EISENSTEIESSAYS IN FILM THEORY N FILM FORM ALSO BY SERGEI EISENSTEIN: The Film Sense SERGEI EISENSTEIN Film Form ESSAYS IN FILM THEORY, edited and translated by JAY LEYDA A HarvestlHB/ Book Harcourt Brace /ovanovich N ew York and London I] ISBN 0-15-630920-3 Copyright 1949 by Harcourt, Brace & Horld, Inc. Copyrif{ht reneu'ed 1977 by lay Leyda A II rights reser'7.Jed. iVO part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrif'val system, u,ithout permission in 'u:riting from the publisher. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS Introduction vii THROL'GH THEATER TO CINEMA 3 THE UNEXPECTED 18 THE CINEMATOGRAPHIC PRINCIPLE AND THE IDEOGRAM 28 A DIALECTIC APPROACH TO FILM FORM 45 THE FILMIC FOURTH DIMENSION 64 METHODS OF MONTAGE 72 A COURSE IN TREATMENT 84 FILM LANGUAGE 108 FILM FORM: NE"\V PROBLEMS I 22 THE STRUcrURE OF THE FILM 150 ACHIEVEMENT 179 DICKENS, GRIFFITH, AND THE FILM TODAY 195 Appendix A. A Statement on the Sound-Film by Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov 257 Appendix B. Notes from a Director's Laboratory 261 Notes on Texts lind Trtmslations 266 Sources 268 Index 273 INTRODUCTION THE COMPILATION of this book of essays was one of its author's last tasks. Though too weak in his last two years of life to resume film work, Eisenstein was too strong to relax his theoretical activity. His fatal attack, on the night of Feb­ ruary 10, 1948, interrupted him at work; when he was found the next morning, before him were his last words-an un­ finished essay on color, its use in the unfinished Ivan the Terrible. It is precisely because he was so far from being finished, as film-maker or theoretician, that we feel his loss so deeply. A great artist leaves his work behind him, but a contempla­ tion of Eisenstein's completed work does little to ease the shock of his death, for all these films pointed to further work in which his heroic and tireless expansion of the film medium would push beyond all the limits that lesser artists have set around it. Each step forward by Eisenstein promised a hun­ dred following unexpected steps, and death at the age of forty-nine leaves many steps untaken. As a great teacher he left an even richer heritage: from his students and the large body of his theory we can expect further fruit, even beyond our generation. It was said of Bach, "Only he who knows much can teach much," and we can be eternally grateful that Eisenstein's immense knowl­ edge was poured not only into six finished films but also, directly and indirectly, into an incalculable number of pupils. A steady source for his imagination, as artist and as teacher, lay in his consciousness of the artist's real influence in society, an influence to be fully realized only within an equally power­ ful sense of responsibility to society. This dual pull deter­ mined his every decision: in esthetics, for example, it made vii vw INTRODUCTION him impatient with every lean towards surface naturalism­ for he could see the unwillingness, the laziness, ignorance and often opportunism behind such an evasion of the difficult but central problem. The film artist's job was to learn his prin­ ciples from a profound investigation of all arts and all levels of life, to measure these principles against an unfaltering un­ derstanding of himself, and if he then did anything less than create-with bold, living works that moved their audiences to excitement and understanding-he was neither good artist nor positive member of society. In film, with all its easy satis­ factions, there was more temptation to skirt this primary issue than in any other art, but once Eisenstein chose cinema as the supremely expressive medium, he undertook to wage upon it, as upon a battlefield, a perpetual war against the evils of dishonesty, satisfaction, superficiality. He fought with the arrogance of an assured artist-he knew how much we all needed him, whether we admitted it or not. His aim was a poetry possible only to films, a realism heightened by all the means in the film-artist's power. Though both he and the surrealists would have denied his relation to the term, this was sur-realism-but the dynamic aim and accomplishment of Sergei Eisenstein need no category or label. To challenge laziness and naturalism puts the challenger at a disadvantage: it attaches "anti-natural" labels to the chal­ lenger's principles and practice, and forces him to prove, in works, that they can be affective beyond those works whose "simplicity" is essentially negative. The affective test was passed by each of Eisenstein's films; the principles were stub­ bornly enunciated in writing that in sheer quantity outdoes the public thinking of any film-maker. He admitted to being neither a smooth nor a talented writer, and was dependent on the