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Kinesthetic Empathy in Sergei Eisenstein’s Film Theory

Ana Hedberg Olenina

in Psychomotor Aesthetics: Movement and Affect in Modern Literature and Film

Chapter 4 explores Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of the audience’s corporeal empathy, evoked by actors’ movements and graphical, nonhuman “gestures”—that is, “movements” implied by the structure of the ... More

Chapter 4 explores Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of the audience’s corporeal empathy, evoked by actors’ movements and graphical, nonhuman “gestures”—that is, “movements” implied by the structure of the shot composition, editing, and other formal devices. In scrutinizing Eisenstein’s theory that spectatorship is, fundamentally, an enactive experience, this chapter traces the roots of his ideas and evaluates the aesthetic and political implications of his position. First, I analyze the filmmaker’s engagement with psychological theories of William James, William Carpenter, Vladimir Bekhterev, Alexander Luria, and Lev Vygotsky, as well as the 19th-century German theorists of empathy (Einfühlung). Special attention is devoted to one of Eisenstein’s major sources: Vladimir Bekhterev’s Collective Reflexology (1921), a seminal work of early Soviet psychology, which discussed nonverbal communication in crowds and argued that the processing of visual sensations by the brain instantaneously impacts motor networks. I argue that although Eisenstein’s model of spectatorship appears manipulative, it is also potentially emancipatory. Embracing the utopian spirit of the avant-garde, he was willing to subject himself and his audience to radical experimentation aimed at testing the sensory properties of cinema and demystifying the mass production of emotions.Less

Introduction

in In Excess: Sergei Eisenstein's Mexico

This chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished film ¡Que Viva Mexico!. Though Eisenstein never lived to see any of his footage and never edited a single ... More

This chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished film ¡Que Viva Mexico!. Though Eisenstein never lived to see any of his footage and never edited a single sequence from it, this film became the most famous of the many projects that Eisenstein never fully realized. This volume is conceived as an investigation into the way Eisenstein's texts, the body of the unfinished film with all the materials surrounding it including scripts, notes and letters. It also argues that Eisenstein's modernist/avant-garde theories and practices embody the same qualities and partake of the same cultures, despite the difference in their respective receptions.Less

Radical Cinema

Lara Feigel

in Literature, Cinema and Politics 1930-1945: Reading Between the Frames

This chapter describes some of the cinematic techniques or aspects of the filmic medium itself that are seen as crucial to the 1930s cinematic text. It then moves freely between silent and sound ... More

This chapter describes some of the cinematic techniques or aspects of the filmic medium itself that are seen as crucial to the 1930s cinematic text. It then moves freely between silent and sound cinema, ranging from the 1920s to the 1940s. Sergei Eisenstein used montage to illustrate the disparity between the wealth and privileges of Russia's rulers and the poverty of ordinary men. Bertolt Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt is characteristic of 1920s radical cinematic montage. In Charles Chaplin's films from the 1920s and 1930s, it is the constant movements of Chaplin's body that animate the film. Like Chaplin, Dziga Vertov uses the mechanisation of cinema to emphasise the mechanisation of the modern city. The film medium emphasises its own indexicality most overtly when it engages specifically with photography. The films that bore the index of their subjects also bore the traces of the cameraman.Less

Moving Pictures and Moving People: The Aesthetics of ‘Mass Success’

Juliet John

in Dickens and Mass Culture

This chapter examines the role of Dickens's aesthetics works in enabling Dickens to become the author most adapted for the screen. It is an exploration, through Dickens's relationship with film, of ... More

This chapter examines the role of Dickens's aesthetics works in enabling Dickens to become the author most adapted for the screen. It is an exploration, through Dickens's relationship with film, of the ideology of the aesthetic in relation to the mass market, a topic famously addressed by Sergei Eisenstein in his essay ‘Dickens, Griffith and Ourselves’. The chapter argues that the ‘structures of feeling’ in Dickens's art enabled it to function as a bridge between the most popular form of entertainment in his own day (stage melodrama) and the most popular form of entertainment in the age that followed (the screen). While Dickens's influence on film and the influence of nineteenth‐century stage melodrama on Dickens is well known, this chapter maintains that it is the ability of Dickens's novels to ‘sit astride’ melodramatic and realist aesthetics that is the key to their capacity to function as a bridge between stage melodrama and the new medium of the cinema. The history of Dickens on screen makes clear that aesthetic forms, especially when transported across historical periods and cultures, do not carry with them unchanging or consistent ideological baggage.Less

The “Epilogue”

in In Excess: Sergei Eisenstein's Mexico

This chapter analyzes the baroque aesthetic in relation to Sergei Eisenstein's film ¡Que Viva Mexico!. It focuses on the allegory of the skull during the Day of the Dead as central to the narrative ... More

