SERGEI EISENSTEIN: BIOGRAPHY AND FILMS - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

Sergei Eisenstein (1898 - 1948) was a prominent Russian film director and theorist who created the montage of attractions or psychological montage, a technique in which images are presented, independent of the main action, to achieve the maximum psychological impact on the viewer.

Eisenstein is currently recognized for being the father of montage in the history of the seventh art and for applying such theory at a time when cinema was only a few years old.

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The avant-garde Russian director not only contributed to the film montage, but his influences were involved in the filming, the set design and even the montage of American cinema.

In addition, he was the director of the renowned film Potemkin of 1925, which is seen as one of the best films in the history of cinema. He also directed Alexander Nevsky, released in 1938, and Ivan the Terrible (published in two parts, 1944 and 1958). In addition, he was a screenwriter for both films.

Eisenstein was also known because he was convinced that art could be useful in the Russian Revolution, in which he lived. He enlisted in the Red Army for a time, which influenced his vision as a filmmaker.

Biography

Early years

Sergei Eisenstein was born on January 22, 1898 in Riga, Latvia, Russian Empire, under the name Sergey Mikhaylovich Eisenstein. He was born into a middle-class family of Jews (by his paternal grandparents) and Slavic (by his mother).

His father Mikhail, a civil engineer, worked in shipbuilding until 1910. Later they moved to Saint Petersburg. Sergei Eisenstein attended the science-oriented Realschule school to prepare for engineering school.

Still, Eisenstein found time for vigorous reading in Russian, German, English, and French, as well as cartoons and acting at a children's theater he founded. In 1915, he moved to Petrograd to continue his engineering studies at his father's alma mater.

On his own, he began studying Renaissance art and attended the avant-garde theater productions of Russian theater director Vsévolod Meyerhold.

With the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917, he enlisted in the Red Army and helped organize and build defenses, and produce training for the troops. After the revolution, he sold his first political cartoons, signing as Sir Gay in various magazines in Petrograd.

Beginning of his career

In 1920, Eisenstein left the army to join the General Staff Academy in Moscow, where he was part of the First Proletcult Workers' Theater; an artistic movement to renew traditional bourgeois art and social consciousness. In such a group he managed to work as a decoration assistant and costume designer.

Eisenstein gained fame for his groundbreaking work producing the play The Mexican, adapted to the story of the American writer Jack London. Later, he enrolled in the experimental theater workshop of his idol Mayerhold and collaborated with various avant-garde theater groups.

In 1923, he made a short film of the play The Wise, by the Russian playwright Aleksandr Ostrovski. The play was titled The Daily Glúmov and consisted of a political satire with folkloric tones with the intention of mounting a series of circus-like attractions.

Einsenstein's set of such shocking scenes drew public attention for the masterful montage.

After analyzing the films of American director David Griffith, the montage experiments of filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, and the reissuing techniques of Esfir Shub, Einsenstein became convinced that time and space can be manipulated in cinematographic pieces.

Assembly of attractions

Finally, in 1924, after publishing his article on publishing theories, he proposed his form of "montage of attractions" in which he arbitrarily presented images, regardless of the action, without a chronology, with the intention of creating a psychological impact on the viewer..

For Eisenstein, the expressive capacity of the show should not be concentrated in the plot line of the film, but in the way in which the staging is oriented and the director's ability to manipulate the emotions of the viewer.

Eisenstein explained that the concept means that images and planes are not alone, but must interact through montage, constructing well-thought-out meanings to achieve totality.

Such concepts were put into practice with his first film Strike, made that same year. Strike is a film full of expressionist camera angles, reflections, and visual metaphors.

In a police spy story, the camera becomes a spy and any other character. The play shows Eisenstein's new cinematic grammar, filled with a montage of conflicts, shots that served as words and with persuasive dialogue.

While Strike was a groundbreaking achievement, the footage did not convey the desired message and was therefore a shaky technique.

Stay in Western Europe

Possessed by his theory, Einsenstein tried to eliminate the flaw in his previous film, so his new work Potemkin or also called The Battleship Potemkin managed to evade it.

In 1925, the film was finally made in the port and in the city of Odessa ordered by the Central Executive Committee of the United States to commemorate the Russian Revolution of 1905, having a momentous impact at the time.

Following the achievement of his previous feature film in Soviet cinema, Eisenstein created the film October, also called Ten Days That Shook the World, in 1928. In two hours he tried to address issues of changes of power in government after 1917.

A year later, he went to Paris to film the film Romance sentimentale, an essay in counterpoint of images and music. In addition, Einsenstein gave various talks in Berlin, Zurich, London, Paris, and also supervised a documentary on abortion directed by the Soviet Eduard Tissé.

Stay in America

In 1930 he went to the United States and taught at various Ive League schools before heading to Hollywood. In Hollywood he worked on adaptations of the novels Sutter's Gold by Swiss writer Blaide Cendrars and An American Tragedy by American novelist Theodore Dreiser.

Still, by refusing to modify his scripts to meet the demands of the studios, he broke the contract and went to Mexico in 1932 to direct the film ¡Que viva México !, with capital raised by American novelist Upton Sinclair.

That same year, Einsenstein signed a contract that allowed him to direct the film with an image of apolitical Mexico. In addition, part of the contract stipulated that all negative films, positive impressions and the story as such would be from Mrs. Sirclair.

