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Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948)

Author of Film Form: Essays in Film Theory

110+ Works 1,770 Members 10 Reviews 4 Favorited

About the Author

Potemkin, a silent film that appeared in 1925, was the great Russian film director's first brilliant "mass epic," originally commissioned just after the 1917 Russian Revolution to commemorate the 1905 anti-Czarist uprising. In it Eisenstein broke new ground in the cinema with his anti-narrative show more technique of "shock-attraction," or dialectical, montage---a series of shots in which each pair being spliced gives rise to a collision of images, thereby creating a sharp impression, or synthesis, in the viewer's mind. Eisenstein (who had been an engineer before he became a film director) compared this technique to the series of explosions made by an internal combustion engine driving a vehicle forward---just so, the famous sequence of slaughter on the Odessa steps and the slow descent of a baby in its carriage through the carnage drives Potemkin forward. Dynamic cutting is again evident in Ten Days That Shook the World (1928), in which he uses slowly mounting sequences and fast cuts to depict the gathering storm of the Russian Revolution and its ultimate triumph. Despite his glorification of the Russian Revolution and the new Soviet state, Eisenstein often found himself at odds with the Soviet government. For a while he even attempted to work in Hollywood, but he returned to Russia to make Alexander Nevsky (1938), his most popular film, and Ivan the Terrible, which he envisioned as a three-part epic. Part I (1944) was completed and released, Part II was withheld at first by the Soviet Film Trust and then later released, and Eisenstein died of a heart attack while working on Part III. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Includes the names: S Eisenstein, S.M.Eisenstein, S.M. Ejzenstejn, Sergei Einstein, Serge Eisenstein, Sergei Eisentein, Sergej Ejzenstejn, Sergej Eisenstein, Sergei Eisenstein, Sergéi Eisenstein, Sergei Einsenstein, Sergei Eizenshtein, Sergei Eisenshtein, Serguei Eisenstein, Sergei Einseistein, Sergueï Eisenstein, Serge M. Eisenstein, Segio M. Eisenstein, Sergey M.Eisenstein, Sergeĭ Eizenshteĭn, Sergey M. Eisenstein, Sergei M. Eisenstein, Sergio M. Eisenstein, Sergueï Einsenstein, Sergei M. Eisenstein, Sergej M. Eisenstein, Sergel M. Eisenstein, Sergej M. Ejzenstejn, Sergej M. Ejzenstejn, Sergej M. Ejzenštejn, Sergein M. Eisenstein, Serguei M. Eisenstein, Sergueï M. Eisenstein, Sergej M. Ėjzenštejn, Serguéi M. Eisenstein, Serguéi M. Eisenstein, Sergei M. Eïzenshteïn, Sergej Mihajlovic Ejzenstejn, Serguéi M. Eisenstein, Professor) Sergei Eisenstein, Sergei Mijailovich Eisenstein, Sergej Michajlovic Eisenstein, Sergej Mikhajlovic Eisenstein, Eisenstein Szergej Mihajlovics, Sergei Michailovich Eisenstein, Eisenstein SergeI MikhaIlovich, Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, Sergej Michajlovič Ejzenštejn, Sergej Mihajlovič Ëjzenštejn, Sergeii Mikhaiilovich Eisenstein, Sergeĭ Mikhaĭlovich Eisenstein, Sergeij Michailowitsch Eisenstein, Эйзенштейн Сергей, Sergueï Mikhaïlovitch Eisenstein, Sergej Mihajlovic Èjzenstejn, Serguei Mikhaïlovitch Eisenstein, Sergeï Mikhaïlovitch Eisenstein, Sergej Mihajlovič Ëjzenštejn, Sergueï Mikhaïlovitch Eisenstein, Jay (translator and E Sergei M.; Leyda Eisenstein, Sergei Eisenstein; (Editor And Translator) Jay Ley, Sergei M. Translated and Edited by Ivor Montagu Ei, Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, Sergei M. (Guion Extraido Directamente Del Film Por E. Ripoll-Freixes) Eisenstein

Also includes: S. M. Eisenstein (1)

