The name of Sergei Eisenstein is known throughout the world as the name of one of the founders of the art of cinema, as well as a great master of the Russian avant-garde. His immortal masterpieces are still used by film institutes as teaching aids for editing and directing.
The director's legacy
2025 will mark the 100th anniversary of the masterpiece of world cinematography, the film Battleship Potemkin. Sergei Mikhailovich was only 27 years old when he filmed this tape. Few people know in what year Sergei Eisenstein was born, but he lived only fifty years (from 1898 to 1948). It should be noted that this time fell on the most difficult and tragic periods in the history of our country.
Sergei Eisenstein, whose filmography includes about twenty-five films, and a good half of them about Mexico, left behind a unique legacy not only in the form of films. These are also textbooks andmanuals for students of cinematography. The director's complete works consist of eleven volumes. From them you can draw the most interesting information about what was the time in which Sergei Eisenstein lived and worked. The autobiography is supplemented with letters, working notes, essays and articles.
World directors about Eisenstein
The famous director Mikhail Romm writes in his memoirs that he learned his profession from Eisenstein's film "Battleship Potemkin". He was a student of directing courses and had the opportunity to work in the editing workshop of Mosfilm. Mikhail Ilyich watched the famous "Battleship Potemkin" forty times, carefully analyzed and studied the mise-en-scenes, soundtrack, characters' dialogues and dismantled the frame editing system.
Alfred Hitchcock considered himself a student and follower of our great director. He did not hide the fact that in his work he used the methods invented by Sergei Mikhailovich. His famous "suspience", that is, dramatic pauses, tension build-up, creation of an atmosphere of anxiety - a consequence of the use of Eisenstein's techniques, such as: naturalistic details and focusing on individual details, various angles, suddenly decreasing or increasing the object, slowing down and accelerating time through rhythmic frame editing, sound effects, blackout and so on..
Family and parents
Sergei Eisenstein, whose personal life as an adult is a mysterywith seven seals, like many of his famous colleagues and teachers, he did not create his own family. He did not have a wife or children. He himself blamed his parents for this, who did not give him the right education in this matter. Sergei Eisenstein, whose photograph is shown below, is captured next to his mother and father at the age of two or three.
After a serious scandal that happened in 1909, the parents' family life turned into a constant series of scandals and violent showdowns. Little Seryozha was forced to listen to his mother and father, who regularly opened his eyes to each other. Mom told Sergei that his father was a thief and a scoundrel, and his father, in turn, reported that his mother was a corrupt woman. In the end, in 1912, when Sergei was 11 years old, his parents divorced and parted. By decision of the Holy Synod, the boy stayed with his father.
Marriage of parents can be considered unequal. Mother, Yulia Ivanovna Konetskaya, came from a we althy family. Her father, a representative of the poor urban class, came to St. Petersburg from Tikhvin. There he took up contract work, saved up a small amount of capital and married the daughter of a we althy merchant. Soon he opened his own business - the Neva Barge Shipping Company.
The father of the future director, Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein, had Swedish-Jewish roots. Having become the husband of Yulia Ivanovna Konetskaya, he moved her to Riga, where their only son Sergei was born.
The appearance of the central part of Riga is largely connected with the activities of Mikhail Eisenstein. Occupyingpost of chief architect of the city, he built more than fifty beautiful buildings in the Art Nouveau style. They still adorn the capital of Latvia. Mikhail Osipovich was distinguished by his great industriousness and good business qualities. He made a successful career, rising to the rank of a real state councilor. And this gave his children the right to hereditary nobility.
Sergei Mikhailovich's talents
From early childhood, his father, Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein, taught his son to read. He gave him an excellent education. Sergei Eisenstein was almost fluent in English, German and French. The boy early learned to ride, play the piano, take pictures. This fashionable hobby did not bypass the smart child, who comprehends various sciences with great interest and is drawn to new discoveries. He was also good at drawing.
