Sergei Eisenstein: The Historical Dialectic
Sergei Eisenstein, together with his colleagues Vassili Pudovkin, Dziga Vertov, and Alexander Dovshenko, revolutionized film directing. Building on the work of D.W. Griffith, each set out on a different path for creating films, but each did so out of a conviction that the power of film should be harnessed for a public purpose—to change society. Each of these directors had a different aesthetic. Pudovkin embraced the theatrical, Vertov embraced the documentary in its most orthodox form, and Dovshenko embraced the poetic. To say that Eisenstein saw film as architecture or as graphic design or as a new malleable medium arising out of literature is too limiting. Eisenstein, like Griffith before him, explored the medium of film and contributed new ideas about film. In addition to Griffith, Eisenstein’s ideas about film made him a key explorer of the medium. His ideas about editing remain important (see S. Eisenstein, Film Form, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977; The Film Sense, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975). And his influence on directors such as Sam Peckinpah and Oliver Stone confirms his continued relevance to directing. For Eisenstein, editing is the core creative strategy, and his director’s idea is articulated in those ideas about editing. For Eisenstein, history is conflict, the inevitable dialectic of one force fighting another. The clash of images has to be articulated and given a human face.
Text Interpretation
Eisenstein directed fewer than ten films from 1925 to 1945. When he fell out of favor, he would teach and write. At the invitation of Charlie Chaplin, he tried Hollywood in the early 1930s and developed a script for Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy at Paramount. He also directed a film for Sinclair Lewis in Mexico, but his North American interlude was not successful. Eisenstein is best known for his films “Potemkin” (1925), “Alexander Nevsky” (1938), and “Ivan the Terrible” (Part I, 1943; Part II, 1946).
Turning more specifically to Eisenstein’s director’s idea, although Eisenstein considered editing ideas to be the most powerful manifestation of that idea, he believed that text interpretation as well as style of acting also contributed to the director’s idea. With regard to text interpretation, Eisenstein approached his screen stories in a particular fashion. “Strike” (1924) examines the consequences of labor rebelling against management, with the government not mediating but rather aligning with capital against labor. The historical struggle is specific, conflicted, and framed as exploitation versus moral or human values. The struggle becomes tangible as well as metaphorical as it devolves into evil versus good.
A similar interpretive pattern follows in “Potemkin” (1925), which tells the story of a naval mutiny in 1905 in the seaport of Odessa. Here, again, the mutiny is framed in terms of exploitation—the sailors are the victims, and their officers enrich themselves by providing bad food rather than decent provisions. One sailor, Vakulinchuk, assumes a leadership role and is the catalyst for the mutiny. His death in the struggle makes him a martyr for his fellow sailors and the sympathetic population of Odessa. Sailors and the townspeople become the decent, moral social element while the officers of the ship and businessmen of Odessa and the Czarist troops become the exploiters, the parasites, the evil embodiment of their leaders, as the military attacks the civilians and sailors. The conflict between good and evil is underway.
In “Alexander Nevsky” (1937), a 13th-century narrative, the main character is Alexander Nevsky, a prince of the Russian hinterland. In the east, Russia is under attack by the Mongols; in the west, the Germans have invaded the Ukraine. Nevsky, having already defeated the Swedes, is a natural leader. He chooses to defend the city Novgorod against the advancing Germans. Nevsky is good and strong; his people are simple, virtuous, and dogged, both men and women. The Germans, aided by Russian opportunists, are authoritarian, cruel, and evil. Once again the interpretation is a struggle between good and evil, and the characters are archetypal rather than realistic.
Perhaps the most complex narrative Eisenstein undertook was “Ivan the Terrible.” Originally intended as a three-part film, in fact only the first two were completed. Part I of “Ivan the Terrible” (1943) is the 16th-century narrative of the czar who united Russia. Based in Moscow, the film begins when Ivan is crowned czar. The film ends with the funeral of his wife, poisoned (as he will learn in Part II) by his own aunt. Although Ivan faces enemies in the east and the west, his larger enemies are his own noblemen, the Boyars. They want power over the future course of Russia. They represent duplicity, deceit, and exploitation. To fight them, Ivan creates a personal guard, the Oprichnicki, who will be the instrument of his will. Ivan will be betrayed by both his closest friends—Kurbsky, who goes over to the Poles in the west, and Phillip, who chooses to retreat to the east and enter into the priesthood. Both friends ally themselves with the cause of the Boyars. Ivan becomes czar by virtue of his will but must resort to the cruel exercise of power to retain his position. Betrayal is all around him, in his court as well as the country at large. Part I of “Ivan the Terrible” depicts the abandonment of Ivan by his friends; because of the death of his wife, at the end he is alone except for the Oprichnicki.
