexican Film Trust".
Mexican odyssey
On 24 November, Eisenstein signed a contract with the Trust "upon the basis of his desire to be free to direct the making of a picture according to his own ideas of what a Mexican picture should be, and in full faith in Eisenstein's artistic integrity." The contract also stipulated that the film would be "non-political," that immediately available funding came from Mrs. Sinclair in an amount of "not less than Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars," that the shooting schedule amounted to "a period of from three to four months," and most importantly that "Eisenstein furthermore agrees that all pictures made or directed by him in Mexico, all negative film and positive prints, and all story and ideas embodied in said Mexican picture, will be the property of Mrs. Sinclair..." A codicil to the contract, dated December 1, allowed that the "Soviet Government may have the [finished] film free for showing inside the U.S.S.R." Reportedly, it was verbally clarified that the expectation was for a finished film of about an hour's duration.By 4 December 1930, Eisenstein was en route to Mexico by train, accompanied by Aleksandrov and Tisse. Later he produced a brief synopsis of the six-part film which would come, in one form or another, to be the final plan Eisenstein would settle on for his project. The title for the project, ¡Que viva México!
¡Qué viva México!
¡Qué viva México! is a film project begun in 1930 by the Russian avant-garde director Sergei Eisenstein . It would have been an episodic portrayal of Mexican culture and politics from pre-Conquest civilization to the Mexican revolution. Production was beset by difficulties and was eventually...
, was decided on some time later still. While in Mexico Eisenstein mixed socially with Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....
, and Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
. Eisenstein admired these artists as much as Mexican culture in general, and they inspired Eisenstein to call his films "moving frescoes".
After a prolonged absence, Stalin sent a telegram expressing the concern that Eisenstein had become a deserter. Under pressure, Eisenstein blamed Mary Sinclair's younger brother, Hunter Kimbrough, who had been sent along to act as a line producer, for the film's problems. Eisenstein hoped to pressure the Sinclairs to insinuate themselves between him and Stalin, so Eisenstein could finish the film in his own way. The furious Sinclair shut down production and ordered Kimbrough to return to the United States with the remaining film footage and the three Soviets to see what they could do with the film already shot, estimates ranging from 170,000 lineal feet with Soldadera unfilmed, to an excess of 250,000 lineal feet.
For the unfinished filming of the "novel" of Soldadera, without incurring any cost, Eisenstein had secured 500 soldiers, 10,000 guns, and 50 cannons from the Mexican Army, but this was lost due to Sinclair's cancelling of production. When Eisenstein arrived at the American border, a customs search of his trunk revealed sketches and drawings of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
caricatures amongst other lewd pornographic material. His re-entry visa had expired, and Sinclair's contacts in Washington were unable to secure him an additional extension. Eisenstein, Aleksandrov, and Tisse were allowed, after a month's stay at the U.S.-Mexico border outside Laredo, Texas
Laredo, Texas
Laredo is the county seat of Webb County, Texas, United States, located on the north bank of the Rio Grande in South Texas, across from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. According to the 2010 census, the city population was 236,091 making it the 3rd largest on the United States-Mexican border,...
, a 30-day "pass" to get from Texas to New York, and thence depart for Moscow, while Kimbrough returned to Los Angeles with the remaining film.
Eisenstein toured the American South, on his way to New York. In mid-1932, the Sinclairs were able to secure the services of Sol Lesser, who had just opened his distribution office in New York, Principal Distributing Corporation. Lesser agreed to supervise post-production work on the miles of negative — at the Sinclairs' expense — and distribute any resulting product. Two short feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
s and a short subject
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
— Thunder Over Mexico based on the "Maguey" footage, Eisenstein in Mexico, and Death Day respectively — were completed and released in the United States between the autumn of 1933 and early 1934.
Eisenstein never saw any of the Sinclair-Lesser films, nor a later effort by his first biographer, Marie Seton
Marie Seton
Marie Seton was a film critic and biographer of Sergei Eisenstein, Paul Robeson, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Satyajit Ray.In 1935 she helped to establish the reputation of Ronald Moody....
, called Time in the Sun. He would publicly maintain that he had lost all interest in the project.
