The Cinema Of Eisenstein

Eisenstein led a busy, dramatic life. His achievements and adventures merit far more detailed investigation than can be undertaken here. What is useful for the purposes of this book is an overall orientation to his career, a framework within which we can situate his films and theoretical writings.

"The Cinema of Eisenstein" is David Bordwell's comprehensive analysis of the films of Sergei Eisenstein, arguably the key figure in the entire history of film. The director of such classics as "Potemkin," "Ivan the Terrible,"" October," "Strike," and "Alexander Nevsky," Eisenstein theorized montage, presented Soviet realism to the world, and mastered the concept of film epic.
Discussing each film in illuminating detail, David Bordwell points out the traces of various artistic currents of the times, from Marxist modernism to Socialist Realism to Symbolist poetics, as well as the changing influence of Soviet politics. He guides us through Eisenstein's theoretical writings, including major texts that have only recently appeared in English. With close attention to the texture of the filmmaker's thought and work, Bordwell uncovers new depths of artistry and surprising new implications for the theory and history of cinema.
Comprehensive, authoritative, and illustrated with more than three hundred stills, "The Cinema of Eisenstein" deserves to be on the shelf of every serious student of film.