Amazon.com
After D.W. Griffith, the most important figure in the history of the international cinema is Sergei Eisenstein. Both men died in 1948, but Eisenstein left a double legacy: not only was he one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, but he was also a magnificent film theorist, perhaps the most important one ever. This book of his essays, superbly translated and edited by Jay Leyda, reprints some of his most vital writings on the art of the cinema, including articles on the language and structure of the movies, the differences between theater and film, and the author's efforts to adapt Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy for the screen. In "The Cinematic Principle and the Ideogram," Eisenstein analyzes the written symbols of the Japanese language as a model for film editing. "Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today," one of the author's most famous pieces, speaks of Griffith as a Dickensian director and then argues for a kind of filmmaking that transcends Griffith's literal style in order to touch its audience on an ideological and metaphorical level. This volume also includes the notorious "statement" on sound movies, which argues against the use of synchronous sound and in favor of jarring, contrapuntal audio that Eisenstein believed would add new dimensions to the talking picture. Idiosyncratic, engrossing, and brilliant, Eisenstein's essays will inspire you to reevaluate everything you thought you knew about the movies.
Book Description
Twelve essays written between 1928 and 1945 that demonstrate key points in the development of Eisenstein’s film theory and in particular his analysis of the sound-film medium. Edited, translated, and with an Introduction by Jay Leyda; Index; photographs and diagrams.
Customer Reviews:
Theories on Cinema.......2006-04-10
This is not a how to for wannabe movie directors, the essays revolve around the cinematic medium and its creation, and not so much on its content. Not unlike McLuhan, Eisenstein proposes to understand cinema as an extension of our senses ( hence, his following book, Film Sense ), and retraces the evolution from theather to cinema to sound cinema with a focus on Japanese influence ( Kabuki ) and a revolutionary ( for its time ) approach to montage. Cryptic at times, but a goldmine of insights into the nature of the silver screen.
Film Form: Marxism, Montage and the Hegelian Dialectic.......2002-07-10
As many of the early film theorists, Eisenstein has a tendency to propose as universals the principles of a specific school. The Soviet school of montage, whose heyday was in the late 20s, finds its most brilliant auteur here expounding not only upon its philosophy of cinema, but on ways in which this philosophy is in fitting with Marxism, the Hegelian dialectic and science. As such, it is a brilliant manifesto, a seminal work of greater value than any of those by Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Vertov, Dovzhenko or other montagists.
Nonetheless, it is problematic in several ways, and an understanding of the nature of its idiosyncrasies is extremely valuable. First, in an effort to "prove" his hypotheses, Eisenstein often attempts to reconcile film and physics in ways that are inappropriate and pseudo-scientific. He presents himself, in that sense, as both Eisenstein and amateur Einstein. Further, case studies are often chosen from his own work, in effect limiting the reader's freedom to disagree with his conclusions. Finally, the manner in which he expresses his thoughts is beyond elliptical. At times, it appears that one would have had to have been living in Russia at the time that these essays were written and to have been thinking about the same issues that Eisenstein was to comprehend what he is getting at. [On the other hand, for those who have had the joy of reading Wittgenstein, for example, this should be a good book to take to the beach.]
As indicated above, these problems can be explained. Communists have always had a complex relationship with the Social Darwinists. On one hand, Marxism was born out of progressive, evolutionary thinking; on the other hand, Marxists dismiss the idea of "survival of the fittest" as primitive and untenable. Soviet biologists often found themselves in the unique position of having to reconcile their theories with the party line, supported by hand selected data. In the end, of course, the value of art and science were measured by the rigid slide rule of the Communist Party. Science that did not promote its agenda was considered "anti-revolutionary."
Eisenstein is the Comrade Lysenko of cinema. He hoists high the myth of science (i.e., the systematic study of physical Truth), reduced essentially to propaganda, and borne along on the shoulders of dubious examples. The most convenient (and most incontrovertible) of these are taken from his own films, the full meanings of which belong to his own demesne. The language Eisenstein uses to construct his arguments is wisely selected: The more clearly one understands his propagandist averments and the less clearly the logic upon which they are based, the more likely one is to accept them as fact. Somewhat hypocritically, then, Eisenstein selects the voice of the intellectual elite to speak to the masses, hiding his true political intentions behind a veil of empty esotericism. Like the soothsayer, the illusionist and the ringleader, "Film Form" operates in the realm of baseless belief in which arguments gain validity relative not to WHAT they say but the WAY in which they say it. For this very reason, it is an important read... the very dogma of Bolshevik art.
