Sergei Eisenstein Totally Explained

Everything about Sergei Eisenstein totally explained

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (; January 23, 1898 – February 11, 1948) was a revolutionary Soviet Russian film director and film theorist noted in particular for his silent films Strike, Battleship Potemkin and, as well as historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. His work vastly influenced early film makers owing to his innovative use of and writings about montage.

Biography

Early years

Eisenstein's father, Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein, was an assimilated Jew, who worked as an architect; and his mother Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, from a Russian Orthodox family, was the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Julia left Riga the year of the 1905 Revolution, bringing Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Sergei would return at times to see his father, who later moved to join them around 1910. Divorce followed this time of separation, with Julia deserting the family to live in France. At the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, Sergei studied architecture and engineering, the profession of his father. At school with his fellow students however, Sergei would join the military to serve the revolution, which would divide him from his father. In 1918 Sergei joined the Red Army with his father Mikhail supporting the opposite side. This brought his father to Germany after defeat, and Sergei to Petrograd, Vologda, and Dvinsk. In 1920, Sergei was transfered to a command position in Minsk, after success providing propaganda for the October Revolution. At this time, Sergei studied Japanese- he learned some three hundred kanji characters and gained an exposure to Kabuki theatre, these studies led to travel to Japan. In 1920 Eisenstein moved to Moscow, and began his career in theatre working for Proletkult. His productions there were entitled Gas Masks, Listen Moscow, and The Wise Man, Eisenstein would then work as a designer for Vsevolod Meyerhold. In 1923 Eisenstein began his career as a theorist, by writing The Montage of Attractions for LEF. Eisenstein's first film, Glumov's Diary, was also made in this year. The Battleship Potemkin (1925) was acclaimed critically worldwide. But it was mostly his international critical renown which enabled Eisenstein to direct The General Line (aka Old and New), and then (aka Ten Days That Shook The World) as part of a grand tenth 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 and likeminded others, such as Pudovkin and Dovzhenko, under fire from 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.

Time abroad

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. In 1929, in Switzerland, Eisenstein supervised an educational documentary about abortion directed by Edouard Tissé entitled Frauennot - Frauenglück. In late April 1930, Jesse L. Lasky, on behalf of Paramount Pictures, offered the opportunity to make a film in the United States. He accepted a short-term contract for $100,000 and arrived in Hollywood in May 1930. However, 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 Zaharoff 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 then proposed a movie version of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. 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 Major Frank Pease, president of the Hollywood Technical Director's Institute. Pease, an anti-semite and anti-communist, mounted a public campaign against Eisenstein. Seventeen days later, on 23 October 1930 by "mutual consent", 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 a 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. 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. Charlie Chaplin recommended that Eisenstein 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. The two had mutual admiration and 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 November 24, 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", Reportedly, it was verbally clarified that the expectation was for a finished film of about an hour's duration. By the 4th of December, 1930, Eisenstein was en route to Mexico by train, accompanied by Alexandrov and Tisse. Later 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, ¡Qué viva México!, was decided on some time later still. While in Mexico Eisenstein mixed socially with Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera. Eisenstein admired these artists as much as Mexican culture in general, they inspired Eisenstein to call his films, "moving frescoes". After a prolonged absence, Stalin sent a telegram expressing the concern that Eisenstein had become a deserter. Under pressure, Eisenstein blamed Mary Sinclair's younger brother, Hunter Kimbrough -- who had been sent along to act as a line producer -- for the film's problems. Eisenstein hoped to pressure the Sinclairs to insinuate themselves between him and Stalin, so Eisenstein could finish the film in his own way. The furious Sinclair shut down production and ordered Kimbrough to return to the U.S. with the remaining film footage and the three Soviets to see what they could do with the film already shot, estimates ranging from 170,000 lineal feet with "Soldadera" unfilmed, to an excess of 250,000 lineal feet. For the unfinished filming of the "novel" of Soldadera, without incurring any cost, Eisenstein had secured 500 soldiers, 10,000 guns, and 50 cannons from the Mexican Army. but this was lost due to Sinclair's canceling of production.
   When Eisenstein arrived at the American border, a customs search of his trunk revealed sketches and drawings of Jesus caricatures amongst other material of a lewd pornographic nature. 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, Eisenstein in Mexico, and Death Day respectively — were completed and released in the United States between the autumn of 1933 and early 1934.

Late work

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'd 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 Kislovodsk in July 1933, ostensibly a result of depression born of his final acceptance that he'd never be allowed to edit the Mexican footage which was turned over by Sinclair to Hollywood editors, who would irreparably alter the negatives.He was subsequently assigned a teaching position with the film school, GIK (now Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography) where he'd taught earlier and in 1933 and 1934 was in charge of writing curriculum. Eisenstein married filmmaker and writer Pera Atasheva (1900-1965) in 1934 and remained so until his death in 1948. In 1935, he began another 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; and shot film prodigiously, resulting in cost overruns and missed deadlines. Even though Soviet film executive Boris Shumyatsky encouraged Sinclair in undermining Eisenstein it was derailed not as much as Bezhin Meadow by the Soviet film industry, but by its American backers.
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. (The production executive at Film studio Mosfilm, where Meadow was being made, was also replaced, but without further executions.)
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, with music composed by Sergei Prokofiev. 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. It was 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 was assigned to direct Richard Wagner's Die Walküre at the Bolshoi Theatre.

Rhythmic

Tonal

Overtonal

Intellectual In his initial films, Eisenstein didn't 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 classes, he avoided casting stars.
Eisenstein's vision of Communism brought him into conflict with officials in the ruling regime of Joseph Stalin. Like many Bolshevik artists, Eisenstein envisioned a new society which would subsidize artists totally, freeing them from the confines of bosses and budgets, leaving them absolutely free to create, but budgets and producers were as significant to the Soviet film industry as the rest of the world. The fledgling war- and revolution-wracked and isolated new nation didn't have the resources to nationalize its film industry at first. When it did, limited resources - both monetary and equipment - required production controls as extensive as in the capitalist world.

List of selected films

1923 Дневник Глумова (Glumov's Diary)

1924 Стачка (Strike)

1925 Броненосец Потёмкин (The Battleship Potemkin)

1927 Октябрь «Десять дней, которые потрясли мир»

1929 Старое и новое «Генеральная линия» (The General Line aka "Old And New")

1931 Да здравствует Мексика! (¡Qué viva México! released in 1979)

1935 Бежин луг (Bezhin Meadow until 1937)

1938 Александр Невский (Alexander Nevsky)

1944 Иван Грозный 1-я серия (Ivan The Terrible, Part I)

1945 Иван Грозный 2-я серия (Ivan The Terrible, Part II)

1946 Иван Грозный 3-я серия (Ivan The Terrible, Part III)

List of writings

Selected articles in: Ian Christie, and Richard Taylor, The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896-1939, Routledge, 1994 ISBN:041505298X

Sergei Eisenstein, Jay Leyda tr. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, Hartcourt, 1949

Sergei Eisenstein, Jay Leyda tr. The Film Sense, Hartcourt, 1942

Sergei Eisenstein, Towards a Theory of Montage, British Film Institute, 1994

Sergei Eisenstein, and Ernest Lindgren, Que Viva Mexico! Ayer Publishing, 1951 ISBN:0405039166

In Russian, and available online

Сергей Эйзенштейн. Автобиография