The movie was never finished; Budgetary concerns, combined with Stalin's discontent over the length of Eisenstein's stay in Mexico, plus other factors, slowed production when the film was nearly finished.

Eisenstein's relationship with Sinclair became strained due to production delays and communication problems. The Sinclairs took all the remaining images from the film, and Eisenstein was left with no choice but to return to the Soviet Union.

Return to the Soviet Union

Apparently, in 1933, when he arrived in the Soviet Union, he stayed for a time in a psychiatric hospital in the city of Kislovodsk, as a result of a severe depression due to the loss of the images from the film ¡Que viva México! and because of the political tension that he had experienced.

His project ideas were bluntly rejected, although at the time he was assigned a position as a professor at the State Institute of Cinematography.

In 1935, Eisenstein began work on another film project, "Bezhin Meadow"; his first talking movie. Despite this, the film was affected by problems similar to those suffered by "¡Que viva México!"

Eisenstein had unilaterally decided to film two versions of the set, for adults and for children, so a clear schedule was not achieved. The head of the Soviet film industry stopped filming and canceled production.

Despite this, in 1938, Stalin gave Eisenstein a chance by assigning him to make a biographical film of Alexander Nevsky. The film revealed Eisenstein's potential through several epic sequences and the famous ice battle scene.

The biographical film was a success both in the Soviet Union and abroad; Einsenstein was able to position Soviet cinema in the world.

Latest productions and death

In 1939, he was offered a new project entitled "The Grand Canal of Fergana", which after intensive pre-production work was canceled.

Following the non-aggression signing by the Soviet Union and Germany, Eisenstein considered that the agreement provided a solid foundation for cultural cooperation, which helped his position in the Russian film industry.

Then, in 1940, Einsestein took it upon himself to make an even larger historical scale: "Ivan the Terrible." It consisted of a two-part film that glorifies the psychopathic and murderous Ivan IV of Russia.

Sergei Einsestein's death prevented him from summarizing his views in the areas of the psychology of creativity, the anthropology of art, and semiotics.

While not many filmmakers have followed Eisenstein, his essays on the nature of film art have been translated into various languages ​​and studied in various nations.

On February 2, 1946, he suffered a heart attack and spent much of the following year recovering. However, on February 11, 1948, he died of a second heart attack at the age of 50. According to various references, Sergei Eisenstein was homosexual, although it has not been confirmed with certainty.

Films

The battleship Potemkin

Battleship Potemkin is a Soviet silent film released in 1925 and directed by Sergei Eisenstein, known for being one of the masterpieces of international cinema. It is a dramatized version of the 1905 revolt in Russia, when the crew of the battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers.

In 1958, it was named the best film of all time, while in 2012 it was named the eleventh best film in the history of cinema.

The famous scene on the Odessa staircase shows Eisenstein's theory of dialectical montage. The strength of Odessa's steps arises when the viewer's mind combines the individual and independent shots and forms a new conceptual impression.

Through Eisenstein's manipulations of filmic time and space, the slaughter on the stone steps takes on powerful symbolic meaning. However, the film was banned in 1946 by Stalin, fearing that the same uprising of the film against his regime will occur.

Alexander Nevsky

Alexander Nevsky is a 1938 historical drama film directed by Sergei Einsenstein. The film depicts the attempted invasion of the Russian city Novgorod by the Teutonic Knights of the Holy Empire in the 13th century, and their defeat by the Russian prince Alexander Nevsky.

Eisenstein made the film together with Russian director Dmitri Vaselyev and from a script co-written with Russian screenwriter Pyotr Pavlenko.

Such professionals were assigned to ensure that Eisenstein did not deviate from formalism and to facilitate the recording of the sound of gunfire, this being Eisenstein's first sound work.

On the other hand, it was made by the Soviet producer Goskino, with the Russian actor Nikolai Cherkasov in the main role and a musical composition by the Russian Sergei Prokofiev.

As for its symbolic montage, the film has several scenes with this sense; in fact, the taking of the human and animal skeletons on the battlefield makes the viewer feel, in a few shots of the same montage, the feeling of war.

Ivan the terrible

Ivan the Terrible is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia, commissioned by Soviet Prime Minister Joseph Stalin, who both admired and identified with the Grand Prince. The film was written and directed by Sergei Einsenstein.

The first part (1943) was a great success and as a consequence, Eisenstein received the Stalin Prize. Part two, released three years later, showed a different Ivan: a bloodthirsty tyrant seen as "Stalin's predecessor."

The second part had been banned and the images in part three were destroyed. Part two of the film was first shown in 1958 on Eisenstein's 60th anniversary.

Later, a museum in Moscow showed a scene from the third part of Ivan the Terrible. The scene is based on Ivan interrogating a foreign mercenary in the same way as Stalin's secret policemen.

References

1. Sergei Einsenstein Biography, Portal carleton.edu, (nd). Taken from carleton.edu
2. Sergey Einsenstein, Jean Mitry, (nd). Taken from britannica.com
3. Sergei Eisenstein, Wikipedia in English, (nd). Taken from Wikipedia.org
4. Sergei Eisenstein, the discoverer of cinema as a mass spectacle, Alberto López, (2019). Taken from elpais.com
5. Battleship Potemkin, Robert Sklar and David A. Cook, (nd). Taken from britannica.com
6. Alexander Nevsky: Stalinist propaganda in the 13 ^th century, Portal The Guardian, (2009). Taken from theguardian.com