Montage, Marxism and the Hegelian Dialectic.......2002-07-09
As many of the early film theorists, Eisenstein has a tendency to propose as universals the principles of a specific school. The Soviet school of montage, whose heyday was in the late 20s, finds its most brilliant auteur here expounding not only upon its philosophy of cinema, but on ways in which this philosophy is in fitting with Marxism, the Hegelian dialectic and science. As such, it is a brilliant manifesto, a seminal work of greater value than any of those by Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Vertov, Dovzhenko or other montagists.
Nonetheless, it is problematic in several ways, and an understanding of the nature of its idiosyncrasies is extremely valuable. First, in an effort to "prove" his hypotheses, Eisenstein often attempts to reconcile film and physics in ways that are inappropriate and pseudo-scientific. He presents himself, in that sense, as both Eisenstein and amateur Einstein. Further, case studies are often chosen from his own work, in effect limiting the reader's freedom to disagree with his conclusions. Finally, the manner in which he expresses his thoughts is beyond elliptical. At times, it appears that one would have had to have been living in Russia at the time that these essays were written and to have been thinking about the same issues that Eisenstein was to comprehend what he is getting at. [On the other hand, for those who have had the joy of reading Wittgenstein, for example, this should be a good book to take to the beach.]
As indicated above, these problems can be explained. Communists have always had a complex relationship with the Social Darwinists. On one hand, Marxism was born out of progressive, evolutionary thinking; on the other hand, Marxists dismiss the idea of "survival of the fittest" as primitive and untenable. Soviet biologists often found themselves in the unique position of having to reconcile their theories with the party line, supported by hand selected data. In the end, of course, the value of art and science were measured by the rigid slide rule of the Communist Party. Science that did not promote its agenda was considered "anti-revolutionary."
Eisenstein is the very Comrade Lysenko of cinema. He hoists high the myth of science (i.e., the systematic study of physical Truth), reduced essentially to propaganda, and borne along on the shoulders of dubious examples. The most convenient (most incontrovertible) of these are those taken from his own films, the full meaning of which belongs to his own demesne. The language Eisenstein uses to construct his arguments is wisely selected: The more clearly one understands his propagandist averments and the less clearly the logic upon which they are based, the more likely one is to accept them as fact. Somewhat hypocritically, then, Eisenstein selects the voice of the intellectual elite to speak to the masses, hiding his true political intentions behind a veil of empty esotericism. Like the soothsayer, the illusionist and the ringleader, "Film Form" operates in the realm of baseless belief in which arguments gain validity relative not to WHAT they say but the WAY in which they say it. For this very reason, it is an important read... the very dogma of Bolshevik art.
THIS BOOK WILL NOT IMPROVE YOUR FILMMAKING.......2000-02-28
This book will not improve your skills as a filmmaker (I doubt that any book would). If you can actually figure out what Eisenstein is trying to say, you will only find very vague and obscure theories. His ideas are interesting in what they reveal about his films and himself, but you cannot apply them to your filmmaking.
The montage explained.......1999-07-24
While it can be tough to read Film Form it is ultimately a more then worth while book to read. Eisenstein's theory of montage is a must read. Very inspiring and insightful
Average customer rating:
- Tough but interesting...
- THIS BOOK WILL NOT IMPROVE YOUR FILMS!
- A must read for all filmmakers, The basis of all great films
|
The Film Sense
Sergei M. Eisenstein , and
Jay Leyda
Manufacturer: Harcourt
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Film Form: Essays in Film Theory
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ASIN: 0156309351 |
Amazon.com
The theory of "montage" or editing, developed by early Soviet filmmakers, reached its deepest expression in the writings of Sergeii Eisenstein, undeniably the most profound theorist of film art. This book contains the clearest and most accessible introduction to his ideas about the cinema. Eisenstein, who directed "The Battleship Potemkin" and "Alexander Nevsky," was a master propagandist as well as a superb filmmaker. In this book, he argues passionately that these two crafts are closely related.
Book Description
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, born in Riga in 1898, first achieved world fame with his silent film, Potemkin in 1925. Although he only completed six films in his lifetime, he is considered one of the most influential film-makers and film theoreticians of all time.
The Film Sense draws upon Eisenstein's experience in the creation of Strike, Potemkin, Ten Days That Shook the World, Old and New and Alexander Nevsky to discuss films as a medium that would appeal to all the senses, not just the emotions and the intellect. The book also includes a complete list of his work and a bibliography.
Customer Reviews:
Tough but interesting..........2000-11-14
Though no book will make you a filmmaker, some will help you refine your vision. This book, for me, added some poetry and texture to the imagery already in my mind. Pretty much the only thing that will improve your film skills, is making them.