Return to Soviet Union
Eisenstein's foray into the west made the staunchly Stalinist film industry look upon him with a suspicion that would never completely disappear. He apparently spent some time in a mental hospital in KislovodskKislovodsk
Kislovodsk is a city in Stavropol Krai, Russia, which lies in the North Caucasian region of the country, between the Black and Caspian Seas. The closest airport is located in the city of Mineralnye Vody. Population:...
in July 1933, ostensibly a result of depression born of his final acceptance that he would never be allowed to edit the Mexican footage, turned over by Sinclair to Hollywood editors, who would irreparably alter the negatives.
He was subsequently assigned a teaching position with the film school GIK (now Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography
Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography
The Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography All-Russian State University of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov), VGIK for short, is a film school in Moscow, Russia.-History:...
) where he had taught earlier and in 1933 and 1934 was in charge of writing curriculum. Eisenstein married filmmaker and writer Vera Atasheva (1900–65) in 1934 and remained married until his death in 1948, though there is some speculation about his sexuality.
In 1935, he began another project, Bezhin Meadow
Bezhin Meadow
Bezhin Meadow is a 1937 Soviet film famous for having been suppressed and believed destroyed before its completion. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, it tells the story of a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year's harvest and the...
, but it appears the film was afflicted with many of the same problems as Que Viva Mexico— Eisenstein unilaterally decided to film two versions of the scenario, one for adult viewers and one for children; failed to define a clear shooting schedule; and shot film prodigiously, resulting in cost overruns and missed deadlines. Even though Soviet film executive Boris Shumyatsky
Boris Shumyatsky
Boris Zakharovich Shumyatsky was the de facto executive producer for the Soviet film monopoly from 1930 to 1937...
encouraged Sinclair in undermining Eisenstein it was derailed not as much as Bezhin Meadow by the Soviet film industry, but by its American backers.
The thing which appeared to save Eisenstein's career at this point was that Stalin ended up taking the position that the Bezhin Meadow catastrophe, along with several other problems facing the industry at that point, had less to do with Eisenstein's approach to filmmaking as with the executives who were supposed to have been supervising him. Ultimately this came down on the shoulders of Boris Shumyatsky
Boris Shumyatsky
Boris Zakharovich Shumyatsky was the de facto executive producer for the Soviet film monopoly from 1930 to 1937...
, "executive producer" of Soviet film since 1932, who in early 1938 was denounced, arrested, tried and convicted as a traitor, and shot. (The production executive at Film studio Mosfilm
Mosfilm
Mosfilm is a film studio, which is often described as the largest and oldest in Russia and in Europe. Its output includes most of the more widely-acclaimed Soviet films, ranging from works by Tarkovsky and Eisenstein , to Red Westerns, to the Akira Kurosawa co-production and the epic Война и Мир...
, where Meadow was being made, was also replaced, but without further executions.)
Comeback
Eisenstein was thence able to ingratiate himself with Stalin for 'one more chance', and he chose, from two offerings, the assignment of a biopic of Alexander NevskyAlexander Nevsky (film)
Alexander Nevsky is a 1938 historical drama film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, in association with Dmitri Vasilyev and a script co-written with Pyotr Pavlenko, who were assigned to ensure Eisenstein did not stray into "formalism" and to facilitate shooting on a reasonable timetable...
, with music composed by Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
. This time, he was assigned a co-scenarist, Pyotr Pavlenko
Pyotr Pavlenko
Pyotr Andreyevich Pavlenko , , was a Soviet writer, screenwriter and war correspondent. He became a member of the CPSU in 1920.-Early life:...
, to bring in a completed script; professional actors to play the roles; and an assistant director, Dmitri Vasilyev, to expedite shooting.
The result was a film critically received by both the Soviets and in the West, which won him the Order of Lenin
Order of Lenin
The Order of Lenin , named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union...
and the Stalin Prize. It was an obvious allegory and stern warning against the massing forces of Nazi Germany, well played and well made. The script had Nevsky utter a number of traditional Russian proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
s, verbally rooting his fight against the Germanic invaders in Russian traditions. This was started, completed, and placed in distribution all within the year 1938, and represented not only Eisenstein's first film in nearly a decade but also his first sound film.
Within months of its release, the Stalin entered into a pact with Hitler, and Nevsky was promptly pulled from distribution. Eisenstein returned to teaching and was assigned to direct Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Die Walküre
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
at the Bolshoi Theatre
Bolshoi Theatre
The Bolshoi Theatre is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds performances of ballet and opera. The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera are amongst the oldest and most renowned ballet and opera companies in the world...