Series

Works by Sergei Eisenstein

The Film Sense (1969) 304 copies
The Battleship Potemkin [1925 film] (1925) — Director — 147 copies
Immoral Memories (1963) 61 copies
Alexander Nevsky [1938 film] (1938) — Director — 60 copies
Film Form / The Film Sense (1957) 54 copies
Notes of a Film Director (1944) 52 copies
Ivan the Terrible [film collection] (1945) — Director — 48 copies
Walt Disney (2017) 44 copies
Ivan the Terrible (1970) 40 copies
Potemkin, a Film [script] (1968) 38 copies
Film Essays and a Lecture (1968) 37 copies
October [1928 film] (1928) — Director — 35 copies
Lezioni di regia (1979) 27 copies
Strike [1925 film] (1925) — Director; Writer — 26 copies
Reflexiones de un cineasta (1958) 14 copies
Il montaggio (1986) 10 copies
On the Detective Story (2017) 7 copies
Ivan the Terrible - Pt. 2 (1998) 7 copies
Ivan the Terrible - Pt. 1 (1998) 7 copies
The Eisenstein reader (1998) 6 copies
La ligne générale (1984) 4 copies
Sinema Dersleri (2006) 4 copies
Memoires 1 (1978) 3 copies
Selected works (1988) 3 copies
Intégrale Eisenstein (1924) 3 copies
Il colore (1982) 3 copies
Memoires/3 oeuvres/6 (1985) 2 copies
Leçons de mise en scène (2001) 2 copies
Sinema Sanati (2016) 2 copies
Mettre en scene 2 copies
Memoires 2 (1980) 2 copies
EL ACORAZADO POTEMKIN (1971) 1 copy
The Soviet Screen (1939) 1 copy
S. M. Eisenstein (1982) 1 copy
Strike / October (2017) 1 copy
Battleship Potemkin Excerpt — Director — 1 copy

Associated Works

Film: A Montage of Theories (1966) — Contributor — 82 copies
The Penguin Film Review 8 (1945) — Contributor — 4 copies
Chaplin básnik smiechu a sľz (1964) — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

Common Knowledge

Canonical name
Eisenstein, Sergei
Birthdate
1898-01-23
Date of death
1948-02-11
Gender
male
Nationality
Russia
Occupations
Film director
teacher
film theorist
Organizations
Government Film Institute (Moscow)

Members

Reviews

A battleship crew is driven to mutiny and joins the Russian revolution.

I hate when movies want to make points instead of tell stories, so I'm never going to like a propaganda film. But even putting that aside, I still think this is extremely over-rated. There are no characters that survive the beginning of the movie. The story is insultingly simple-minded. And even the iconic massacre scene is so ridiculously over-the-top that it plays more as comedy than horror. "My baby! Won't somebody save my baby!"

Concept: B
Story: D
Characters: F
Dialog: F
Pacing: C
Cinematography: B
Special effects/design: B
Acting: C
Music: B

Enjoyment: D

GPA: 1.8/4
… (more)
½
 
Flagged
comfypants | 4 other reviews | Jan 5, 2016 |
A classic of silent cinema, with an iconic scene of a massacre of civilians on the steps in the Black Sea port of Odessa during the 1905 Revolution. This incident is actually fictional, but all the best film-makers agree that you should never let the facts get in the way of a good story - or a stunning image.

Like many versions of 'Potemkin' circulating today, this film is drawn from the print prepared by the Soviet authorities in 1955 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1905 Revolution. To that end, although the original titles are used, giving the composer of the score as Edward Miesel, the music on this film is lifted from the soundtrack of that print and consists of music by Dmitri Shostakovich. It was not specifically written for the film, but is drawn from a number of sources - however, the appositeness of the music used over the Odessa Steps sequence - from Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony, which commemorates the 1905 Revolution - leads me to suspect that he may have started to write music for this new print of Potemkin, but either lost inspiration or got sidetracked onto other projects before finishing it.… (more)
1 vote
Flagged
RobertDay | 4 other reviews | Oct 23, 2013 |
Sergei Eisenstein is a brilliant film theorist many consider to be the father of modern film theory. His work has inspired thinking from the early days of cinema and is still one of the most respected and drawn upon arguments about film today. His essays, more than any other theorist, attempts to create a set of tools that film viewers can use to read films as texts. Eisenstein was a forward thinker about film as a textual medium with meaning beyond the literal level. He draws on many literary elements to explain how we should read film, but his work with the Haiku is the metaphor that resonates most with me. Haiku is juxtapositional poetry, as is film in the brilliant mind of Eisenstein. I think film belongs in an english classroom, and I think that Eisenstein is the ticket to take film from a movie day break in the schedule where kids come to class and zone out from the work they have been doing recently, to something rigorous, challenging, and inspiring.… (more)
2 vote
Flagged
NickConstantine | Sep 26, 2011 |

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Statistics

Works
110
Also by
4
Members
1,770
Popularity
#14,549
Rating
4.0
Reviews
10
ISBNs
192
Languages
13
Favorited
4

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