born in riga, latvia, into the family of a prominent architect and engineer; graduated from the...
TRANSCRIPT
Sergei EisensteinThe man, his art, and
Battleship Potemkin
Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948)
Born in Riga, Latvia, into the family of a prominent architect and engineer;
Graduated from the Institute of Civil Engineering in Saint Petersburg;
In 1920, joined the Proletkult (“proletarian culture”) Central Workers’ Theatre in Moscow;
Studied in the School for Stage Direction under Vsevolod Meyerhold in early 1920s.
Sergei Eisenstein’s films
Strike 1923 Battleship Potemkin (pronounced Potyomkin)
1925 October (Ten Days that Shook the World) 1927 The General Line (The Old and the New) 1929 Que viva Mexico! (unfinished – abandoned 1932) Bezhin Meadow (1935 – undistributed,
destroyed) Alexander Nevsky 1938 Ivan the Terrible Pt. I 1944 Ivan the Terrible Pt II (finished 1946, released
only in 1958)
Eisenstein and the Theatre
Studied under VsevolodMeyerhold (1874-1940)
antirealist theatre theatre of the grotesque clowning, acrobatics abstract, "constructivist" sets
Vsevolod Meyerhold (portrait by Boris Grigoriev)
Visual Influence: Italian Commedia dell'arte
Etchings of Italian actors by Jacques Callot,a French artist(1592-1635).
Masks: Pantalone,Arlekino, Dottore, etc.
Grotesque features, expressive postures and movements.
Eisenstein's essay (1923)
“Montage of attractions”: cinema compared to theatre and circus;
Eisenstein’s first experiment in film:
grotesque intermezzo inserted in play
Film Strike (1923) as a commedia dell'arte
Masks: factory managers, spies
Serious heroes: revolutionaries
Dark comedy, the revolutionaries are suppressed.
Eisenstein and the visual arts
Films as "moving frescoes" – the influence of Diego Rivera;
Numerous quotes from the visual arts – e.g., from Francisco Goya;
Icons in Ivan The Terrible; Eisenstein was an artist himself –
created sketches for characters and individual shots;
Constructivist imagery.
Diego Rivera (1886-1957, Mexico)In the Arsenal, 1928
Vladimir Tatlin’sMonument to the Third International (1919) (example of constructivism)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)