Part II of “Ivan the Terrible” charts the psychological transformation of Ivan from monarch to murderer. Abandoned by everyone from his childhood, including his friend Phillip, Ivan turns to eliminating his betrayers, particularly his aunt Efrosinia and her son Vladamir. Boyars are executed, Efrosinia loses her son and her power, and Ivan is victorious, but his world seems to have gone mad. Victory is at best empty, for Ivan remains very much alone.
In each of these films, the conflict is elevated to momentous proportions with considerable historical implications. It seems as though Eisenstein wanted to point out that history is created out of such struggles. At no point does Eisenstein suggest a more benign view of the historical process. It is all about conflict.
Directing the Actor
In terms of directing actors, Eisenstein relied heavily on casting. In “Potemkin,” beyond Vakulinchuk there is no single character whose screen time requires a performance. Even in the case of Vakulinchuk, only frustration, anger, and indignation are required, and then he is killed. Instead of seeking out actors with a range of skills, Eisenstein was casting for a particular look—in fact, a stereotypical look, such as the intellectual, the obedient child, the adventurous child, the elegant grandmother, the middle-class mother, the peasant mother, the aggressive Cossack, the cigar-chomping businessman, the snobbish officer, the peasant sailor. Subsequent to the casting, Eisenstein relied on editing, primarily the juxtaposition of shots, to create feelings about these characters and their fates. In this sense, the performance requirements were limited. Performance expectations, however, changed considerably when it came to “Alexander Nevsky” and “Ivan the Terrible.” Eisenstein continued to rely on stereotypical casting for the secondary roles—the sturdy peasant, the aristocratic Teutonic knights, and the Russian traitor as weasel in “Alexander Nevsky”; the Boyar as overstuffed exploiter, scheming aristocrat, or cruel manipulator in “Ivan the Terrible.” But, for the major roles, Eisenstein turned to experienced theater actors who looked the part and could enhance their performance with a large inner passion. A specific example illustrates the point. Eisenstein chose Nikolai Cherkassov, the leading Russian theater actor, for the parts of Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. The inner qualities of each character differ considerably from one another. First we turn to Alexander Nevsky.
Eisenstein presents Nevsky in a very particular manner. Given the challenges Russia faces in the 13th century (such as invasions from the east and the west), Eisenstein wants to draw a particular quality from Cherkassov—the strength, determination, and self-confidence necessary to save Russia. Nevsky has to be convincing as the savior of Mother Russia, and Cherkassov is very convincing as Nevsky. Beyond the actor’s towering presence and bearing, Eisenstein places him in narrative circumstances that illustrate different dimensions of the Nevsky character. In the scene that introduces Nevsky, he is shown fishing at a time of war. He is presented either in the foreground or alone. The other fishermen are clustered or positioned in a seated position. The character’s superiority is apparent. Later in the same scene, a group of Mongols attacks his fellow fishermen when they are not sufficiently humble in the presence of the Mongols. Nevsky not only stops the fight but also attracts the attention of the leader of the Mongol party. Taller and insisting on freedom (and dignity) for his fishermen, Nevsky listens to the Mongol leader rattle off Nevsky’s accomplishments (e.g., the general who defeated the Swedes) and rejects an offer by the Mongol leader to join their army with rank and privileges commensurate with his achievements. The Mongols leave.
One of the fishermen suggests Nevsky lead his people against the Mongols. Nevsky says not yet, as the risk is greater in the west. They must fight the Germans and prevent them from taking Novgorod, a Russian city that is their next goal. In his declaration, Nevsky assumes the mantle of a Russian leader, but it is only later in battle that we see another dimension of Nevsky—his skills and risk-taking in battle.
Despite advice from his officers to the contrary, Nevsky decides to meet the Teutonic knights and their army before they reach Russian territory—in the middle of frozen Chudskoye Lake. The danger of fighting on frozen ice will be mitigated by the heavier German armor (they are more likely to break through the ice than the Russians). He also organizes a strategy to draw the Germans into battle and then attack their flanks as they are intensely engaged with the defending Russian force. Nevsky is victorious.