This chapter analyzes the baroque aesthetic in relation to Sergei Eisenstein's film ¡Que Viva Mexico!. It focuses on the allegory of the skull during the Day of the Dead as central to the narrative structure of the film. It compares Eisenstein's project with Walter Benjamin's work on the use of baroque allegory as a means to a radically dialectical construction of history.Less

Repetition

Kevin M. F. Platt

in Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths

This chapter analyzes representations of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great in the cultural life of the 1930s and 1940s. It turns first to the case of Aleksei N. Tolstoi and his many works on ... More

This chapter analyzes representations of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great in the cultural life of the 1930s and 1940s. It turns first to the case of Aleksei N. Tolstoi and his many works on Peter the Great. This body of work exemplifies the extent to which even of some of the most orthodox contributions to Stalinist historical mythmaking depended on sensitivity to the ironic undertow of history's own history of use and reuse. It then examines Sergei Eisenstein's second film in his uncompleted trilogy of works on Ivan the Terrible. It reads this film not as an exercise in “Aesopean” critique via historical allegory, as it is most commonly seen, but rather as a stunning achievement in metahistorical analysis. It argues that Eisenstein's film should ultimately be seen not as a willful “send up” of Stalin in the guise of Ivan but as a higher order of subversion—a meditation on and critique of Stalinist historical practices as such.Less

The Eisenstein Effect: Architecture and Narrative Montage in Sergei Eisenstein and Le Corbusier

Anthony Vidler

in The Moving Eye: Film, Television, Architecture, Visual Art and the Modern

This chapter analyzes the confluence in thinking about cinematic and architectural montage in the work of the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. It describes ... More

This chapter analyzes the confluence in thinking about cinematic and architectural montage in the work of the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. It describes their encounter in Moscow in 1928 and their shared admiration for the French architectural historian Auguste Choisy, whose description of spatial passage through the Athenian Acropolis is a key point of reference in the accounts the filmmaker and the architect develop of the role of narrative, movement, and editing in the apprehension of space. Although Le Corbusier’s promenade architecturale is the manipulation of a body moving through actual space according to precise calculations of a visual sequence, the cinematic version, as staged by Corbusier and Chenal, faced the viewer with a surrogate or avatar body moving through space, but never presented the viewer with the scenes viewed by this body: an invisible, one might say ineffable merging of architecture with the image of an invisible architecture as a projection of a static viewer. Architecture in this sense achieves the status desired of the modernist machine universe, but in the process has been reduced to two dimensions, without perspective. Eisenstein, for his part, was in this sense able to “build” an architecture in film—not the imperfect static forms that one had to walk through or work hard to imagine their ecstatic movement, but through the moving image itself understood as the highest technological achievement of modernism, thus achieving the (ecstatic) dissolution, in image, of modernist architecture.Less

Theses on Cinema as Philosophy

Paisley Livingston

in Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy

This chapter criticizes what the chapter calls the ‘bold thesis’, which is the conjunction of the idea that films can make an original contribution to philosophy, and the idea that this contribution ... More

This chapter criticizes what the chapter calls the ‘bold thesis’, which is the conjunction of the idea that films can make an original contribution to philosophy, and the idea that this contribution can be achieved primarily or even entirely through means exclusive to the cinematic medium. A dilemma argument against this thesis is set forth: either support for the bold thesis depends on a claim about a cinematic contribution that cannot be paraphrased and so can be reasonably doubted, or it rests on a contribution that can be paraphrased, in which case the clause about medium specificity is betrayed. As an alternative to the bold thesis, the chapter advocates a moderate thesis whereby a film-related contribution to philosophy can be of value even when the philosophical content is neither original nor conveyed primarily by means exclusive to the cinematic medium. This chapter discusses Aaron Smuts' proposed solution to the problem of paraphrase, which makes reference to an argument advanced by Sergei Eisenstein in the ‘For God and Country’ sequence of October.Less

Dreiser, Eisenstein and Upton Sinclair

in Cinematic Fictions: The Impact of the Cinema on the American Novel up to World War II

This chapter begins with a discussion of Theodore Dreiser's interest in cinema, and then considers Sergei Eisenstein's film adaptation of An American Tragedy, which was praised by Dreiser but ... More

This chapter begins with a discussion of Theodore Dreiser's interest in cinema, and then considers Sergei Eisenstein's film adaptation of An American Tragedy, which was praised by Dreiser but rejected by Paramount. It also describes Eisenstein's project with Upton Sinclair to make the film Que Viva Mexico!, which resulted in a shorter film released under the title Thunder Over Mexico in 1933.Less

