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Sergei Eisenstein |
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Director / Screenwriter / Editor / Producer |
| 1898 - 1948 |
| Born January 23,
Riga, Russia |
| Key
Production Country: Soviet Union |
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Key Genres:
Propaganda Film, Historical Film, Historical Epic, Political Drama,
Biography, Drama |
| Key
Collaborators:
Eduard Tisse (Cinematographer), Nikolai Cherkasov (Leading Player), Grigori Alexandrov
(Screenwriter/Director), Sergei Prokofiev (Composer),
Vasili Rakhals (Production Designer), Andrei Abrikosov (Character Player), Alexander Antonov (Leading Player), Serafima Birman (Leading Player), Andrei Moskvin (Cinematographer), Esfir Tobak
(Editor) |
| Recommended:
Strike
(1924), Battleship
Potemkin (1925), Que viva Mexico! (1932), Alexander Nevsky (1938), Ivan the Terrible, Part Two (1946) |
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Links:
[
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein ] [
Russian
Archives Online ] [
World
Socialist Web Site Profile ] [
Off Screen Article (2007) ] [
Film
International Article (2008)
] |
| Books:
[
Film
Form: Essays in Film Theory ] [
The
Eisenstein Reader ] [
Eisenstein
at 100: A Reconsideration ] [
The Film Sense ]
[
Sergei Eisenstein: A Biography ] [
Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict ] [
Beyond the Stars: The Memoirs of Sergei Eisenstein ] |
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DVD's:
[
Amazon
] |
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1,000
Greatest Films: Strike (1924),
Battleship Potemkin (1925), October (1927), The General Line (1929), Que viva Mexico! (1932), Alexander Nevsky (1938),
Ivan the Terrible, Part One (1944), Ivan the Terrible, Part Two (1946) |
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"Compared
with the abiding influence on cinema of
Renoir, Murnau or
Fritz Lang, it is no longer possible
to view Eisenstein as the man who laid down the theoretical
basis of the medium - the British Film Institute once had that
as part of a trilogy, with Griffith
supplying the alphabet and Chaplin
the humanity. It is true that early Eisenstein is a stirring
propagandist: in those first four films, the identification with
Soviet ideals and myths is based on concrete realization. But
the argument of those films is often foolish and ultimately,
inhumane." -
David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002) |
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"Eisenstein's
achievements are impressive and ambitious, but finally limited:
as he discovered in his later years, montage, though
interesting in theory, was too cerebral and repetitive a method
in practice, while, for all the Revolution's initial devotion to
the people, his films too often emerge as cold, soulless
propaganda." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989) |
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"That
the Russian Sergei Mikhailovitch Eisenstein was a genius at the
art of montage is indisputable. Whether he was also a genius of
the cinema, in the manner of his compatriot
Dovzhenko, is more open to
doubt...If his films sometimes lack the human touch, he remains
a master of the organization of images within the frame in such
a way as to make the maximum impact on his audience." - David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999) |
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"The master of montage, Eisenstein created a series of classic
Soviet films which speak of the faith, optimism, and willpower
of the Russian people." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"Now why should the cinema follow the forms of
theater and painting rather than the methodology of language,
which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the
combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete
objects?" - Sergei Eisenstein
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