From an acting point of view, Cherkassov must convince us of his resolve and superior strategy. Building upon the charisma and strength of character established earlier in the film, Cherkassov presents a realistic portrait of a Russian hero. The style of acting is no different from the portrayal of that other great general, George Patton, in Franklin Schaffner’s “Patton.” George C. Scott must convince us of Patton’s resolve and his brilliance, just as Cherkassov did in his portrayal of Nevsky.
The performance demands on Cherkassov and Eisenstein are far more complex in Part I of “Ivan the Terrible.” Ivan, the 16th-century monarch who unifies Russia under his czarship, faces not only external enemies in the east and west but also internal enemies—his nobles, the Boyars. Faced with enemies all around, Ivan as a character must project strength and determination, as well as an inner psychological complexity. In Part I, Ivan has to deal with betrayal by those princes closest to him—Kurbsky and Phillip. He also loses his wife, poisoned by his own aunt. In Part II, we learn that Ivan’s mother was poisoned by the Boyars when he was an 11-year-old boy, and Ivan must summon up the will to be as ruthless as his aunt and the other Boyars. This requires a kind of dementia that embraces cruelty as an understandable, even inevitable adaptation. In other words, Ivan adopts a surname, “the Terrible,” to help him prevail, but in doing so he becomes a psychotic killer.
As can be imagined, the depth of performance has to be broad and convincing, and Cherkassov created a performance that is large enough to convince. Whereas the Nevsky performance required a credibility that was believable, the Ivan performance required a theatricality usually associated with opera. Extreme and stylized, Cherkassov’s Ivan captures a mercurial character that can love or hate, someone who is up to the task of uniting a country, or someone who feels abandoned by everyone in the world. The performance range demands an “anti-realism” that is so stylized that it can encompass enormous swings in behavior and performance style. The character of Ivan requires a larger than life performance, and Cherkassov provides it. Because Eisenstein’s director’s idea is all about conflict (peace and war; outer appearances and inner feelings), Cherkassov’s performance had to reinforce these conflicts.
Directing the Camera
To understand how to harness conflict, we turn now to how Eisenstein used the camera to portray conflict. There are numerous dimensions to Eisenstein’s visual skill as a director. To understand his work as a director we must look at the compositional qualities of his films and the editing of his films. Because Eisenstein’s contributions to the art of editing are so great, we will discuss how the editing contributed to his director’s idea after we look at his visual style.
In order to frame an understanding of Eisenstein’s visual style, we must first examine how it contributes to the historical dialectic of opposite forces in conflict. These ideas require an imagery that suggests different dimensions of power and conflict. We begin with the land and how Eisenstein’s presentation of the land created a sense of scale that is important and harnessed a beauty worth fighting and dying for.
Eisenstein uses powerful images of the beauty of the sea and the seaport of Odessa in “Potemkin.” These images imply a certain tranquility, a welcome quality for sailors and the civilian population. The land is even more powerfully evoked in “Alexander Nevsky,” where the rural imagery is of wheat fields, with shipmasts in the foreground and the bountiful sea in the background. In all the rural images, the sky is endless and dominates and dwarfs humans. In “Alexander Nevsky,” the earth is bountiful and beautiful, mother to all men. The urban images are different. Bustling and brimming with religious iconography, the city represents physical protection rather than spiritual sustenance for its inhabitants. Cities are power centers important to Russia but also to its enemies. That sense of power and potential protection is how Eisenstein chose to present the city in “Alexander Nevsky.” The land is presented differently in “Ivan the Terrible.” The rural and urban areas are never entities unto themselves. They exist but only as an extension of Ivan and his vision of Russia. We will defer observations about these visuals until we discuss how the leader is presented visually.
We turn next to the ordinary citizens. In each of these films, they are important because Eisenstein was making films within a society that viewed classlessness as a central goal. Relative to the shot selection for most other characters, Eisenstein chose to portray ordinary people in close-up or mid shots, which allowed him to present the characters in a more emotional manner. In “Potemkin,” individual sailors, the mourning townspeople at Vakulinchuk’s funeral, and the victims of the Odessa Steppes massacre are all presented in this way. The shot selection allowed Eisenstein to individuate these characters. It was important that they never be simply the classless crowd. For Eisenstein and his narrative, they were the emotional heart of the land. This pattern of presentations is continued in “Alexander Nevsky.” Whether fishermen or urban peasants, soldiers for Nevsky or victims of the Teutonic knights, these characters were kind hearted, simple, and morally good—in a word, admirable patriots and martyrs for their country. Again, Eisenstein’s use of close-up and mid shots establishes an emotional connection with these characters.
