Sergei Eisenstein Movies
The father of montage, Russia's Sergei Eisenstein was one of the principal architects of the modern cinematic form. Despite a relatively small ouevre of only seven completed films, most if not all of which suffered under the weight of communist intrusion, few individuals were more instrumental in enabling motion pictures to evolve beyond their origins in 19th century Victorian theater into a new arena of abstract thought and expression. While later criticized for the strong currents of propaganda coursing through his work, the continuing influence of Eisenstein's films is, regardless of politics, undeniable; a master of metaphor and allusion, he brought to the medium a new depth of power and complexity.Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was born January 23, 1898, in Riga, Latvia. The child of an affluent architect, he studied at the Institute of Civil Engineering in Petrograd, and in the wake of the 1917 revolution he began working as an engineer for the Red Army. By the early '20s, he had become the set designer of Vsevolod Meyerhold's Moscow Proletkult Theater, later graduating to the position of director; there he learned the principles of "bio-mechanics," or conditioned spontaneity. Eisenstein's interest in film began with an appreciation of the work of D.W. Griffith, whose editing style influenced him in the production of his first cinematic endeavor, the 1923 five-minute newsreel parody Dnevnik Glumova. A stint with Lev Kuleshov's film workshop followed, as did an increasing fascination with the burgeoning avant-garde.
With his feature debut, 1924's Stachka, Eisenstein introduced a new kind of film language, dubbed "montage." Expanding upon Meyerhold's theory of bio-mechanics, montage consisted of a sequence of conflicting images which served to abbreviate time spans and overlap symbolic meanings, with the cumulative emotional effect of a scene greater than the sum of its parts. Theorizing that it worked in a fashion similar to the dialectic of Karl Marx, Eisenstein sought to use the montage technique to make films for the common man; in the film's most memorable sequence, a group of factory workers are shot down, with the scenes of their deaths intercut with the depiction of cattle at the slaughter -- parallel images trading on the emotional impact of each other to heighten their combined impact.
Eisenstein's second film, 1925's massively influential Battleship Potemkin, further honed the montage concept. The much-imitated "Odessa Steps" sequence, in particular, proved so powerful that many audiences believed they were viewing actual newsreel footage, prompting a pleased Eisenstein to label himself an "illusionist." For the follow-up, he was commissioned to direct 1927's Oktiabr in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. Communist officials, already wary of the impact of his work on audiences, forced Eisenstein to temper his montage style, although the film clearly remains the product of his distinctive vision. Generalnaya Liniya, his final silent film, premiered in 1929.
At the dawn of the 1930s, Eisenstein was sent to Europe and the U.S. to research the sound-film phenomenon. Greeted by the global movie community as a great hero, he was befriended by the likes of Albert Einstein, Abel Gance, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, and his hero, D.W. Griffith. Encouraged by documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty to explore Latin America during his journey, he shot Que Viva Mexico in 1930 with the financial assistance of writer Upton Sinclair. Upon completing the principal photography, Eisenstein sent the completed footage to Russia, where it was intercepted by government officials and removed from the director's control.
In 1932, Eisenstein was named a scholar of the Moscow film school, where he wrote a number of essays about montage and motion picture direction which were later published in book form. In 1935 he began filming Bezhin Lug, but the screenplay's bitter political commentary brought the wrath of Party officials, who shut down production prior to the picture's completion. Only by submitting to a public apology was he allowed to begin work on 1938's Aleksandr Nevsky, an attack on Nazi Germany later withdrawn from distribution after Josef Stalin signed a 1939 non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler.
