Encyclopedia
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a revolutionary
Soviet film director and film theorist noted in particular for his
silent films
Strike,
Battleship Potemkin, sometimes
The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 [i] silent film [i] ...
and
. His work vastly influenced early film makers owing to his innovative use of and writings about
montage.
Early years
Eisenstein was born in
Riga,
Latvia. His father, Mikhail Eisenstein, was an architect of German
Jewish descent; his mother, Julia, was an ethnic
Russian and
Orthodox Christian.
Eisenstein was a pioneer in the use of montage, a specific use of film editing. He believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through a "linkage" of related scenes. Eisenstein felt the "collision" of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He developed what he called "methods of montage":
- Metric
- Rhythmic
- Tonal
- Overtonal
- Intellectual
His many articles and books — including
Film Form and
The Film Sense — explain these methods in detail. Along with Lev Kuleshov, he was one of the earliest theorists of the young film medium. His impact on film makers in the 1920s was enormous and his theories continue to be taught in film schools to this day.
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 class backgrounds.
Eisenstein's vision of
Communism brought him into conflict with officials in the ruling regime of
Joseph Stalin. Like a great many Bolshevik artists, Eisenstein envisioned the new society as one which would subsidize the artist totally, freeing them from the confines of bosses and budgets, thus leaving them absolutely free to create. Yet, budgets and producers were as much a part of the Soviet film industry as the rest of the world. The fledgling, war- and revolution-wracked, and isolated new nation simply hadn't the resources to even nationalize its film industry at first. Later, when it did, limited resources - both monetary and equipment - necessitated production controls every bit as extensive as in the capitalist world.
Eisenstein's popularity and influence in his own land waxed and waned with the success of his films and the passage of time.
The Battleship Potemkin, sometimes
The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 [i] silent film [i] ...
was acclaimed critically worldwide and popular in the Soviet Union. But it was mostly his international critical renown which enabled Eisenstein to direct
The General Line , and then
as part of a grand 10th anniversary celebration of the October Revolution of 1917. 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 - along with likeminded others, such as
Pudovkin and Dovzhenko - under fire within the Soviet film community forcing him to issue public articles of self-criticism and commitments to reform his cinematic visions to conform to
socialist realism's increasingly specific doctrines.
Europe and Hollywood
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 Aleksandrov 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 where, in late April, 1930, he was approached by
Jesse L. Lasky on behalf of
Paramount Pictures to make a film in the
United States. He accepted a short-term contract for $100,000 and arrived in
Hollywood in May 1930.
Unfortunately, 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 Zharov 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 finally settled on a movie version on
Theodore Dreiser's
An American Tragedy is a famous American novel, by Theodore Dreiser [i]....
. 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 the American fascist agitator Major Pease, who had mounted a public campaign against Eisenstein. Seventeen days later, by "mutual agreement", 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 an image of 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 at its worst by the Stalinists, as the
Soviet film industry came increasingly under their sway. 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.
Que Viva Mexico!
A last-minute reprieve came from
Charlie Chaplin, who arranged for Eisenstein to 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. Conversely, Sinclair was a fan of Eisenstein's film work and looked forward to the opportunity to assist the artist. 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 to make a film to be produced by Sinclair and his wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough Sinclair, and three other investors organized as the Mexican Film Trust.
On 24 November, Eisenstein signed a contract with the Trust "upon the basis of Eisenstein's 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 1 December, 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.
If Eisenstein's experience in Hollywood had seemed a failure, his journey to Mexico was destined to be an utter fiasco. Mexico was a right-wing dictatorship with no diplomatic ties to the Soviet Union, and had insisted on censorship rights over all footage shot as a condition of admitting the Soviet filmmakers to Mexico. The process devised was to have every reel of negative sent back to Los Angeles for development, a print struck and returned to the Mexican authorities for review and comment, which they were not inclined to do in any hurry.