Numerous comics and cartoons, sometimes very frivolous content, made by him in adulthood, served as a pretext for organizing extremely interesting exhibitions. The first took place in 1957 in Moscow. In the future, his humorous sketches, cartoons, sketches of costumes and scenery for performances, mise-en-scenes for films, drawings on biblical and literary subjects, as well as paintings made during travels in Europe and America, traveled all over the European continent and both Americas. After all, Sergei Eisenstein made more than 600 drawings for only two films - "Alexander Nevsky" and "Ivan the Terrible"
Sergey Eisenstein's father dreamed of seeing his sonarchitect. For this reason, in 1915, Sergei entered the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineers. By this time, his parents had already separated, and his father lived in Berlin with his new wife.
Teachers
Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich considered his spiritual father the great theater director Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold. He adored and idolized him. It is believed that genius and villainy do not coexist in one person, but Meyerhold repeatedly refuted this statement with his life. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, biography - the topic of our review, writes about his teacher in theater directing as follows: Vsevolod Emilievich had a unique ability to teach without giving his students any useful knowledge. Eisenstein recalls that he saw and comprehended all the director's secrets of Meyerhold as soon as he got to his rehearsal of the play.
Having barely noticed signs of talent in any of the students, Meyerhold, under one pretext or another, immediately got rid of a potential rival. Vsevolod Emilievich usually acted through women. So he did with Eisenstein.
If Meyerhold did not want to share his knowledge with his students, then the director Sergei Eisenstein, on the contrary, devoted his whole life and talent to the creation of the universal laws of cinematography, which he described with complete frankness in his writings on the art of cinema. His "The Art of Mise-en-scène", "Mise-en-Cène", "Edition", "Method" and "Careful Nature" have become handbooks for filmmakers around the world.
Buildingfilm theory
Not becoming an architect, as his father wanted, Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich, nevertheless, left behind an interesting schematic drawing of the house, which he defined as the “Cinema Theory Building”. This plan can be considered universal. Not only is it convenient for shooting movies, it is also ideal for developing plans for the development of cinema in general.
The foundation on which the whole construction rests is the method of dialectics, that is, conversation, interaction, conflict and coordinated cooperation. The next slab is hoisted onto the method - the expressiveness of a person. This definition refers to the ways in which a person expresses his emotions in society.
Above, on the slab of "human expressiveness", there are four columns - pathos, mise-en-frame, mise-en-scène and comic. These columns, more precisely, factors, together, through montage, create the necessary image that affects the sensual thinking of a person. All this together is the philosophy of art, in our case, cinema. Further work on the film involves an in-depth study of sociology and technology. This is absolutely necessary, as the tasks facing the cinema are constantly expanding, technology is being improved, audience coverage is increasing, and quality standards are rising. The design is crowned with a flag with the inscription: "Cinema Method".
Conflict as the driving force of art
The word "conflict" - as the basis on which art rests - is absent from the scheme of the building of cinema theory. However, Sergei Eisenstein was convinced that the conflict wasthe driving force of all processes, both constructive and destructive. His conviction is based on his own childhood experience, when he, a completely unintelligent kid, turned out to be a participant in grandiose scenes and scandals that took place between his parents. Depending on the unfolding mise-en-scene, he, in the absence of other characters, was involved by papa and mama either as a witness to the depravity of the other, or as an arbitrator, sorting out which of them is right and who is to blame, or as the culprit of their unhappy life, or even as performer of small assignments in moments of offended silence of the spouses. He was a ball flying from one of them to the other. Such a life in constant conflict could not but be deposited on the worldview of Sergei Mikhailovich. The conflict has become a natural, one might say, a breeding ground for him.
Analyzing his past, Sergei Eisenstein writes that on his childish conscience there was not a single destructive act characteristic of ordinary children. He did not break toys, did not take apart watches to see what was inside them, did not offend cats and dogs, did not lie and was not capricious. In a word, he was the perfect child. Sergei Eisenstein, the director's autobiography is evidence of this, embodied all the pranks that were not realized in childhood in his films. It was the lack of opportunity to develop naturally and explore life in the way that all normal children do that manifested itself in him in his mature years. Hence the bloody scenes of executions, murders, etc., etc. All these aggressive methodsimpact on the audience, on their psyche, Eisenstein called attractions.
Mystical coincidence or fateful decision?
Sergei Eisenstein, whose biography indicates that he was an absolutely rational person, contains facts of mystical events to which he attached great importance.
