The Cinema of Eisenstein

An examination of Sergei Eisenstein's distictive contributions to filmmaking and film theory. It provides the only comprehensive guide in English to the range of Eisenstein's achievements in cinema.

An examination of Sergei Eisenstein's distictive contributions to filmmaking and film theory. It provides the only comprehensive guide in English to the range of Eisenstein's achievements in cinema.

Autorentext

David Bordwell is Jacques Ledoux Professor Emeritus of Film Studies in the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has written several books on film theory, history, and criticism, including On the History of Film Style (Harvard, 1997) and The*Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of*Production to 1960 (with Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, Routledge/Columbia, 1985).

Klappentext

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.

Inhalt

Preface 2005 -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- 1. A Life in Cinema -- From Theatre to Cinema -- The Silent Films -- Europe, Hollywood, and Mexico -- Projects and Problems -- Triumph and Decline -- The Particularities of Method -- 2. Monumental Heroics: The Silent Films -- Toward Plotless Cinema -- Strike -- Potemkin -- October -- Old and New -- A Note on Versions of Eisensteins Silent Films -- 3. Seizing the Spectator: Film Theory in the Silent Era -- Between Theory and Practice -- Agitation as Excitation -- Montage in Theatre and Film -- Film Language and Intellectual Cinema -- Film Formas Dialectics The Eclectic Modernist -- 4. Practical Aesthetics: Pedagogy -- Structure and Style: The Episode -- Structure and Style: From Episode to Work -- Assaulting the Eye -- 5. Cinema as Synthesis: Film Theory,-1948 -- From Agitprop Formalism to Socialist Realism -- Conceptions of Psychological Activity -- Film Form: Organic Unity -- Montage: The Musical Analogy Revisited -- PathosandEcstasy -- A Mature Poetics -- 6. History and Tragedy: The Late Films -- Alexander Nevsky -- Ivan the Terrible -- 7. The Making and Remaking of Segei Eisenstein -- Legend in Life -- The Assimilation into Orthodoxy -- The Exemplary Modernist -- Eisenstein Our Contemporary -- Chronology -- Filmography -- Further Reading -- Bibliography -- PhotoCredits -- Index.