. After the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941, Nevsky was released into wide distribution and earned international success. With the war approaching Moscow, Eisenstein was one of many filmmakers evacuated to Alma-Ata
Almaty
Almaty , also known by its former names Verny and Alma-Ata , is the former capital of Kazakhstan and the nation's largest city, with a population of 1,348,500...
, where he first considered the idea of making a film about Czar Ivan IV. Eisenstein corresponded with Prokofiev from Alma Ata, and was joined by him there in 1942. Prokofiev composed the score
Ivan the Terrible (Prokofiev)
Ivan the Terrible is music by Sergei Prokofiev originally composed for the Sergei Eisenstein film about the sixteenth-century ruler. Prokofiev composed music to Part 1 in 1942-44, and to Part 2 in 1945; the score is cataloged as Op. 116...
for Eisenstein's film and Eisenstein reciprocated by designing sets for an operatic rendition of War and Peace
War and Peace (Prokofiev)
War and Peace is an opera in two parts , sometimes arranged as five acts, by Sergei Prokofiev to a Russian libretto by the composer and Mira Mendelson, based on the novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy...
that Prokofiev was developing.
Ivan trilogy
Eisenstein's film, Ivan The Terrible, Part I, presenting Ivan IV of RussiaIvan IV of Russia
Ivan IV Vasilyevich , known in English as Ivan the Terrible , was Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 until his death. His long reign saw the conquest of the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, transforming Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state spanning almost one billion acres,...
as a national hero, won Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's approval (and a Stalin Prize), but the sequel, Ivan The Terrible, Part II was criticized by various authorities and would go unreleased until 1958. All footage from the still incomplete Ivan The Terrible: Part III was confiscated, and most of it was destroyed (though several filmed scenes still exist today).
Eisenstein's health was also failing: he was struck by a heart attack during the making of this picture, and soon died of another at the age of 50. He is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery
Novodevichy Cemetery
Novodevichy Cemetery is the most famous cemetery in Moscow, Russia. It is next to the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent, which is the city's third most popular tourist site. It should not be confused with the Novodevichy Cemetery in Saint Petersburg....
in Moscow.
Film theorist
Eisenstein was a pioneer in the use of montageSoviet montage theory
Soviet montage theory is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing...
, a specific use of film editing
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
. He and his contemporary, Lev Kuleshov
Lev Kuleshov
Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school .-Career:...
, two of the earliest film theorists, argued that montage was the essence of the cinema. His articles and books — particularly Film Form and The Film Sense — explain the significance of montage in detail.
His writings and films have continued to have a major impact on subsequent filmmakers. Eisenstein believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through a "linkage" of related images. Eisenstein felt the "collision" of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He believed that an idea should be derived from the juxtaposition of two independent shots, bringing an element of collage into film. He developed what he called "methods of montage":#Metric
- Rhythmic
- Tonal
- Overtonal
- Intellectual
Eisenstein taught film-making during his career at GIK where he wrote the curricula for the directors' course; his classroom illustrations are reproduced in Vladimir Nizhniĭ's Lessons with Eisenstein. Exercises and examples for students were based on rendering literature such as Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
's Le Père Goriot
Le Père Goriot
Le Père Goriot is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac , included in the Scènes de la vie Parisienne section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine...
. Another hypothetical was the staging of the Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
an struggle for independence as depicted in Anatolii Vinogradov's The Black Consul, influenced as well by John Vandercook's Black Majesty.
Lessons from this scenario delved into the character of Jean-Jacques Dessalines
Jean-Jacques Dessalines
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was a leader of the Haitian Revolution and the first ruler of an independent Haiti under the 1801 constitution. Initially regarded as Governor-General, Dessalines later named himself Emperor Jacques I of Haiti...
, replaying his movements, actions, and the drama surrounding him. Further to the didactics of literary and dramatic content, Eisenstein taught the technicalities of directing, photography, and editing, while encouraging his students' development of individuality, expressiveness, and creativity. Eisenstein's pedagogy, like his films, were politically charged and contained quotes from Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
interwoven with his teaching.
In his initial films, Eisenstein did not use professional actors. His narratives eschewed individual characters and addressed broad social issues, especially class conflict
Class conflict
Class conflict is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests between people of different classes....
. He used stock characters, and the roles were filled with untrained people from the appropriate classes; he avoided casting stars
Movie star
A movie star is a celebrity who is well-known, or famous, for his or her starring, or leading, roles in motion pictures. The term may also apply to an actor or actress who is recognized as a marketable commodity and whose name is used to promote a movie in trailers and posters...