Eisenstein had no story or subject in mind for a film about Mexico, however, even when he left Los Angeles; and embarked on a full-scale photographic expedition, filming anything and everything of personal interest without clear idea what he would be doing with it in fulfillment of his contract. He planned, however, to create something without use of a script, to utilize local "types" rather than professional actors for any human role, and to shoot the film silent.
Eisenstein should have, by contract, returned with the finished film by the end of April 1931. Instead, by the 15th of that month, he could only offer up a sketchily written, abstraction-based, somewhat poetic impression of what the finished film might be. It was six months later before 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 Mexico!, was decided on some time later still.
While in Mexico, Eisenstein had gotten wind that the Soviet film industry was pressing Stalin to have Eisenstein declared a deserter, due to his prolonged absence from the Soviet Union, and that Stalin was not resisting that pressure.
On 5 February, 1932, Sinclair received a telegram from Soyuzkino, to forward to Eisenstein, ordering the latter immediately back to the U.S.S.R, leaving Aleksandrov and Tisse to finish the film without him. On the same day, Sinclair learned that Eisenstein blamed Mary Sinclair's younger brother, Hunter Kimbrough , and now also himself and his wife, for the film's problems, in the hopes of getting them to pressure the Sinclairs to insinuate themselves between him and Stalin, and let him finish the film in his own way. The furious Sinclair shut down production and ordered Kimbrough to bring himself, the remaining negatives, and the three Soviets back to the United States to make what they could of the film on hand.
Departure from Mexico
To cap things off, when Eisenstein arrived at the American border, a customs search of his trunk revealed, along with several reels of negatives, sketches of bizarre sexual fantasies. Kimbrough was barely able to prevent their arrest and confiscation of the entire cargo. Simultaneously, it was determined that Eisenstein's re-entry visa had expired, and Sinclair's contacts in Washington were unable to secure him an additional extension. Eisenstein, Alexandrov and Tisse were, after a month's stay at the
U.S.-Mexico border outside
Laredo, Texas, allowed 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 planned to edit the film in Moscow, and Sinclair was inclined to allow this. However, Eisenstein took the entire 30 days to tour the American South, and repeated his blaming of Kimbrough to the Soviet film people in New York. Additionally, once Eisenstein had left the USA, the Soviets agreed to allow him to cut the film in Moscow but expected the Mexican Film Trust to pay for the duplicate negatives and shipping of the material, then began insisting on the original negative being sent. Mary Sinclair, on behalf of herself and the other trust members, balked at that juncture. The Trust was virtually broke, and all faith by the investors toward Eisenstein was also broken. Eisenstein was officially "off the project"; someone else, in the USA, would be found to edit the film.
It took another year to find someone to deal with the vast amount of Eisenstein's Mexican footage. Other than two general descriptions of each part of the film, Eisenstein had provided Sinclair with no descriptive material to work from. Indeed, he had never developed the film's structure on paper anywhere beyond this most general of stages. The major studios were not interested in either trying to figure out a continuity for the mass of film or to market a silent picture. Another, American-made "photographic expedition" to Mexico had already been shown in New York. Finally, in mid-1932, the Sinclairs were able to secure the services of Sol Lesser, who had just opened his own distribution office in New York, Principal Distributing Corp.. Lesser agreed to supervise post-production work on the miles of negative - at the Sinclairs expense - and distribute any resulting product. Two short
feature films and a short subject—
Thunder Over Mexico,
Eisenstein in Mexico, and
Death Day, respectively—were completed and released in the United States between the autumn of 1933 and early 1934. Sinclair's refusal to let Eisenstein work on the films made at least the first title an object of ire and scorn among American Communists and other Eisenstein supporters, and came out with some attendant publicity in the form of public controversy and protest. However, none of the films did very well, failing to return the original investment.