THIS BOOK WILL NOT IMPROVE YOUR FILMS!.......2000-02-28
If you want to improve your own films, this book will not help you (I doubt that any book would). If you can actually figure out what Eisenstien is trying to say (which would probably take 3 readings, but who has the time?) you will find only obscure and vague theories. They are interesting in what they reveal about Eisenstein and his films, but they will not help you as a filmmaker!
A must read for all filmmakers, The basis of all great films.......1997-11-10
Eisenstein thoughts on montage and how the mind interpets film is invaluable when creating films of one's own. Read the book 3 times to learn it for the first.
Average customer rating:
- Someone, Please REPRINT THIS BOOK!
|
Nonindifferent Nature: Film and the Structure of Things (Cambridge Studies in Film)
Sergei Eisenstein
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0521324157 |
Customer Reviews:
Someone, Please REPRINT THIS BOOK!.......2001-03-24
All I can say is that if you're serious about film, you're serious about Eisenstein, and in that case, you you should have access to this volume of his theories. Here we get many more diverse sources to Eisenstein's thoughts, as Martin Lefebvre wrote in his extended study for Screen 41.4, one of which is classical rhetoric and ideas of religious ecstasy. Revisiting Eisenstein may now be more important than ever w/ the various newcomers to "filmmaking" in the non-stop emergence of new forms and formats for motion pictures and with them new possibilities to explore and experiment with narration.
Amazon.com
Sergei Eisenstein is arguably the most important single figure in the history of movies. He was certainly the most versatile. The director of the masterpieces Battleship Potemkin and Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein also wrote ground-breaking essays on film art and taught classes on motion picture production. In this thoughtful, clear, and beautifully organized book, David Bordwell describes Eisenstein's development as a filmmaker, essayist, and teacher, demonstrating how each of his occupations comments upon and elucidates the other. Playing the role of Eisenstein's biographer, historian, interpreter, and critic, Bordwell has composed one of the clearest and most complete views available of this difficult but exciting genius.
Book Description
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.
Customer Reviews:
A Film Freak's Guide to the Great Eisenstein.......2000-06-07
David Bordwell, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, has produced as complete and insightful a guide to the cinemagraphic artistry of Sergei Eisenstein as any film lover could hope for. In addition to covering the director's life and "rehabilitation" to rightful prominence years after his death, Dr. Bordwell spends measured time dissecting and describing Eisenstein's theories of montage and "Social Realist" cinema in a most understandable and fluent way. For anyone who has marveled at the dramatic power of the "Odessa Steps" sequence in "The Battleship Potempkin" or the heroic sweep of "Alexander Nevsky," this book will take you behind the scenes and reveal how these masterworks were made, and why. Very readable, and filled with hundreds of illustrations from films both completed and unmade, "The Cinema of Eisenstein" will satisfy the serious movie-goer and the student of Soviet cultural history. A compendious bibliography and suggested reading list is included. Comrades, get this book!
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S.M. Eisenstein: Selected Works : Writings, 1922-34
Manufacturer: Indiana Univ Pr
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ASIN: 0253350425 |
Book Description
Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) was not only one of the worlds greatest filmmakers, he was also one of the most important theorists and teachers of film. In the period covered by this volume, 1934-47, his filmmaking ran into the difficulties generated by the authorities' increasingly restricted definition of socialist realism, by the show trials, the purges, the Second World War, and the postwar proclamation of a rigid cultural orthodoxy by Stalin's henchmen, Zhdanov.
In this volume, we see Eisenstein's reaction to this hostile environment, as filmmaker, theorist, and teacher, from his public obeisance over Bezhin Meadow to his private defiance with Ivan the Terrible.
This volume completes the original project to publish Eisenstein's Selected Works in English.
Amazon.com
Sergei Eisenstein's essays about the art of cinema have influenced film theorists for decades, but it was his films that redefined what cinema is capable of achieving--the "Odessa Steps" sequence from Battleship Potemkin, with its rapid cutting and juxtaposed images, is one of the most famous scenes in all cinema, and is often used as evidence of the power of film as an art form. For biographer and film historian Ronald Bergan, "Eisenstein, though his films are thoroughly Russian in content and context, belongs directly in the current of 20th-century Western art with such other 'cosmopolitan' Russians as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninov, Vassili Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Vladimir Nabokov, George Balanchine, and Sergei Diaghilev."
