Synopses & Reviews
Legendary director Sergei Eisenstein has unquestionably emerged as cinema's most influential theorist and author of some of the most important aesthetic writings of the twentieth century. For the first time in one volume,
The Eisenstein Reader presents in concise, chronological form his most significant work--including his famous theories of montage and articles on subjects as diverse as sound, film language, and Russian history. The selections range from early writings on his great silent masterpieces
The Strike, October and
The Battleship Potemkin, to later works, hatched in the increasingly hostile and paranoid environment of Stalin's Soviet Union.
Drawn from the acclaimed four-volume Selected Works, this collection, which includes a new introduction and explanatory notes by Richard Taylor as well as many illustrations, further illuminates the startling originality, diversity, and power of the greatest and most flamboyant of all Russian filmmakers.
Synopsis
This book presents, in a concise form, a selection of Sergei Eisenstein's significant writings. The texts, drawn from the BFI's "Selected Works of Eisenstein", address subjects including sound, film language, and his theories of "montage". This reader provides an accessible introduction to Eisenstein's work.
About the Author
Richard Taylor is Professor of Politics at the University of Wales, Swansea.
Table of Contents
The montage of attractions (1923)--the montage of film attractions (1924)--the problem of the materialist approach to form (1925)--Constanta (whither "The Battleship Potemkin" (1926)--Eisenstein on Eisenstein, the director of "Potemkin" (1926)--Bela forgets the scissors (1926)--Our "October". Beyond the played and the non-played (1928)--beyond the shot (1929)--the dramaturgy of film form (the dialetical approach to film form) (1929)--the fourth dimension in cinema (1929)--"eh!" on the purity of film language (1934)--the mistakes of Behzin Meadow (1937)--Alexander Nevsky and the rout of the Germans (1938)--the problems of the Soviet historical film (1940)--Stalin, Molotov and Zhadanov on "Ivan the Terrible, Part Two" (1947)--from lectures on music annd colour in "Ivan the Terrible" (1947).