Sergueï Eisenstein

Sergueï Mikhaïlovitch Eisenstein {{Lang-Ru|СергейМихайловичЭйзенштейн}} (January 23rd 1898, Riga, Russia - February 11th 1948, Moscow, Soviet Union, deceased of an heart attack) is one of largest Russian realizers the.

Biography

The father of Eisenstein, Mikhaïl Eisenstein, is municipal engineer of the town of Riga, and exerts later the same function with Petrograd. He constructs remarkable architectural whole in the style “Art nouveau”, in particular with Riga. His/her mother moves in Paris when it is twelve years old.

Sergueï politically does not take in October 1917 at the time of the Révolution of October. It engaged only when the civil war starts, while following the movement of its school-fellows of the School of the Art schools. New Russia needs propagandists. The artists, in particular the caricaturists, can make join the illiterate masses with the combat of the Bolsheviks. Then painted Eisenstein of the banners, the posters sardonic, sarcastic, well in its mood.

He is a pioneer of the use of several cinematographic techniques of which the assembly of attractions, that he explains in his theoretical writings which had a great influence in the history of the cinema.

In its first films, it does not use professional actors. Its accounts avoid the individual characters to concentrate on social questions in particular the conflicts of class. The characters are stereotyped and interprêtés by nonprofessional actors.

Eisenstein is honest towards the ideals of the Communisme preached by Joseph Stalin. This last includes/understands very well the capacity of films as tools of Propagande, and he regards Eisenstein as a discussed figure. The popularity and the influence of Eisenstein fluctuate according to the success of its films. In 1925, it turns the Battleship Potemkine . The famous scene of poussette descending the staircase is filmed on September 22nd with Odessa. It is the commission, charged by the Central committee with the Communist party with organizing the jubilee of the revolution lacked 1905, and which includes/understands in its rows the police chief of the people to the State education Lounatcharski and the painter Malevitch, who indicated Eisenstein to carry out a commemorative film. For lack of time, the realizer will not be able to treat the totality of the events, but only one of them, the mutiny occurred on the battleship. Sometimes, it does not obtain the recognition for its work, for example for the film October: Ten days which shook the world for the tenth birthday of the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

All the art of Sergueï Eisenstein is expressed through its single assemblies and the use of what criticisms will name “the cinema-fist”, forms expression being opposed to the “cinema-eye” of Dziga Vertov. The force of the assemblies, used to extremely transmit a visual message to the spectator, constitute a great contribution with the cinema mondial : the sequence of the images creates an intrinsic direction, in particular by the use of dominant. Assembly, rhythmic, use of the colors (in the last shutter of its last film Ivan the Terrible ) but especially strict choice of the luminosity form a new cinematographic language on which Eisenstein will write much, as a theorist of the cinema (he will always affirm to prefer the silent film with the talking films in his theoretical writings because of the larger impact of the assembly).

In 1930, Paramount Pictures invites Eisenstein with Hollywood with a contract of one hundred thousand dollars. It arrives at New York the May 20th and continuous as far as California. Paramount wants to make him make a version filmed on the American Tragedy of Theodore Dreiser but the dissensions in connection with the distribution lead it to leave in October. Josef von Sternberg finishes film.

Eisenstein leaves to the Mexico with Edouard Tissé (its chief-operator) where it tries to produce documentary partly dramatized entitled That Viva Mexico City! . Before it is finished, Stalin requires that Eisenstein turn over to Soviet Union. Eisenstein leaves the reels not assembled to the care of Upton Sinclair, the main thing financial of the project, which must make him follow to Moscow. But the reels were never sent. In 1933 in New York, a first assembly is carried out by Sol To injure, without intervention of Eisenstein, and is exploited under the title Tonnerre on Mexico . Since several versions were created, more or less close to the initial intentions of Eisenstein. That Viva Mexico City! is regarded for that as a cursed film, although it was of its own preferred consent its.

