Sergei Eisenstein

Überblick

Geboren am
22. Januar 1898 · Riga, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire [now Latvia]
Verstorben
11. Februar 1948 · Moskau, Russische SFSR, UdSSR [heute Russland] (Herzattacke)
Geburtsname
Sergei Mikhailovich Eizenshtein
Größe
1,70 m

Biografie

Familie

Ehepartner

Markenzeichen

[Montage] Considered the father of the cinematic montage, he often used heavily edited sequences for emotional impact and historical propaganda (his most famous being the Odessa Steps sequence in Panzerkreuzer Potemkin (1925) [Battleship Potemkin]).
Collectivization: Often used a collective instead of the main character
Often uses non-professional actors
Close-ups of faces
Uncompromising violence

Wissenswertes

Spoke fluent Japanese, and used the haiku as a model for his theories on montage.
He was one of the founders of the world's oldest film school, VGIK in Moscow (opened 1 September 1919), and along with Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Mikhail Romm, Eduard Tisse and Anatoli Golovnya, worked out the basic methods of professional training, which produced such well-known giants as Sergei Parajanov, and Andrei Tarkovsky, and the more obscure masters Mikhail Vartanov and Artavazd Peleshian.
Visited Germany and met with Fritz Lang during the filming of Metropolis (1927), on the Irrgarten der Leidenschaft (1925) set. (1926).
He once praised Walt Disney's Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge (1937) as the single greatest film ever made.
Arrived in the United States in 1929, accompanied by Grigoriy Aleksandrov and Eduard Tisse. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford had praised Eisenstein during a 1926 trip to Moscow, and after visiting Hollywood, he was given a contract by Paramount "to direct several films at the convenience of the contractee." His proposed projects, film adaptations of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds", Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" and "Gold" (a.k.a. "Sutter's Gold"), were rejected as being too socially conscious and not commercial enough to justify their length and expense. Paramount canceled the contract, and then on November 18, 1930, the State Department announced it was deporting Eisenstein and his companions because they were Communists.

Zitate

The hieroglyphic language of the cinema is capable of expressing any concept, any idea of class, any political or tactical slogan, without recourse to the help of a rather suspect dramatic or psychological past.