OT: Born this day - Eisenstein
Thornhill
OBITUARY
Sergei Eisenstein Is Dead In Moscow
Famous Russian Film Director Devised New Techniques--'Potemkin' One of His
Hits
By REUTERS
The New York Times Photo Archives
Sergey Eisenstein
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MOSCOW, Feb. 11 -- Sergei Eisenstein, famous Russian film director and
producer, died last night.
Developed Fusion of Arts
Sergei M. Eisenstein had been widely acclaimed as one of the world's
foremost movie directors. He was responsible for such outstanding examples
of the cinema art as "Potemkin" and "Alexander Nevsky," and he was said to
have successfully brought about in the motion picture a true fusion of all
the arts.
That many of his pictures were patently propaganda works was true, but to
students of the movie art this appeared not so much to matter as the fact
that he developed new techniques, devised camera approaches and sought
always to bring out the potential of a still developing form. That he
forgot--or overlooked--to bring the Marxist message to one of his films two
years ago brought him that fatal kiss of all--the accusation from the
authoritative Soviet magazine, Culture and Life, that his productions had
been short on the prescribed Soviet requirement of art and interpretation of
history.
One of his most striking contributions was the development of the montage
and a new method of cutting and mounting film after "shooting" was over to
produce a rapid panoramic progression of images that forcefully projected
some idea. "A work of art understood dynamically is just the process of
arranging images and feelings in the mind of the spectator," he wrote.
He once tried Hollywood. The visit was not a success and ended without his
ever having been assigned a single picture. He did, however, go to Mexico,
where he collaborated in the writing and directing of "Thunder Over Mexico,"
which was released here in a heavily edited version.
Other pictures which had wide showing here were "Ten Days That Shook the
World," "General Line" and "The Silver Lining."
Work on "Ivan the Terrible"
It was the second part of a trilogy on "Ivan the Terrible" that halted the
director in mid-work in 1946. Having failed to portray what an official
paper called "contemporary realism" the film expert coincidentally developed
a heart attack.
A few months later he was reported to have regretted that he had "permitted
a distortion of historical facts, which made our film bad and ideologically
defective." Apart from what forces were brought upon him at home he remained
to professional and lay filmgoers here a man of great intellectual vigor and
unremitting faith in films as an art form.
He was born in 1898, was trained as a civil engineer and architect. During
the revolution he built trenches for the Bolsheviki. He was only 26 when he
directed "Potemkin," which has been hailed as his greatest picture. It
described the revolt of the sailors on the armored ship Potemkin during the
abortive revolt of 1905.
The first part of "Ivan the Terrible" was exhibited in New York a year ago.
Bosley Crowther, writing in The New York Times, called it the product of one
of the really great artist in the (film) medium and praised it as a story of
"awesome and monumental impressiveness in which the senses are saturated
with medieval majesty."
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0123.html
Boaz
January 22 was D. W. Griffith's birthday.
January 20 marked the birthdays of both David Lynch and Federico
Fellini.
I guess late January is a good month for most great directors (with
late July being the exception).
Boaz
cthor...@worldnet.att.net (Thornhill) wrote in message news:<ded391d8.03012...@posting.google.com>...