Back in the USSR
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. Eisenstein's foray into the west made the now-staunchly Stalinist film industry look upon him with a more suspicious eye, and this suspicion would never be completely erased in the mind of the Stalinist elite. He apparently spent some time in a Soviet mental hospital in Kidslovosk, in July 1933, ostensibly a result of depression born of his final acceptance that he would never be allowed to edit the Mexican footage. He was subsequently assigned a teaching position with the film school, GIK. He explored with the Soviet film industry three or four projects, but was denied permission to begin serious work on any of them. Finally, in 1935, he was allowed to undertake direction of another's 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; shot film prodigeously, resulting in cost overruns and missed deadlines. When he was sidetracked with a case of smallpox, the Soviet producers and critics began examining the product, and found it awash in formalism. Production was stopped, furious debate ensued over whether the film could be salvaged to the government's expectations, it was decided it could not, Eisenstein was publicly excoriated and all but a few stills and footage samples were destroyed.
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.
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 Nevsky. This time, however, he was also assigned a co-scenarist, Pyotr Pavlenko, to bring in a completed script; professional actors to play the roles; and an assistant director, Dmitry Vasiliev, to expedite shooting. The result was a film critically received by both the Soviets and in the West, an obvious allegory and stern warning against the massing forces of Nazi Germany, well-played and well-made. 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.
Unfortunately, within months of its release, the mercurial Stalin entered into his infamous pact with Hitler, and Nevsky was promptly pulled from distribution. Thwarted again on the morning of triumph, Eisenstein returned to teaching and had to wait until Hitler's double-cross sent German troops pouring across the Soviet border in a devastating first strike, to see "his" success receive its just, wide distribution and real international success.
With the war approaching Moscow, Eisenstein was one of the many filmmakers based there who was evacuated to Alma-Ata, where he first considered the idea of making a film about Czar Ivan IV, aka Ivan the Terrible, whom Stalin happened to admire and came to see, in his imagination, as the same sort of brilliant, decisive, successful leader as he fancied himself.
His film,
Ivan The Terrible, Part I, presenting
Ivan IV of Russia as a national hero, won
Stalin's approval , but the sequel,
Ivan The Terrible, Part II was not approved of by the government. All footage from the still incomplete
was confiscated, and most of it was destroyed .
Eisenstein suffered a
hemorrhage and died at the age of 50. An unconfirmed legend in film history states that Russian
scientists preserved his
brain and it supposedly was much larger than a normal human brain, which the scientists took as a sign of genius.
He is buried at
Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
Quotation
"The profession of film director can and should be such a high and precious one; that no man aspiring to it can disregard any knowledge that will make him a better film director or human being." —
Filmography
- Dnevnik Gloumova — a short film Eisenstein assembled in 1923 for the Proletkult theater; inspired by a Nicolas Ostrovsky play and projected at the time of the "a wise man" spectacle.
- Strike
- The Battleship Potemkin, sometimes The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 [i] silent film [i] ...
-
- The General Line
- Romance sentimentale
- Que Viva Mexico!
- Thunder Over Mexico
- Eisenstein In Mexico
- Death Day
- Bezhin Meadow
- Alexander Nevsky
- Time In The Sun
- Ivan The Terrible, Part I
- Ivan The Terrible, Part II
- Ivan The Terrible, Part III
- Que Viva Mexico
- In 1929, in Switzerland, Eisenstein supervised a film directed by Edouard Tissé: Frauennot - Frauenglück
Further reading
- Harry M. Geduld and Ronald Gottesman , "", Indiana University Press, 1970
- Leyda, Jay and Zina Voynow, "Eisenstein At Work", Pantheon Books, 1982
- Leyda, Jay, "", George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1960
- Leyda, Jay, "Eisenstein on Disney", Methuen Paperback, 1986
- Ronald Bergan,, Overlook Press, 1999
- David Bordwell, The Cinema of Eisenstein, Harvard University Press, 1994
- S. M. Eisenstein, Towards a Theory of Montage, British Film Institute
...
, 1994
- S. M. Eisenstein, , Hartcourt
- S. M. Eisenstein, The Film Sense , Hartcourt
- Ivor Montagu, "With Eisenstein in Hollywood," Seven Seas Books, Berlin, 1968
See also
External links
- — a short film by Eisenstein
- — a short film by Eisenstein, in which he appears briefly
