The Cinema of Eisenstein

By David Bordwell and Bordwell Bordwell

Book Overview

The Cinema of Eisenstein is David Bordwell's comprehensive analysis of the films of Sergei Eisenstein, arguably the key figure in the entire history of film. The director of such classics as Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible, October, Strike, and Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein theorized montage, presented Soviet realism to the world, and mastered the concept of film epic. Comprehensive, authoritative, and illustrated throughout, this classic work deserves to be on the shelf of every serious student of cinema.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415973651
• ISBN13: 9780415973656
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.2" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

A Film Freak's Guide to the Great Eisenstein

David Bordwell, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, has produced as complete and insightful a guide to the cinemagraphic artistry of Sergei Eisenstein as any film lover could hope for. In addition to covering the director's life and "rehabilitation" to rightful prominence years after his death, Dr. Bordwell spends measured time dissecting and describing Eisenstein's theories of montage and "Social Realist" cinema in a most understandable and fluent way. For anyone who has marveled at the dramatic power of the "Odessa Steps" sequence in "The Battleship Potempkin" or the heroic sweep of "Alexander Nevsky," this book will take you behind the scenes and reveal how these masterworks were made, and why. Very readable, and filled with hundreds of illustrations from films both completed and unmade, "The Cinema of Eisenstein" will satisfy the serious movie-goer and the student of Soviet cultural history. A compendious bibliography and suggested reading list is included. Comrades, get this book!