For his antagonists, Eisenstein resorted to a different strategy. Art direction and the use of lightness or darkness defined these characters. Eisenstein also chose to have these characters move less and used mid and long shots rather than close-ups to distance the audience from these characters. When he did use a close-up, as with the Boyars in “Ivan the Terrible,” shadows mottled the faces. When he was emphasizing the cruelty of a film’s antagonists, Eisenstein would focus on their victims—children thrown alive into a fire and peasant leaders hung for not bending to the Teutonic will in “Alexander Nevsky.” When Eisenstein focused on the antagonists, he tried to convey an image of their power and ruthlessness. For the helmeted foot soldiers of the Teutonic Order, the camera was positioned very close to the soldiers, looking up at their lances. The image crowds the viewer and impresses with its sense of invincibility. Eisenstein also emphasized the vain and threatening nature of the helmets in “Alexander Nevsky”—the horns and the talons appeared threatening to the enemy, and the viewers.
Finally, we should discuss Eisenstein’s images of a leader, particularly in “Alexander Nevsky” and Parts I and II of “Ivan the Terrible.” Eisenstein excelled at supporting the mythology around leadership in all three films. I have already mentioned the presentation of Alexander Nevsky in the foreground fishing and later gazing landward to assess the altercation with the Mongol soldiers. His response about not disturbing the fish is less impressive than his posture and the visual elements behind him—the extended fishing net and the fishermen deep in the background of the frame. The composition creates a heroic image of Nevsky. He literally towers over his people. Because he shares the same frame with them, the image supports the idea that Nevsky is connected to these people. This heroic presentation of Nevsky continues as he rides into Novgorod to invite the residents to join him in battle with the German invaders. This compositional structure is maintained when Nevsky argues battle strategy with his commanders, goes into battle on the frozen lake, and later declares victory over the Germans. The camera looks up at its hero, a leader of the people.
If Alexander Nevsky is the powerful leader, Ivan the Terrible is transformed into the mythical leader. Early in “Ivan the Terrible, Part I,” Ivan is in his palace seated at a desk on which sits a globe. The lighting casts a shadow, and behind Ivan his shadow engulfs an entire wall. Eisenstein created a myth, and man and myth share the same image. Eisenstein amplified this idea at the end of “Ivan the Terrible, Part I,” when Ivan has retreated to the village of Alexandrov. He will not return to Moscow until the people of Moscow invite him to return to lead them. In the foreground of one image, Ivan looks from the tower that faces in the direction of Moscow. In the background is an endless, winding, weaving line of people (all the way back to Moscow?). There, in the same shot, are the leader and those he will lead. It is a remarkable image. Few shots in film history are as powerful, but the gates of Babylon in D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance” (1917) and the attack on the train in David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) are two that come to mind. In each case, the director is mixing man and myth. Eisenstein’s power as a visualist and as a transformative director is best illustrated by this image.
Directing for the Edit
For our discussion of Eisenstein’s editing, we will focus on the Odessa Steppes sequence in “Potemkin,” on the Pskov massacre sequence in “Alexander Nevsky,” and on the coronation sequence in “Ivan the Terrible, Part I.” To highlight his editing ideas, we need to review particular editing ideas and the manner in which they shape or can shape ideas. To create intensity, the director can use the following devices:
- Close-ups
- Camera placement closer to the visual action
- Subjective camera placement
- Camera movement, particularly subjective movement
- A more rapid pace in the length of the shots (i.e., shorter shots as compared to the shots in the previous scene)
To create empathy, the director can use:
- Close-ups
- Wide-angle shots to provide a visual context for whatever or whoever is in the foreground
- Slower pace
- Shots of other characters reacting to the action of the shot
To create a sense of victimization, the director can use:
- Camera placement above the subject (looking down)
- Subjective camera placement, looking up at the victimizer
- Objective establishing shots that show victim and victimizer
- Objective movement to make the victimization scene appear more fluid (energized)
- Increase in pace
My point here is that editing can shape how we experience narrative events. Few directors have considered editing to be a source of power in filmmaking, but Eisenstein recognized its power and developed many of the ideas still used today regarding the use of pace, rhythm, and cutting to add emotional impact.