A Life in Conflict is a fitting subtitle for this biography of the iconoclastic filmmaker, who was able to complete only seven feature-length films in a career spanning just over two decades, in the midst of frequent clashes with the Soviet Union's official tastemakers, including Joseph Stalin himself. (Among the book's highlights is a lengthy quotation from Eisenstein's journals transcribing a conversation he had with Stalin and other Soviet officials about "mistakes" in Ivan the Terrible, Part 2.) Critics have often denigrated Eisenstein for toeing the Communist Party line; Bergan reminds us that doing so was a simple matter of survival. Bergan also provides much more detail than previous accounts of the director's experiences in Hollywood under contract to Paramount, drawing upon Eisenstein's memoirs and Moscow archives. This personal material, which also helps contextualize decades of speculation about Eisenstein's sexuality and its relationship to his work, is perhaps the single factor that makes the biography worth reading no matter what one's degree of familiarity with the films. --Ron Hogan
Customer Reviews:
The life of a great intellectual.......2001-11-21
Ronald Bergan shows that although Eisenstein was committed to the Bolshevik cause and contributed to its development, his films must, in no way, simply be dismissed as propaganda. Eisenstein pioneering visual techniques, explorations in montage and lyrical representations have earned him an indisputable position as among film makers.
The culminating scenes in `Strike!', for instance, are built on an alternating sequence of shots that show soldiers chasing and shooting the strikers while a butcher is slitting the throat of farm animals in the slaughterhouse. This allegorical interpretation of the Czar as a butcher wa not fully understood by a large portion of the viewing public, as Eisenstein himself witnessed when the film was shown in the rural areas throughout the country. Indeed, many farmers were unable to grasp the metaphor of the slaughtered beasts as an association of the Czar as a criminal, a butcher, a murderer of innocents because for farmers the killing of an animal did not constitute a crime.
The rally to arms in `Alexander Nevsky' culminated in the battle on ice scene (which runs for almost a third of the film). The scene, which Eisenstein duly prepared with the aid of sketches, appears as if inspired by the paintings of the Italian renaissance artist P. Uccello, as both show the violent clash of armor, horses, arrows, spears and iron.
Book Description
The
Film, Form, and Culture CD-ROM serves as a multimedia glossary or dictionary to ANY film text. It is available separately, and it can be packaged at a discount with any McGraw-Hill film title.
The CD-ROM illustrates film elements and concepts with QuickTime clips from a wide variety of classic films: Citizen Kane, Battleship Potemkin, Rear Window, The Plow That Broke the Plains, Vertigo, and many more. This new version adds modules on Sound and Genre to provide an even stronger tool for film study.
Customer Reviews:
Great resource for teaching.......2007-09-13
I bought this book along with a few others and it has truely helped me develop a curriuclum for my high school Art of Film class. The DVD examples help to visually understand the concepts and I enjoyed it for my own knowledge as well.
Book Description
The Eisenstein Collection brings together Sergei Eisenstein's key writings in one volume for the first time and includes new material not previously available. This edition covers the period from Eisenstein's dispute over the authorship of his first feature film, The Strike, in 1925 to his filmmaking and polemical activities during World War II, including his correspondence with Soviet leaders over Ivan the Terrible.
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Eisenstein, Cinema, and History
James Goodwin
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
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Eisenstein
Manufacturer: Sangam Books Ltd
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ASIN: 0861321006 |
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- The diary is filled with amazing detail of his life.
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Hendrix: The Visual Documentary by Tony Brown : The Original Edition Jimi Hendrix : The Acclaimed Diary of His Life, Loves and Music
Tony Brown
Manufacturer: Omnibus Press
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ASIN: 0711927618 |
Customer Reviews:
The diary is filled with amazing detail of his life........2005-12-05
Tony Brown has painstakingly put together what appears to be a quite accurate almost day by day diary of Jimi's brief career. He lists the dates Jimi went into the studio, the various concerts he played and other activities Jimi did such as specific days of when he was interviewed or on TV. It is in calendar form so it goes from beginning to end, obviously mainly from 1966 to 1970. This is a great way to read about Jimi's life. It has less opinion and more statement of fact, as best as Mr. Brown could reconstruct from his research. There's always some controversy here and there when books about Jimi are published but this book seems to provide a very sensible presentation of Jimi's life as it actually appears to have happened. As a big Jimi I was delighted to find this book and delve into it. Based on going over a few other Jimi books this one appears to be right in step with others, that is, it does appear to be a quite realistic reporting of how Jimi's life went, pretty much day to day in his famous years. Thanks Mr. Brown, a great read. chrisbct@hotmail.com
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