As a sophomore at the Institute of Civil Engineers, he was drawn into the maelstrom of the revolutionary movement. In February 1918, Eisenstein volunteered for the Red Army and went to the front. For two years he was engaged in military construction, participated in amateur performances as an actor and director, and painted train cars with propaganda slogans.
In 1920, a government decree was issued, allowing students to return to universities and resume the educational process. By this time, Sergei Mikhailovich felt a taste for theatrical life and was not eager to take up architecture and construction again, as his parents demanded. He was offered to continue his studies at the General Staff Academy, with the goal of becoming a Japanese translator in the future. The offer was so tempting that Eisenstein hesitated. By this time, the capital had been moved from Petrograd to Moscow, where life was rapidly developing - and theatrical, in particular. On the fateful night, when he finally decided to break with architecture, at the same time as the beginning of his new life, a sudden heart attack stopped the life of his father, Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein.
From that moment, a successful andthe meteoric career of world-famous filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein.
Thank you Peter Greenaway
In 2015, Peter Greenaway's film "Eisenstein in Guanajuato" was released. This picture caused an ambiguous attitude of Russian distributors, but Greenaway claims that the fact that not a single film about a wonderful director has been made so far is a big omission. People should find out what kind of person the great Sergei Eisenstein was. The biography, personal life of the director and his work in cinema require study and research. He does not at all pursue the goal of discrediting the genius. On the contrary, he wants to show how the worldview of a talented person has changed after traveling through countries not shackled by a totalitarian regime. After all, it is no secret to anyone that after a three-year study of the life and customs of the inhabitants of Europe, the USA and Latin America, Sergei Mikhailovich radically changed his view of the goals and objectives of Soviet cinema. Greenway plans to include a second film about our outstanding compatriot, Eisenstein's Handshake. This time, Greenaway wants to show the life of the great director before his trip outside the USSR.
Restructuring the worldview
Eisenstein at the very beginning of his big tour somewhere in Europe bought Fraser's ten-volume "Golden Bough". It was from this book that he gathered information about world religions from ancient times to the present. The idea of a deity, like a cereal, dying and resurrecting, evoked in him the idea of the cyclical nature of everything in the material world.
Ten days in Mexico opened a newa look at social relations in general and cinematography in particular. He saw that in a relatively small area, almost all historical social structures can peacefully coexist - primitive communal, feudal, capitalist and even socialist.
I would like to note that in Mexico so far, for more than 70 years, Eisenstein is considered the number one director. This is not surprising, because he shot scenes there on 80,000 meters of film. These are the customs of local residents, their way of life, national traditions, the beauty of the landscape, natural disasters and a lot of interesting details and information from the life of Latin Americans.
Due to copyright issues, we are unable to see all of this material, which is a pity. In the USA, based on Eisenstein's materials, the Paramount company edited several films that received tremendous success. Details about the sad epic with films can be found in the Soviet Screen magazine for 1974, by R. Yurenev.
After returning home, Sergei Mikhailovich, together with the screenwriter (and in the recent past, the security officer) Alexander Rzheshevsky set to work on the next film. This time about collectivization - "Bezhin meadow". They took as a basis the story of Pavlik Morozov, who, according to the version invented by Eisenstein himself, dies at the hands of his own father. In the first version, the peasants destroy the church in order to arrange a club in it. In the second, the peasants are trying to save the church from the fire. The film was banned for ideological reasons, and the film was washed away. Only a few pictures leftwith stills from the film. They amaze with the power of psychological impact on the viewer.
The director's fate hung in the balance. He miraculously escaped arrest, was suspended from teaching at VGIK, but somehow justified himself and got the opportunity to work further, now on the patriotic film Alexander Nevsky.
"I lived, I thought, I was fond of," - such an epitaph young Sergey Mikhailovich wanted to see on his tombstone.
At the end of his life, after a heart attack that happened in 1946, Eisenstein, after analyzing his fate, wrote that it seems that he was always looking for only one thing - a way to unite and reconcile the conflicting parties. Those opposites that drive all processes in the world. A trip to Mexico showed him that unification is impossible, however - Sergei Mikhailovich clearly saw this - it is quite possible to teach them peaceful coexistence.