Applying these editing ideas, then, we begin to see Eisenstein’s director’s idea in action. Both the Odessa Steppes sequence and the Pskov sequence have a single goal—to shock and outrage the audience through his portrayal of the unjust behavior of the czarist forces in “Potemkin” and the German Teutonic forces in “Alexander Nevsky.” Eisenstein wanted to illustrate the misuse of power, its inhumanity, and the worthiness of using power to crush such injustice. In both sequences, creating emotional arousal and outrage were his goals. The Odessa Steppes sequence introduces the future victims, the innocents who are enjoying life when the Cossacks attack. The grandmother, the intellectual, the granddaughter, the peasant mother and her son, and later the well-to-do mother with her baby carriage are all introduced via mid shots. Although each of these characters later becomes a victim, Eisenstein particularly focused on the deaths of the mothers and their children. Detailed in close-up are the shooting of the ebullient son, the peasant mother’s shock, her raising the boy’s body and appealing to the soldiers to stop, her death, the shooting of the other mother, the command, the baby carriage’s descent down the steps, the baby, the Cossack raising his sword, and the killing. The two mothers are the ultimate victims, and watching their efforts to save their children is the equivalent of seeing our future (children) being stomped out; these scenes are shocking and overwhelming.
Eisenstein used faceless rows of boots and rifles marching inexorably toward the victims to portray this march to death. There are no humanizing close-ups of the soldiers (except the Cossack who kills the baby). The inhuman stamps out the human. Cutting between victims and victimizers, Eisenstein uses screen direction (left to right for the Cossacks, right to left for the mothers) to illustrate the conflict. Rhythmic montages or other visuals that oppose each other further deepen the sense of conflict and victimization.
The Pskov massacre sequence in “Alexander Nevsky” is far more subtle. Here, screen direction also plays a role—one direction for victimizers, the other for the victims. Eisenstein also used the wide-angle shot more frequently, with victims in the foreground and victimizers in the background. In this sequence, Eisenstein relied less on pace to whip up emotion and more on visual juxtapositions—the forces of good (the victims) versus the forces of evil. The camera is placed closer to the Russian victims and hovers farther back from the Teutonic knights. When the victimization reaches its peak—the burning of the children and the hanging of a recalcitrant peasant leader—the shots are long shots and objective. The content did not require additional editing techniques such as pace and close-up.
Turning to the coronation sequence in “Ivan the Terrible, Part I,” Eisenstein’s goal was again not to repeat himself. There is a good deal of conflict and power, but there is also hope. Ivan is crowned as czar, but we do not see his face until the end of the scene. In this sequence, Eisenstein focused on the symbols of power—the scepter; God’s representative, the Bishop, who endorses Ivan’s czarship; the individual Boyars who resist his czarship; his wife, who is the only character who will support Ivan; Efrosinia, his aunt, who will be the primary Boyar antagonist; and the two princes, Kurbsky and Phillip, who ostensibly support Ivan but in the end will betray him. The scene offers some sense of hope when these two princes shower Ivan with gold coins to wish him good fortune in his reign. All of these characters and their actions are presented in close-ups. The pace of the scene implies hope, but Eisenstein’s juxtaposition of those who are hopeful and those who will stand against Ivan introduces the conflicted character of the rest of the screen story. The scene ends as Ivan turns to the camera and for the first time we see the young czar, his face and his eyes. He is hopeful and innocent, the polar opposite of what he will become.
Notable is Eisenstein’s use of light to cast shadows on the enemies of Ivan and light upon Ivan and his young wife. The opposing forces are created and positioned in visual opposition to each other. The juxtaposition is emotional—hope versus skepticism, good versus evil. Eisenstein in this scene has created the oppositional elements of the czar and the Boyars that will dominate the film throughout both Parts I and II.
In this chapter, I have focused on particular scenes that illustrate the director’s idea, the historical dialectic, and conflict as historical determinism. Eisenstein uses text interpretation, performance, and the camera to animate his director’s idea. What I have not yet noted, but do so now, is that great directing is about transformation of a film experience into something larger, deeper. Eisenstein was able to powerfully shift our experience of “Potemkin,” “Alexander Nevsky,” and Parts I and II of “Ivan the Terrible” as stories of a naval revolt and its aftermath or Russian leadership in the 13th and 16th centuries into life-and-death struggles between humane and barbaric values. To do so, he unleashed the power of editing, the aesthetic payoff of visual composition, in pursuit of his passion for the medium and for his country. Conflict is at the core of Eisenstein’s narratives, but it is hope that Eisenstein embraced—the hope that good can overcome evil, and when it cannot, as in “Ivan the Terrible, Part II,” then at least understanding and compassion can be extended to a man who has experienced so much evil in his life that he has become its ultimate victim.