Sergei Eisenstein
A Life in Conflict
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Now back in print, this acclaimed biography reassesses a titan of early cinema based on new material released after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict tells the dramatic story of one of world cinema’s towering geniuses and principal theorists. Ronald Bergan details Eisenstein’s life from his precocious childhood to his explosion onto the avant-garde scene in revolutionary Russia, through his groundbreaking film career, his relationships with authors and artists such as James Joyce and Walt Disney, and his untimely death at age fifty. Eisenstein’s landmark films, including The Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible, are still watched, admired, and taught throughout the world.
Drawing upon material recently released from the Soviet archives after the breakup of the USSR and from Eisenstein’s personal letters, diaries, and sketches, Bergan shines a new light on the influence of Eisenstein’s early life on his work, his homosexuality, and his keen interest in the West. This book is the definitive biography of an influential director who saw film as the synthesis of all the arts and whose work displayed a passionate and profound grasp of art, science, philosophy, and religion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A colleague of the great Soviet director once remarked, "I am absolutely convinced that Eisenstein was a Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century." This biography argues for the validity of that claim. Drawing on the many documents that have become available to researchers since the end of the Cold War, Bergan's study ranks as a clear improvement over the last Einsenstein biography published in English, a translation from the Russian that appeared 25 years ago. For instance, Bergan demonstrates, as Eisenstein's previous biographer, Marie Seton, did not, that the director's celebrated development of montage was rooted in a long study of the visual arts, providing him with a mental backlog of images to realize on screen. Quoting heavily from Eisenstein's posthumously published memoirs, Bergan reveals that somewhere between the meticulously organized work of the former engineering student and the inchoate gay sexuality and occasional childishness of the private man lay a sensibility at once polymathic and in touch with the most elemental human emotions. The biographer also examines Eisenstein's abortive sojourns in Hollywood and Mexico with an incisiveness missing from Ivor Montagu's first-hand account of the period. Finally, Bergan presents the most detailed picture yet of Eisenstein's love-hate relationship with the Stalin regime, whose combination of meticulousness, philistinism and cruelty echoed the circumstances of the director's upbringing. Despite Bergan's effort to portray Eisenstein as a human being as well as an artistic icon, something about the director still remains distant and impersonal when the book is finished. But this portrait goes further toward resolving the riddles of Eisenstein's career than its predecessors, and will reward the attention of anyone interested in either film or Soviet history. Photos.