“The Greatest Picture Ever Made”

Harlow Robinson

in Lewis Milestone: Life and Films

The subject of this chapter is the Oscar-winning film All Quiet on the Western Front. After discussion of why the Laemmle family’s Universal Studios wanted to make film of Erich Maria Remarque’s ... More

The subject of this chapter is the Oscar-winning film All Quiet on the Western Front. After discussion of why the Laemmle family’s Universal Studios wanted to make film of Erich Maria Remarque’s celebrated novel, the chapter considers the screenplay adaptation, casting of Lew Ayres in leading role, the revolutionary sound design, influence of Sergei Eisenstein’s montage technique, reception and political reaction to the film in the United States, and changing attitudes towards World War I. The final section focuses on the hostile reception of the film in Germany, where it was used by the Nazi leaders, especially Joseph Goebbels, for propaganda purposes, and how the film’s global renown changed Milestone’s life.Less

‘Disney Against the Metaphysicals’:Eisenstein, Pound, Ectoplasm and the Politics of Animation

Leigh Wilson

in Modernism and Magic: Experiments with Spiritualism, Theosophy and the Occult

This chapter considers ectoplasm in relation to the materiality of film, and ask what this materiality does to questions of mimesis. It looks at Ezra Pound's conflicted attitude to film, via both his ... More

This chapter considers ectoplasm in relation to the materiality of film, and ask what this materiality does to questions of mimesis. It looks at Ezra Pound's conflicted attitude to film, via both his critical writing and The Cantos, and compares it to the aesthetics and politics of Sergei Eisenstein, in particular in his writings on Disney. For both, the filmic and the ectoplasmic incarnate central questions of the relation between representation and the world, but to very different effect. The chapter argues that in the end the politics of each depend on the extent to which they allow representation to be ectoplasmic.Less

Misreading Egypt

Jesse Schotter

in Hieroglyphic Modernisms: Writing and New Media in the Twentieth Century

The first chapter of Hieroglyphic Modernisms exposes the complex history of Western misconceptions of Egyptian writing from antiquity to the present. Hieroglyphs bridge the gap between modern ... More

The first chapter of Hieroglyphic Modernisms exposes the complex history of Western misconceptions of Egyptian writing from antiquity to the present. Hieroglyphs bridge the gap between modern technologies and the ancient past, looking forward to the rise of new media and backward to the dispersal of languages in the mythical moment of the Tower of Babel. The contradictory ways in which hieroglyphs were interpreted in the West come to shape the differing ways that modernist writers and filmmakers understood the relationship between writing, film, and other new media. On the one hand, poets like Ezra Pound and film theorists like Vachel Lindsay and Sergei Eisenstein use the visual languages of China and of Egypt as a more primal or direct alternative to written words. But Freud, Proust, and the later Eisenstein conversely emphasize the phonetic qualities of Egyptian writing, its similarity to alphabetical scripts. The chapter concludes by arguing that even avant-garde invocations of hieroglyphics depend on narrative form through an examination of Hollis Frampton’s experimental film Zorns Lemma. Less

A Plan with the Force of a Battleship

Alexander Kluge

Richard Langston (ed.)

in Difference and Orientation: An Alexander Kluge Reader

This chapter explores Alexander Kluge's retrospective evaluation of Soviet avant-garde cinema practices. Kluge recounts Sergei Eisenstein's plan in 1927 to film Capital, “based on the scenario by ... More

This chapter explores Alexander Kluge's retrospective evaluation of Soviet avant-garde cinema practices. Kluge recounts Sergei Eisenstein's plan in 1927 to film Capital, “based on the scenario by Karl Marx.” During the following two years, Eisenstein pursues his plan, which no one is willing to finance. Kluge sees Eisenstein's grand plan to film Capital as a kind of imaginary quarry. One can find fragments there, but one may also discover that there is nothing to be found. Dealing in a respectful way with the plans of a great master like Eisenstein is similar to excavating an ancient site; one discovers more about oneself than actual shards and treasures. Kluge suggests that “today we experience the proliferation of existent conditions. Objective reality has outstripped us, but we also have reason to fear the mass of subjectivity that eludes our consciousness.” In 2008, it is dangerous to confront this reality with the method and the expectations of Marx: one becomes discouraged. Kluge then provides a definition of images.Less

Haitian Revolutionary Encounters: Eugene O’Neill, Sergei Eisenstein, and Orson Welles

Jeremy Matthew Glick

in Black Radical Tragic: "Performance, Aesthetics, and the Unfinished Haitian Revolution"