In 1945, Ivan Grozny I, the first film in a projected trilogy documenting the life and times of the notorious 16th century czar, appeared to great acclaim within the Soviet Union; however, the second chapter's 1946 completion was met with the furor of Stalin, who so despised the picture that he effectively buried it until 1958. Ironically, Stalin nevertheless agreed to allow Eisenstein to film the trilogy's conclusion, but health problems forced the director off of the project before it could be completed. Sergei Eisenstein died of a heart attack in Moscow on February 11, 1948. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1985
Few secrets are revealed in the Italian feature-length documentary The Secret Life of Sergei Eisenstein. Save for the revelation of the famed Russian filmmaker's private notes and sketches, there's little here that hasn't been covered elsewhere. Still, filmmaker Giancarlo Bertelli (normally a producer of conformist action films) does a nice job weaving the various elements at his disposal into a cogent narrative. Also, it's always pleasurable to see vignettes from such Eisenstein triumphs as Battleship Potemkin, Strike and Ivan the Terrible. Also included are snippets and stills culled from Eisenstein's never-completed Que Viva Mexico. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The second part of Sergei Eisenstein's baroque chronicle of the legendary Russian czar was originally planned as a three-part epic. But Eisenstein had battles with Russian censors over the second part of his trilogy, ostensibly because of a negative depiction of Ivan's secret police force (Stalin feared that Eisenstein was making a veiled reference to himself). Although filmed shortly after Part One in 1946, the film was suppressed and was not released until 1958. In the meantime, Eisenstein, who died in 1948, never completed his project, spending most of his time defending himself before Stalin and his censor boards. Part Two takes up the story of Ivan the Terrible (Nikolai Cherkasov) upon his return to Moscow from Alexandrov. Ivan must deal with a group of unfriendly boyars and becomes even more insulated after his mother is poisoned and an assassination plot is uncovered. The black-and-white film ends with a luminous color banquet scene. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nikolai Cherkasov, Serafima Birman, (more)
Sergei Eisenstein's operatic saga of the 16th-century Russian hero Czar Ivan IV is given a charismatic performance by Nikolai Cherkasov and a brilliant score by Sergei Prokofiev. Part One deals with Czar Ivan's beginnings as the ruler of Russia, Ivan's coronation, and his marriage to Anastasia Romanovna (Lyudmila Tselikovskaya). Ivan suddenly becomes gravely ill and then mysteriously recovers. When a group of conspirators poison his wife, Ivan becomes more wary of his retainers and announces that the will of the people demands his return from Alexandrov to Moscow. Ivan endeavors to preserve his country in the face of all the internal and external conspiracies. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nikolai Cherkasov, Lyudmila Tselikovskaya, (more)
- 1943
This unique wartime propaganda drama is a film within a film; one of those films is Russian-director Sergei Eisenstein's silent masterpiece Potemkin. The other film provides a loose framework for the other and represents a Russian freedom fighter's attempts to inspire his dispirited, flagging troops by telling an exciting tale of his stint on the great Russian vessel during the revolution. As he tells his story, Eisenstein's film, with the addition of dubbed dialog and sound effects is shown. The enthralled troops find the freedom fighter's tale such an inspiration that they resume their plans to free their home village from the Nazis with renewed vigor. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Hull, Aline MacMahon, (more)
- 1940
In 1931, famed Soviet filmmaker Sergei M. Eisenstein travelled to the Western Hemisphere to make his first non-Russian film, Que Viva Mexico, a project financed by muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair. The project withered and died when Sinclair became impatient with Eisenstein's meticulous shooting methods, whereupon Eisenstein returned to Russia and Sinclair assembled the completed footage into a quasi-documentary, Thunder Over Mexico. Distributors were not forthcoming for this cobbled-together film, which was then consigned to oblivion until 56 minutes' worth of Sinclair's cut were reassembled in 1941 as Time in the Sun. Beautifully photographed, the film as it stood was little more than a glorified travelogue, and would probably have disappeared from sight had not the strength of Eisenstein's reputation brought in an audience of wine-and-cheese cinema enthusiasts, who alternately applauded the film and condemned the distributors for crassly commercializing the director's original vision. As for Eisenstein himself, he was still angered over promises broken by Upton Sinclair, and wouldn't have promoted Time in the Sun even if Stalin had allowed him to do so. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Like many of Eisenstein's best films, Alexander Nevsky was conceived as a morale-booster, aimed at stirring up Russian patriotism. It is set in the 13th century, but the villainous Teutonic Knights are obviously meant to represent the burgeoning threat of Hitler's hordes. With Russia besieged by both these knights and by the Tartars, only a charismatic leader can save the populace from these barbaric baby killers (yes, we see the villains tossing screaming infants into bonfires!) The hero of the piece is the legendary Prince Alexander Nevsky, portrayed by Nikolai Cherkasov, who bears a striking resemblance to Gary Cooper. The saving turnaround for Nevsky is the battle of ice-covered Lake Peipus in 1242. This bravura sequence is staged in spectacular fashion, underlined by the specially-commissioned music of Sergei Prokofiev. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nikolai Cherkasov, Nikolai Okhlopkov, (more)
- 1935
Eisenstein worked on Bezhin Meadow from 1935 to 1937. Based on a Turgenev story, the scenario for Bezhin Meadow was written by Isaac Babel. It's a tale that dramatizes the forcible reorganization of peasant settlements into state affiliated collective farms soon after the formation of the Soviet Union. The scenario involves a farmer's son, killed by his father in retaliation against the Soviet state, and, by implication, the unfair practices of collectivization. Eisenstein's goal was to strive for a classicism that would "contain some part of the huge endowment left us from the silent film era" -- although it remains unclear if this film was intended to be a sound or silent feature. In 1937, the Soviet government, deeming the politics of the film unacceptable, stopped its production, and the film was never completed. It was considered lost until fragments of it were found in the 1970s. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vitya Kartashov, Boris Zakhava, (more)
