Sergei Eisenstein
/Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, the great Soviet filmmaker, was born in Riga on January 10, 1898. He was a film director, teacher, screenwriter, film editor and film theorist best known for his film Battleship Potemkin.
On October 17, 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, stormed the Winter Palace in Russia and overthrew Czar Nicholas II forming the first worker’s state.
Lenin declared: “The cinema is for us the most important of the arts,” and his government gave top priority to the rapid development of the Soviet film industry, which was nationalized in 1919 and The Moscow Film School was founded with Russian filmmakers including Sergei Eisenstein.
At the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, Eisenstein studied architecture and engineering, the profession of his father. In 1918, he left school and joined the Red Army to participate in the Russian Civil War.
In 1928, Eisenstein embarked on a tour of Europe with his collaborator Grigori Aleksandrov and cinematographer Eduard Tisse. They were studying sound motion picture and Eisenstein toured and lectured in Berlin, Zurich, London and Paris.
Eisenstein met with the world’s leading intellectuals, actors, and avant-garde artists like James Joyce, Jean Cocteau and Robert Desnos in France, George Bancroft in Germany.
In London, he delivered a lecture at Cambridge University, where he was guest of honour at Trinity College High Table. He also delivered a lecture at the London Workers’ Film Society where a private screening of Battleship Potemkin was held.
The government had banned public screenings of the film due to its revolutionary content and only lifted the ban in 1954.
He was fluent in several languages including English and he had read Shakespeare, G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens, Edward Lear, Rudyard Kipling, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle among others.
In 1930 he left England for the United States where Paramount Pictures had given him a contract to make a film. Eisenstein proposed it to be either a biography of arms dealer Basil Zaharoff or a film version of Shaw’s Arms and the Man. He also had planned a script for Sutter’s Gold by Blaise Cendrars. Paramount didn’t like those ideas and proposed a film version of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Eisenstein liked the novel and had met Dreiser in Moscow.
Eisenstein completed a script but found himself attacked by Major Pease, president of the Hollywood Technical Director's Institute. Pease, a strident anti-communist, mounted a public campaign against Eisenstein. On October 23, 1930, by "mutual consent", Paramount and Eisenstein declared their contract null and void.
“…American capitalism finds its sharpest and most expressive reflection in the American cinema.” Eisenstein from Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today chapter, Film Form.
While in the United States he met Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper and developed a close relationship with the novelist Upton Sinclair.
As his contract was finished Eisenstein was about to return to the Soviet Union, but Upton Sinclair arranged for him to go to Mexico and make a film there.
Ronald Bergan’s book Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict, tells us that Sinclair wrote to Joseph Stalin on Oct. 26, 1931: “You may have heard that I have taken the job of financing a moving picture which the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein is making in Mexico. It is going to be an extraordinary work, and I think will be a revelation of the moving-picture art…”
Eisenstein shot lots of footage in Mexico but never managed to complete the film that he had named Que Viva Mexico! From that footage the producer Sol Lesser made three films Thunder Over Mexico, Eisenstein in Mexico and Death Day all released in 1934.
In 1927, Eisenstein had the opportunity to meet the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who was visiting Moscow for the celebrations of the Russian revolution's tenth anniversary. Rivera had seen Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin, and praised it by comparing it to his own work as a painter in the service of the Mexican revolution.
Paul Robeson, together with his wife Eslanda and Marie Seton, an actress, film critic and biographer of both Eisenstein and Robeson, arrived in Moscow in1934.
Seton described their intense discussions, “After knowing Robeson for twenty-four hours, Eisenstein, who was a sceptical critic of great men, attributed human genius to Robeson because he was without falseness. Six days later Robeson, who had met many of the greatest artists and thinkers of the twentieth century, said that meeting Eisenstein was one of the greatest experiences of his life.”
They both shared common political views and a fascination with cultures and languages, and thanks to Eisenstein’s fluency with English they could talk freely without an interpreter.
The Haitian Revolution of 1804 is the world's only successful slave revolt and the ex-slave Toussaint Louverture emerged as Haiti's most prominent general. Both Robeson and Eisenstein were interested in making a film together about the revolt and Toussaint but despite plans and discussions the project was never completed.
Haiti itself had been under American military occupation since 1915, as it was to remain until 1934. As Eisenstein would tell his Russian film students in 1932, “When I was in America, I wanted to make a film of this rising, but it was impossible: nowadays Haiti is virtually a colony of the United States.”