energy of his ideas and the clarity of their expression; he employed circumstantial as well as poetic proof-and he drew on the world for his illustrations. His "right way," swerving sharply from standard thinking, or rather, standard non-think­ ing about films, forced his theoretical writing to combine polemic, rhetoric, self-defense, essay, gallery tour, analysis, INTRODUCTION 1X lecture, sermon, criminal investigation, chalk-talk-and to be as valid for the local, immediate problem, as for the general, lasting issue. A many-sided, never-ending education stocked his armory of illustration: criticized for distortion, he would point to the "purposeful distortion" employed by a Sharaku or a Flaubert; accused of "unlifelike theories" he would hold up precedents from the fields of philology and psychology; accusations of "leftism" and "modernism" brought out de­ fenses by Milton, Pushkin, EI Greco that not only solidified his argument, but gave it a fresh dimension, and stimulated the reader to investigate these neglected riches. His first readers were always, as were his first audiences, his fellow film-makers and his students, furnishing, even in their maintenance of opposite views, a body of encourage­ ment and stimulation that would be hard to equal outside that electric Moscow-Leningrad-Kiev circuit of film-enthusi­ asts. His foreign readers have been variously handicapped, by an unavoidable remoteness from this stimulating atmosphere and by a remoteness from the issues under discussion there, that motivated a great deal of Eisenstein's combative writing; but the greatest handicap for his readers (and professionally interested spectators) abroad was the distortion, by misuse, imitation, and misinterpretation, of his basic terms and con­ cepts. To read, for example, about "montage" through the dis­ torting haze of superficiality with which this term has been brought into our studios, has not aided an understanding of Eisenstein's theo�etical writing. In recent years, however, gen­ eral information on Eisenstein's theories has tended to escape these earlier prejudices and apings, and it seems that his films and writings alike will be now examined with more profit in this country than during his lifetime. It is hoped that this sec­ ond volume of his writing to appear in English • will contrib­ ute to this profit and comprehension. Of his hundreds of essays, this group was selected to show certain key-points in the development of his film theory and, . • The. �ilm. Sense, his first book, originally appeared in 1942; the re­ vised editlon m 1947. x INTRODUCTION in particular, of his analysis of the sound-film medium. De­ spite the existence of Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, the study of Eisenstein's theories usually finds its illustrations in his "silent" films. This almost makes more poignant the revelation in these essays of his long planning and contempla­ tion of sound as an essential element in his vision of the total film, and he was fully aware of the apparent strangeness that he "should resemble the last to arrive at the wedding." Yet the still restless couple-sight and sound-has lost its most hope­ ful conciliator and advisor in Eisenstein's death, for no sound­ film program has achieved either the solidity of his "State­ ment" of 19 28 and his "Achievement" of 1939 or the adven­ ture of his plans for An American Tragedy (discussed in "A Course in Treatment"). The sure simplicity of audio-visual experiment in N evsky and the grand experiment in heroic style of Ivtm the Terrible, Part I have not yet been properly gauged for their instructional virtues, and the rich fund of discussion of the sound-film in these essays must be added to the sum of his completed films to gain a rounded view on his intellectually mature grasp of the film medium. Some of these essays have been previously available, some­ times in inadequate English renderings; the relation of the present texts to these earlier translations is indicated at the end of the volume. Generous assistance on all levels has been given this book by Esther and Harold Leonard, by Jane and Gordon Wil­ liams, by Sergei Bertensson, Richard Collins, Robert Payne, and other friends. John Winge made the new translation from Eisenstein's German manuscript (lent by the Museum of Modem Art Film Library) of "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form," and the frames chosen by Eisenstein for its illus­ tration were prepared for reproduction here by Irving Lerner. I am particularly grateful to the Hon. Ivor Montagu whose long association with the personality and ideas of the author produced translations so conscientious and scrupulous that a minimum of adjustment has been necessary in adding them to this collection.