FILM ESSAYS and a Lecture by Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Eisenstein in 1934
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FILM ESSAYS and a Lecture by Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Eisenstein in 1934. Photograph by Jay Leyda FILM ESSAYS AND A LECTURE by SERGEI EISENSTEIN edited by JAY LEYDA Foreword by Grigori Kozintsev Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey English translation © 1968 by Dobson Books, Ltd.; © 1970 by Praeger Publishers, Inc. Preface and English translation of "The Prometheus of Mexican Painting" copyright © 1982 Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey All Rights Reserved LCC: 81-47283 ISBN: 0-691-03970-4 ISBN: 0-691-00334-3 pbk. THIS COLLECTION OF TRANSLATIONS Is DEDICATED TO PERA ATASHEVA First Princeton Paperback printing, 1982 Dobson Books edition, 1968; Praeger Publishers, Inc. edition, 1970 Published by arrangement with Praeger Publishers, Inc. Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey CONTENTS Preface 1 Foreword 7 A Personal Statement 13 The Method of Making Workers' Films 17 Soviet Cinema 20 The New Language of Cinema 32 Perspectives 35 The Dynamic Square 48 GTK-GIK-VGIK; Past—Present—Future 66 Lessons from Literature 77 The Embodiment of a Myth 84 More Thoughts on Structure 92 Charlie the Kid 108 Mr Lincoln by Mr Ford 139 A Close-Up View 150 Problems of Composition 155 Sources and Notes 184 Appendices A. The Published Writings (1922-1982) of Sergei Eisenstein with notes on their English translations 188 B. The Prometheus of Mexican Painting 222 Index 233 PREFACE Before I left Moscow in 1936 Eisenstein prepared a list of the publications in journals and newspapers that he would like drawn upon if some miracle made it possible to publish a collection of his essays in the United States. His first book did not appear here until 1942; that miracle was made by a war, a cable from him, and a publisher who admired his films. The four connected essays that made up The Film Sense had ap peared in print after his compilation of the selected list, but it was to that list I turned when both author and publisher urged a second and third collection. Between these two volumes several events affected this plan: Eisenstein died early in 1948 before the publication of Film Form, then a Cold War turned a Soviet author into such a publishing risk that I turned over the contents of the third volume to a London publisher. In the meantime, a Soviet volume of Eisenstein's writings appeared in Russian, English, and French, and I enlarged the third vol ume to include writings that had not been officially approved in the posthumous estimation of Eisenstein as a Soviet film maker. Film Essays is the third and last of my collections of Ei- senstein translations. Last, because when it was first prepared (in 1964, four years before it was published in England and, later, in the United States), I was hopeful that an English translation would soon appear of the immense Soviet project then beginning to publish all of Eisenstein's writings, including the several texts that he had prepared in 1947 for eventual publication, found in his archive by his widow, Pera Atasheva. Now that we have reached 1981 I am still hopeful, though the writings are far from fully available, either in Russian or English. The six volumes that Atasheva planned in 1964 ap peared in due course and continued to appear after her death in 1965. The Eisenstein Committee headed by Sergei Yutke- vich supervised the last volumes and proposed six more vol umes for publication; close examination of the archive contin ues to disclose texts and documents of obvious value. At the time of his death, his reputation there was at its lowest (the repairs on the shelved Ivan II had not been completed, FILM ESSAYS and all that had been filmed and edited of Ivan III was de stroyed). The remaining years of his widow's life were devoted to re-establishing a recognition of his place in Soviet history. The first six volumes of his writings occupied the chief place in her rehabilitation program. Their contents are indicated in the extended ' 'Published Writings,'' an appendix to this edition of Film Essays. Two large texts were only partially represented in the Selected Works, to make the fact of their existence known. I was glad to see that most of the troublesome essays, hastily included in this third volume of translations, also made their way into the increasingly liberal contents of the first six vol umes.