Sergei Eisenstein: An Investigation into his films and philosophy

Film lovers who read French have long known and admired CINÉMA D'AUJOURD'HUI, the distinguished series of monographs on film directors published in France by Editions Seghers. The series each book in an up-to-date version, complete with many photographs is now becoming available in English, to the enlargement and enrichment of film thought in the English-speaking world. The art of filmmaking has been blessed through-out its short history with a full complement of fine stylists, important innovators, and great artists. But there is one name that shines out above all others: Sergei Eisenstein. This man, who believed in all good faith that his films-from Potemkin, the film unlike any other, to the profoundly poignant Ivan the Terrible-were simply servants of a rigid political ethos, had in fact created infinitely rich enduring affirmations of the human spirit. In this study the late Léon Moussinac, who was Eisenstein's intimate friend from the time of the first Paris showing of Potemkin in 1926 to Eisenstein's death in 1948, explores in detail and with love the excruciating tensions between Eisenstein the man of great human (and humanistic) warmth, Eisenstein the doctrinaire Marxist and political instrument, Eisenstein the film theorist, and Eisenstein the great artist-tensions which, almost but not quite, destroyed both the man and the filmmaker. Mr. Moussinac's study, a classic of film literature and biography, is supplemented by selections from Eisenstein's own thoughts on filmmaking. by excerpts from screenplays, and by a broad spectrum of critical and personal opinion.