“Hollywood,” the writer Paul Foot once noted, “made a film about Spartacus, the leader of the Roman slave revolt, because Spartacus was beaten. Toussaint L’Ouverture was victorious, so they haven’t made a film about him.”
In 1959, Robeson told Jan Carew, the Guyanese novelist, that “…one of his greatest regrets in life was not being able to act the part of Toussaint Louverture in a film.”
When the Spanish Civil War broke out both Eisenstein and Robeson were discussing making a film about that war.
Eisenstein was also grappling with a revolutionary transformation of the arts themselves, the freedom to experiment and renew, the idea that art could contribute powerfully to the social transformation of the world and consciousness.
Two of his greatest contributions to cinema are montage and the juxtaposition of images.
Eisenstein believed that meaning in motion pictures is generated by the collision of opposing shots. He describes montage as “combining shots that are depictive – single in meaning, neutral in content – into intellectual contexts and series.”
He viewed history as a perpetual conflict in which a force and a counterforce collide to produce a totally new and greater phenomenon. He compared this dialectical process in film editing to “the series of explosions of an internal combustion engine, driving forward its automobile or tractor.”
Eisenstein writes in his essay A Dialectic Approach to Film Form, “A dynamic comprehension of things is also basic to the same degree, for a correct understanding of art and of all art-forms. In the realm of art this dialectic principle of dynamics is embodied in CONFLICT as the fundamental principle for the existence of every art-work and every art-form.
For art is always conflict:
according to its social mission,
according to its nature,
according to its methodology.”
Film theorist David Bordwell, in the website Senses of Cinema, writes that Eisenstein’s films “place class struggle at the centre of change” and “they subordinate actions of individual characters to a larger dynamic of social struggle between opposing classes.” Bordwell stresses the close fit between the content and form of these films.
Bordwell writes further, “Their content is shaped by Marxism’s materialist understanding of history, the montage theory that typifies their form is anchored in Eisenstein’s understanding of Engels’s dialectics. By connecting the central idea of montage theory – namely, that juxtaposition of conflicting images gives rise to a new meaning – exclusively to Engels’s emphasis on unity emerging from a struggle of opposites.”
The story of the film Battleship Potemkin is based on a real mutiny that took place on the ship Potemkin off the coast of Odessa in 1905 but the film is set in 1917 during the revolution.
It follows the actions of the sailors on the battleship Potemkin and the citizens of Odessa. We see the sailors protesting that the food is rotten and when confronted by the Captain and his officers, who threaten to shoot them, the sailors revolt. The leader of the revolt is killed, and his body is taken ashore and left on a pier in Odessa and soon the citizens hear of it and come to mourn the martyr.
In support of the rebelling sailors the people send small boats to the battleship bringing supplies and offering support. As the masses gather and make their way down the Odessa steps the Cossacks arrive and in lines with rifles pointed and bayonets fixed march down the steps firing on the unarmed people.
The sailors decide to go into port to aid the citizens and fight the Cossacks but worry that the rest of the fleet may prevent them. In the final scenes we see the Potemkin sailors signalling “Join Us!” to the fleet and the sailors of the fleet answer, waving their caps, “Brothers! Hurrah!” The rebellious battleship sails through with the final title card reading “Above the heads of the Tsar’s admirals rang a brotherly cheer! Unfurling the red flag of freedom!”
In 1947, Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov and Andreĭ Zhdanov met with Eisenstein to discuss his film Ivan the Terrible. Here are some interchanges from that discussion taken from Seventeen Moments in Soviet History online.
Stalin. Have you studied History?
Eisenstein. More or less.
Stalin. More or less? I am also a little familiar with history. You have shown the oprichnina incorrectly. The oprichnina was the army of the king. It was different from the feudal army which could remove its banner and leave the battleground at any moment – the regular army, the progressive army was formed. You have shown this oprichnina to be like the Ku-Klux-Klan.
And later,
Stalin. Your tsar has come out as being indecisive, he resembles Hamlet. Everybody prompts him as to what is to be done, and he himself does not take any decision… Tsar Ivan was a great and a wise ruler… The most outstanding contribution of Ivan the Terrible was that he was the first to introduce the government monopoly of external trade. Ivan the Terrible was the first and Lenin was the second.
Further,
Stalin. It is necessary to show the historical figure in correct style. For example, it was not correct that in the first series Ivan the Terrible kissed his wife so long. At that period, it was not permitted.