The incursion in Occident makes Stalin suspicieux with regard to Eisenstein, mistrust which gains the Nomenklatura. The bureaucracy imposes the cancellation of the two following projects and a supervisor “ official ” is to him assistant during the creation of Alexandre Nevski .

The following film, made between 1942 and 1944, Ivan the Terrible , with the approval of Stalin for the first part so much so that Eisenstein receives the Prix Stalin in 1945. The second part, finished in 1946, is on the other hand censured until in 1958, because Ivan is not described any more there like a hero but like a paranoiac tyrant. The third part, started in 1946 and remained unfinished, is confiscated and partly destroyed. The second part has scenes colors (the final festival), thanks to a recovery of German film Agfacolor after the fall of Stalingrad.

Eisenstein dies following a hemorrhage. A legend claims that its brain was preserved and that it was much larger than that of human ordinary, feeding the myth of the genius of the cinema which it could incarnate.

Catalog of films (feature-length films)

1925 : the Strike ( Стачка (“Чертовогнездо”, “Историястачки”) )
1925: the Battleship Potemkine ( Броненосец “Потёмкин” (“1905 год”) )
1927: October: Ten days which shook the world ( Октябрь (“Десятьдней, которыепотряслимир”) )
1929: the general Line (or the Old one and new the ) ( Староеиновое (“Генеральнаялиния”) )
1930: sentimental Lovesong (France)
1933: That Viva Mexico City! ( незаконченныйфильм “ДаздравствуетМексика!” ); unfinished
1935: Pre Béjine ( Бежинлуг ); unfinished
1938: Alexandre Nevski ( АлександрНевский )
1944: Ivan the Terrible, Left I ( ИванГрозный (1-ясерия) )
1946: Ivan the Terrible, Left II ( ИванГрозный (2-ясерия, сказвторой - “Боярскийзаговор”) )
1946: Ivan the Terrible, Left III ( ИванГрозный (неоконченный, 3-ясерия) ); unfinished.

Others practical

Eisenstein draftsman

Eisenstein was a very prolific draftsman, although this facet of its activity is still far from known. As of the ten years age, he devotes himself to the drawing, and this until his death, except 1924 to 1930, where he practically ceases drawing. One evaluates his graphic production with approximately ten thousand drawings, of which only a few hundreds were published. The remainder remains with the literary and artistic Files of State (RGALI) , in Moscow. Unfortunately, they are rather inaccessible.

To discover the graphic universe of Eisenstein, here a small bibliography:

Secret Drawings , Editions of the Threshold
Eisenstein, the body off the line, Foundation Langlois (CD-ROM)
Eisenstein, drawings and drafts , Books of Star, Books of the Cinema

Eisenstein theorist

Eisenstein was also a large theorist, whose writings remain still badly known because of their largely new character and by the absence of translation in French for a great number of them. If Eisenstein is famous for its theory of the assembly, it is it less for the remainder, in particular for its extra-cinematographic writings. Character with the colossal and protean culture, Eisenstein theorizes as well on Chinese mathematics as on cognitive sciences, on the art of the Russian Peddlers that on that of the XIXe French century, on the dance as on the French literature, on Mexican anthropology as on the Japanese ideograms…

Here a summary bibliography of theoretical writings translated into French:

S. Mr. Eisenstein, Dickens & Griffith (Genesis of the close-up) , Stalker Editor 2007
Sergueï Eisenstein, Cinématisme , Editions Complexes
Eisenstein, the movement of art , Editions of the Stag
Sergueï Eisenstein, Not-Indifferent nature
Sergueï Eisenstein, Walt Disney
Sergueï Eisenstein, Mémoires , 10-18
Sergueï Mikhaïlovitch Eisenstein and Vladimir Nijny, Leçons of setting in scene , ED. Fémis, collection written/screens, 1989.

External bonds

Videoartworld : The Masters Series. Catalog of films, Photograph, Films of Eisenstein on Line. Public domain

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