This chapter engages three Haitian revolutionary “Lines of Flight”: the late-night forest run of the title character of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, a lesson given by Sergei Eisenstein to his ... More

This chapter engages three Haitian revolutionary “Lines of Flight”: the late-night forest run of the title character of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, a lesson given by Sergei Eisenstein to his film students in Moscow on how to film Haitian revolutionary combatant Dessalines’s flight out a window, and Orson Welles’s radio play on the Haitian Revolution. I examine how the Haitian Revolution inspires and focuses three examples of avant-garde performance and works as a political referent to focus political and philosophical thought pertaining to slavery, revolution, and the importance of aesthetic form.Less

Audiovisual Montage in Ivan the Terrible: Understanding Prokofiev’s Film Score Through Eisensteinian Sound–Image Theory

Katya Ermolaeva

in Rethinking Prokofiev

While new scholarship on Prokofiev and Eisenstein continues to emerge, there has been surprisingly little written about Prokofiev’s film scores as they relate to Eisenstein’s theories on music and ... More

While new scholarship on Prokofiev and Eisenstein continues to emerge, there has been surprisingly little written about Prokofiev’s film scores as they relate to Eisenstein’s theories on music and sound. Eisenstein considered “sound imagery” to be as important as visual imagery in film, and with the advent of sound film in the late 1920s, he began writing essays on the subject. Many musicologists have expertly discussed Prokofiev’s music in Eisenstein’s films, and film historians have long considered Eisenstein’s theories on sound and how they function generally in his films. Until recently, however, very few scholars have attempted to merge a close reading of Eisenstein’s theories with an analysis of Prokofiev’s music. This chapter helps to bridge this gap in scholarship by examining Eisenstein’s late theories on music and sound from his essay “The Music of Landscape” in relation to Prokofiev’s score for Ivan the Terrible.Less

Another Revolution

Philip Watts, Dudley Andrew, Yves Citton, Vincent Debaene, and Sam Di Iorio

in Roland Barthes' Cinema

The first filmmaker for whom Barthes expressed a sustained enthusiasm, whose films he did not feel the need to demystify, and the first figure in film history with whom he was in sympathetic ... More

The first filmmaker for whom Barthes expressed a sustained enthusiasm, whose films he did not feel the need to demystify, and the first figure in film history with whom he was in sympathetic dialogue, was the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Two articles from the early 1970s, “The Third Meaning” and “Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein,” confirm this enthusiasm, and attest to Barthes’ attempt, in the years after May 1968, to define a new relation to film, one in which demystification played no part and no longer served even as a pretext for writing about film. Both these essays are dedicated to friends; dedications of essays were a rare occurrence in Barthes’ writing, and they give Barthes’ essays on Eisenstein a slightly different tenor, one distinct from the scientific rationality of semiological analysis, in that they gesture to friendship, affect and “an emotion which simply designates what one loves.”Less

Sound Montage

K. J. Donnelly

in Occult Aesthetics: Synchronization in Sound Film

Montage theory remains at the heart of filmmaking and film studies, although many of its original concerns and insights have perhaps receded from view. Sound montage, theorized with the arrival of ... More

Montage theory remains at the heart of filmmaking and film studies, although many of its original concerns and insights have perhaps receded from view. Sound montage, theorized with the arrival of recorded synchronized sound in films, was the first theory of sound, as well as image, and sometimes explicitly derives ideas and inspiration from music-based theory. Its most influential theorist was Sergei Eisenstein, who also tested and experimented with his ideas in feature films. Montage theory often focused on asynchrony as potentially progressive in aesthetic (and to a degree, political) terms. The crucial notion of sound/music parallel and counterpoint, while perhaps not generating a tremendously robust analytical method, has nevertheless remained an important analytical lens for filmmakers and film criticism. Using this concept, the chapter argues that there has been an unacknowledged persistence of the modes of silent and early sound film in contemporary cinema.Less

John Dos Passos and the Art of Montage

in Cinematic Fictions: The Impact of the Cinema on the American Novel up to World War II

This chapter focuses on the works of novelist John Dos Passos, who not only made sustained attempts to incorporate cinematic elements in his most famous fiction, Manhattan Transfer and the U.S.A. ... More

This chapter focuses on the works of novelist John Dos Passos, who not only made sustained attempts to incorporate cinematic elements in his most famous fiction, Manhattan Transfer and the U.S.A. trilogy, but also saw film as a unique force for cultural change in the modern era. In 1928 Dos Passos visited the Soviet Union, where he met filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and discussed montage with him, a meeting that appears to have increased Dos Passos' interest in the cinema and encouraged him towards this stated goal of narrative objectivity.Less