Molotov. The second series is very restricted in domes and vaults, there is no fresh air, no wider Moscow, it does not show the people. One may show conversations, repressions but not this.
Stalin. Ivan the Terrible was extremely cruel. It is possible to show why he had to be cruel.
Speaking of the actor B. Chirkov,
Stalin. He could not express himself and for an artist the greatest quality is the capability to transform himself. But you, Cherkasov, you are capable of transforming yourself.
And,
Stalin. (Recalling different actors from the first part of the film Ivan the Terrible) Kurbskii – is magnificent. Staritskii is very good. He catches the flies excellently. Also: the future tsar, he is catching flies with his hands! These types of details are necessary. They reveal the essence of man.
Regarding the film Ivan the Terrible
Stalin. That, if necessary, take one and a half, two even three years to produce this film. But the film should be good, it should be ‘sculptured’. We must raise quality. Let there be fewer films, but with greater quality. The viewer has grown up and we must show him good productions.
In the 1952 edition of The British Film Institute’s magazine Sight and Sound Battleship Potemkin was named 4th in the magazines Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. Typical of that year Vittoria da Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves was 1st and Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights 2nd and his The Gold Rush 3rd.
Potemkin was Chaplin’s favourite film.
In 1951, Battleship Potemkin was ranked 1st by the Festival Mondial du Film et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in the list of the best films of the half-century. It was also ranked number one at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.
Typical of the 2022 Sight and Sound poll Potemkin was named 54th.
Eisenstein received numerous awards, including two Stalin Prizes. One in 1941 for Alexander Nevsky and the other in 1946 for the first film of the series Ivan the Terrible. As well as Honoured Artist of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic) 1935, Order of Lenin, 1939 and the Order of the Badge of Honour.
Sergei Eisenstein was a prolific writer, beginning his career as a theorist writing The Montage of Attractions for art journal LEF (Left Front of the Arts). His two most famous books are The Film Sense, (1942) and his collection of essays Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, (1949). He wrote Notes of a film director, and theoretical articles such as Eisenstein on Disney. A screenplay of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy and the screenplay ¡Que viva México!. While teaching he wrote the curricula for the director’s course at VGIK (The Russian State University of Cinematography).
In his 1929 essay, Museums at Night about pupils at Eton College, he writes “The young gentleman, at the very moment of his birth, is entered for this cold prison ten years in advance.”
The New York Times Book Review called The Film Sense “The most instructive discussion of the film art yet put between the covers of a book.”
Eisenstein taught filmmaking during his career at VGIK 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.
Eisenstein's pedagogy, like his films, was politically charged and contained quotes from Vladimir Lenin interwoven with his teaching. “For Eisenstein, teaching was as vital a function as creation.” Jay Leyda, translator of Film Form and The Film Sense.
His Filmography is Glumov's Diary (short), Strike, Battleship Potemkin, October: Ten Days That Shook the World, The Storming of La Sarraz, The General Line, Romance Sentimentale, El Desastre en Oaxaca, Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Part I, Ivan the Terrible, Part II.
Battleship Potemkin had created a sensation in Germany and was banned outright in most countries outside Soviet Russia, for fear its impact would incite revolution. October was commissioned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution.
Eisenstein suffered a heart attack on 2 February 1946, and spent much of the following year recovering. He died of a second heart attack on 11 February 1948, at the age of 50. His body lay in state in the Hall of the Cinema Workers before being cremated on 13 February, and his ashes were buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
He would later reflect in his memoirs that “the revolution gave me the most precious thing in life – it made an artist out of me. If it had not been for the revolution, I would never have broken the tradition, handed down from father to son, of becoming an engineer… The revolution introduced me to art, and art, in its own turn, brought me to the revolution…”.
Bibliography.
Film Form a book of essays Sergei Eisenstein, Meridien Books.
The Film Sense Sergei Eisenstein, Meridien Books.
G. Maryamov, Kremlevskii tsenzor (Moscow, 1992), pp. 84-92.
Brittanica, https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture/The-Soviet-Union
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/sergei-eisenstein
https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/great-directors/sergei-eisenstein/
Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1943-2/the-cult-of-leadership/the-cult-of-leadership-texts/stalin-on-the-film-ivan-the-terrible/
https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/78/1/157/627185
https://klassiki.online/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Klassiki_BattleshipPotemkin.pdf
