Sergei Eisenstein, Russian Film Director <Archive>

[DGH]

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It was reported from Moscow, Russia, that Sergei Eisenstein, the
famous Russian film director and producer, died last night, February
10, 1948.

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."