* After the sixth volume appeared in 1971, six more volumes (without exhausting the archive!) were contracted for publi cation, but there has been a delay in their approval. Awaiting paper and print are the full texts sampled in the first set; a volume on ''Method" that was written alongside his large work "On Direction"; a volume of unrealized films and projects to exceed (in quantity) the realized scripts of Volume VI; a journal of theater ideas kept during the civil war tour of the "Front- Line Theater"; a collection of his correspondence; and the full text of his memoirs to replace the incomplete text hastily pre pared as the opening Volume I of the Selected Works. Before this second set of six volumes appears, the writings of other artists of the first generation of Soviet filmmakers must become available. The works of Dovzhenko and Pudovkin have already been added to Eisenstein's, and the volumes of Kozintsev are ready for the printer; the writings of Romm and Kuleshov are in preparation. * The "personal statement" written in 1926 for a Berlin newspaper was not among the autobiographies gathered as an introduction to Volume I, though it can be found in an appendix to that volume (after Eisenstein's death, lists of his published writings gently omitted works that he published in a foreign language). Still missing: the generalized essay written for Joseph Freeman's Voices of October. "A Close-Up View" closed Iskusstvo Kino to further contributions from him during his lifetime (but it was reprinted in Volume V). I did not expect "Perspectives" to appear in the Selected Works, as it had caused the death of the journal where it first appeared: I was wrong—it can be found in Volume II, leading the theoretical writings. I hope this key essay will some day attract the attention of a translator more able to cope with its difficulties. PREFACE Since 1971, while awaiting an official signal for the next volumes, the Eisenstein Committee has wisely published some of the most basic texts in other formats (periodicals, annuals, etc.). We now have in print Eisenstein's notes for Capital and The Glass House, as well as the whole scenario of the 1932 project for a satirical comedy, MMM. (See "Published Writ ings.") Of the films prepared by Eisenstein outside the Soviet Union we have the two Hollywood scripts, Sutter's Gold and An American Tragedy, written in collaboration with Grigori Al- exandrov and Ivor Montagu, published in Montagu's With Eisenstein in Hollywood (1969). (His Hollywood proposal of The Glass House is incorporated into the notes published in 1979.) Most of the correspondence and documents relating to the unrealized Mexican film is published in The Making and Unmaking of Que Viva Mexico! (1970). When foreign admirers of Eisenstein's films and principles heard of the Soviet publication project, they felt certain that translations would soon be in their hands. The speed and care with which most of the new materials appeared in French and German were envied by readers and students in the United Kingdom and America who are still waiting for an Anglo- American edition. Instead, we hear of conflicting texts and variant translations in circulation through publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. For those who wish to trace Eisenstein's theoretical aims from their beginnings to his end, the wait will be longer. That is, if they feel dependent on new English translations. One may not freely publish translations of newly available Russian texts without negotiating recent copyright laws. A suggestion: You can prepare yourself for the large new texts by reading older English translations of the great amount that Eisenstein published in his lifetime, including pieces taken from books in progress. For example, the two important essays on structure (Nos. 187 and 200 in "Published Writings") were extracted by their author from his unfinished work, Nature Is Not Indifferent (now in Volume III). With the exception of the incomplete Montage, English translations of most of the ma terials in Volume II can be traced through "Published Writ ings." FILM ESSAYS The memoirs of Volume I present particular problems—and rewards. I've explained the haste with which Atasheva rushed it into print. There was also haste—not Atasheva's—in re moving sections too "offensive" in 1964 for a Soviet auto biography. In composing his memoirs (at first intended as a "comic autobiography" to while away hospital hours) Eisen- stein did not worry about his future editors. There was no attempt at a continuing chronology; he preferred Joycean clus ters of associations, often touching several decades within a page. Rude memories (of his parents, among others) are mixed with light-hearted and more publishable ones. The great whom he respected find themselves among the great whom he rec ognized as arrogant or empty. That, to paraphrase a remark in his essay on Orozco, is not the way to write "acceptable" memoirs. Moreover, he was fully aware that he would not be present to offer apologies when these clusters would see print. This removed the main inhibitions. It is not surprising that Anglo-American publishers are being offered two texts of Volume I—the earlier "official" one, and the new fuller life; this contradiction, too, may delay a published English trans lation.