. Eisenstein's vision of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
brought him into conflict with officials in the ruling regime of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
. Like many Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
artists, Eisenstein envisioned a new society which would subsidize artists totally, freeing them from the confines of bosses and budgets, leaving them absolutely free to create, but budgets and producers were as significant to the Soviet film industry as the rest of the world. Due to the fledgling war, the revolution-wracked and isolated new nation didn't have the resources to nationalize its film industry at first. When it did, limited resources — both monetary and equipment — required production controls as extensive as in the capitalist world.
Filmography
- 1923 Дневник Глумова (Glumov's Diary) (short)
- 1924 Стачка (StrikeStrike (film)Strike is a 1925 silent film made in the Soviet Union by Sergei Eisenstein. It was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film, and he would go on to make The Battleship Potemkin later that year. It was acted by the Proletcult Theatre, and composed of six parts...
) - 1925 Броненосец Потёмкин (The Battleship PotemkinThe Battleship PotemkinThe Battleship Potemkin , sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm...
) - 1927 Октябрь «Десять дней, которые потрясли мир» (October: Ten Days That Shook the World)
- 1929 Старое и новое «Генеральная линия» (The General LineThe General LineThe General Line aka Old and New is a 1929 Soviet film directed by Sergei Eisenstein.The General Line was begun in 1927 as a celebration of the collectivization of agriculture, as championed by old-line Bolshevik Leon Trotsky. Hoping to reach a wide audience, the director forsook his usual...
aka "Old And New") - 1930 : Romance sentimentale (France)
- 1931 Да здравствует Мексика! (¡Qué viva México!¡Qué viva México!¡Qué viva México! is a film project begun in 1930 by the Russian avant-garde director Sergei Eisenstein . It would have been an episodic portrayal of Mexican culture and politics from pre-Conquest civilization to the Mexican revolution. Production was beset by difficulties and was eventually...
released in 1979) - 1935 Бежин луг (Bezhin MeadowBezhin MeadowBezhin Meadow is a 1937 Soviet film famous for having been suppressed and believed destroyed before its completion. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, it tells the story of a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year's harvest and the...
until 1937) - 1938 Александр Невский (Alexander NevskyAlexander Nevsky (film)Alexander Nevsky is a 1938 historical drama film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, in association with Dmitri Vasilyev and a script co-written with Pyotr Pavlenko, who were assigned to ensure Eisenstein did not stray into "formalism" and to facilitate shooting on a reasonable timetable...
) - 1944 Иван Грозный 1-я серия (Ivan The Terrible, Part IIvan the Terrible (film)Ivan the Terrible is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia made by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Part 1 was released in 1944 but Part 2 was not released until 1958 due to political censorship...
) - 1945 Иван Грозный 2-я серия (Ivan The Terrible, Part IIIvan the Terrible (film)Ivan the Terrible is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia made by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Part 1 was released in 1944 but Part 2 was not released until 1958 due to political censorship...
) - 1946 Иван Грозный 3-я серия (Ivan The Terrible, Part IIIIvan the Terrible (film)Ivan the Terrible is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia made by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Part 1 was released in 1944 but Part 2 was not released until 1958 due to political censorship...
)
List of writings
- Selected articles in: .; translated by Jay Leyda.
- Eisenstein, Sergei (1942) The Film Sense, New York: Hartcourt; translated by Jay Leyda..
- Eisenstein, Sergei (1994) Towards a Theory of Montage, British Film Institute.
In Russian, and available online, Избранные статьи.
Honours and awards
- Two Stalin Prizes - 1941 for the film Alexander NevskyAlexander Nevsky (film)Alexander Nevsky is a 1938 historical drama film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, in association with Dmitri Vasilyev and a script co-written with Pyotr Pavlenko, who were assigned to ensure Eisenstein did not stray into "formalism" and to facilitate shooting on a reasonable timetable...
(1938), 1946 for the 1st series of the film "Ivan the TerribleIvan the Terrible (film)Ivan the Terrible is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia made by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Part 1 was released in 1944 but Part 2 was not released until 1958 due to political censorship...
" (1944) - Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1935)
- Order of LeninOrder of LeninThe Order of Lenin , named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union...
(1939) - for the film "Alexander Nevsky" (1938) - Order of the Badge of Honour