After the dissolution of his project based on the Theodore Dreiser novel An American Tragedy and nearing the conclusion of his failed sojourn in Hollywood, legendary Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein secured financing for this documentary about Mexico from avowed Socialist Upton Sinclair. Eisenstein and his cinematographer Eduard Tisse shot the film in 1931 and '32, intending to divide the narrative into four novels or segments called "Sandunga," "Fiesta," "Maguey," and "Soldadera." After completing filming, Eisenstein sent his footage to Hollywood for processing but political and economic intrigues prevented him from ever editing the material. Intended to be an episodic study of Mexico's durable ethnography and symbols against the backdrop of its colonial history from the ancient Mayans to the 1910 revolution, Que Viva Mexico was instead tragically chopped into pieces and used in a variety of other films, mostly documentary shorts. In 1979, this version of the film was reconstructed by Eisenstein's assistant director, Grigory Alexandrov, from his former mentor's notes. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- 1930
Some accounts claim that Eisenstein only attached his name to this sound short simply because he needed the money. It is, however, closer to the truth to say that this was a collaboration, although the exact extent of the collaboration between him and Grigori Alexandrov remains undetermined. The film itself is a short, experimental, slightly poetic montage of city and abstract images. Eisenstein's contribution seems to have been the soundtrack which demonstrates his theory of "contrapuntal use of sounds" or the attempt to find a common denominator between sound and image. The sound for Romance Sentimentale is drawn directly on the film's optical track and is the first instance of the use of this technique. This was not intended as a materialist film statement; it was rather an experiment towards an integrated film language. While the film's images are cursory, it retains historical importance as an experimental film predecessor and as the first sound film made by Soviets, even if not in the Soviet Union. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide
- 1929
Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's The General Line (Generalnaia linia) began life 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 practice of emphasizing groups by concentrating on a single rural heroine. Eisenstein briefly abandoned this project to film October, in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Revolution. By the time he was able to return to General Line, the Party's attitudes had changed and Trotsky had fallen from grace. As a result, the film was hastily re-edited and sent out in 1929 under a new title, The Old and the New (Staroe i novoe). In later years, archivists restored The General Line to an approximation of Eisenstein's original concept. Much of the director's montage-like imagery--such as using simple props to trace the progress from the agrarian customs of the 19th-century to the more mechanized procedures of the 20th--were common to both versions of the film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Borrowing its title from a book by American journalist John Reed (of Reds fame), Sergei Eisenstein's Ten Days That Shook the World reenacts the crucial week-and-a-half in October, 1918, when the Russian Kerensky regime was toppled by the Bolsheviks. While Eisenstein takes certain liberties in characterization--those opposing the Bolsheviks are depicted as mental defectives or grossly overweight clowns--his re-creation of such events as the storming of the Winter Palace are painstakingly meticulous. The "actor" playing Lenin, a nonprofessional worker named Nikandrov, so closely resembles the genuine article that the effect is positively eerie. So authentic is Eisenstein's reconstruction of events that, for years, TV documentaries have been passing off clips from Ten Days That Shook the World as "actual" scenes of the Revolution. While impressive on a technical level, the film never truly stirs the audience's emotions; Eisenstein purists have argued that this "alienation" technique was the director's intention all along, forcing the viewer to observe the events intellectually rather than emotionally. Produced in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World was initially titled October. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vasiliy Nikandrov, N. Popov, (more)
After the success of Strike (1924), Sergei Eisenstein was commissioned by the Soviet government to make a film commemorating the uprising of 1905. Eisenstein's scenario, boiled down from what was to have been a multipart epic of the occasion, focussed on the crew of the battleship Potemkin. Fed up with the extreme cruelties of their officers and their maggot-ridden meat rations, the sailors stage a violent mutiny. This, in turn, sparks an abortive citizens' revolt against the Czarist regime. The film's centerpiece is staged on the Odessa Steps, where in 1905 the Czar's Cossacks methodically shot down rioters and innocent bystanders alike. To Eisenstein, this single bloody incident was the crucible of the successful 1917 Bolshevik revolution, and the result was the "Odessa Steps sequence," which is often considered the most famous sequence ever filmed; it is certainly one of the most imitated, perhaps most overtly by Brian De Palma in The Untouchables (1987). This triumph of Eisenstein's "rhythmic editing" technique occurs in the middle of film, not as the climax, as more current film structure might do it. All the actors in the film were amateurs, selected by Eisenstein because of their "rightness" as types for their roles. Pictorial quality varies from print to print, but even in a duped-down version, Battleship Potemkin is must-see cinema. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alexander Antonov, Vladimir Barsky, (more)
The first full-length feature project of pantheon Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, Strike is a government-commissioned celebration of the unrealized 1905 Bolshevik revolution. The story is set in motion by a series of outrages and humiliations perpetrated on the workers of a metalworks plant. The Czarist regime is unsympathetic to the workers, characteristically helping the plant owners to subjugate the hapless victims. Finally, the workers revolt, staging an all-out strike. Here is where Eisenstein's theory of "the montage of shocks" was given its first major workout. While the notion of juxtaposing short, separate images to heighten tension and excitement was not new, Eisenstein was the first to fully understand the value of using sudden-shock images (a bloody face, a fired weapon, a descending club) to make his dramatic and sociological points. Playing to mixed reviews and small audiences in Russia, Strike proved a success worldwide, assuring Eisenstein complete creative freedom on his next project, the immortal Potemkin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ivan Klyukvin, Alexander Antonov, (more)
