Professor David Peimer
Eisenstein: His Life and Works, Including Extracts From Ivan the Terrible and Battleship Potemkin

Professor David Peimer | Eisenstein His Life and Works, Including Extracts From Ivan the Terrible and Battleship Potemkin | 05.14.22

Visuals displayed and videos played during presentation.

- So I’m going to look at Sergei Eisenstein today, lived 1898 to 1948, 50 years, short life, but remarkable number of achievements, remarkable individual. I’m going to look at some of his, the key moments of his life story, and then theoretically what he contributed to the theory of making film, and understanding how to use film to produce emotional effect, and to produce ideas. And then thirdly, going to have a look at the “Battleship Potemkin,” the great movie, one of the greatest movies ever made, and one of his very early ones. And then “Ivan, the Terrible,” music by Prokofiev. And then afterwards a little bit on “Alexander Nevsky.” I’m going to hold on “10 Days That Shook the World,” which is more about the October 1917 Russian Revolution, because I think that’s less influential, and a little bit less interesting in terms of the craft and art of filmmaking. I think the other three are by far superior, especially the first two, I would argue. And in addition, the guy’s life was quite extraordinary, so much was packed in such a short time, which we’ll go through, as we look at these. I really do feel that Eisenstein, and I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration, but for me, he is the, if you like, the Freud of filmmaking. Because he was the first to really theorise, ‘cause he was an academic, he was a teacher as well, so he was the first to really theorise about how to make film. Not just have a whole series of images in order to tell a story, or follow a character and their journey.

But much more impactful was beyond that, how do you produce the most heightened emotional effect in the audience? How do you produce the ideas that go with the emotion? And this is what I think really obsessed him in the craft. We need to remember that this is the early days of filmmaking. So it’s really these guys, Eisenstein and of course many others. And in a way they’re discovering on the hop, they’re discovering, they’re trying, try and fail, experimenting, bit of this bit of that. There’s no, if you like, already forged or given approach to filmmaking. They are making it, almost making it up as they go along with this brand new technology just discovered. And there is a sense of pure fun, and relish, of the enjoyment of the art and craft of just using this new technology, because we need to go back to these times where in the 1920s and before, it was not necessarily seen as, a film, was not necessarily seen in terms of what it would become, neither as an art form, or entertainment, or propaganda for that matter. It was a very fledgling new innovative technology. So, and the music by Prokofiev, and the work with him, the two together, I know that, I mean, Patrick has given a wonderful talk during the week on the music, so I’m going to hold on that, that’s not my area of expertise, that’s Patrick’s brilliant area. And I’m going to focus on the actual films themselves, the content, the visual aspect of it, visual storytelling, in today’s parlance. And of course his life.

Okay, so to go on here, this is just a picture of Prokofiev, who more or less lived similar period to Eisenstein. Very different image, as you can see, Prokofiev is at least a quarter, if not a third Jewish, whatever we want to call it, let’s say just half Jewish, simple, going back to his father . Entirely different world and background, remarkably stunning music, as we all know. This is a picture here, on the left hand side, of Eisenstein’s father and mother, and there’s little toddler Eisenstein in the middle. And then in the middle image is in a much older Eisenstein, and this is him with a Japanese kabuki performer. And Eisenstein actually learned some Japanese, and studied kabuki, and Japanese forms of dance, and movement, and performance. I mean, it was very popular in Europe at the time to study Japanese, Balinese, and different forms from Asia in particular, or parts of Asia, especially Japan, parts of China, Bali, and some other areas. So it was a sense of discovery, I don’t think it was simply a kind of naive, sort of noble savage approach, I don’t think it was that at all. I think these guys really understood that there was a profound need to understand the colonised peoples, or to at least understand the other, and not just see them as exotic, but how to find a way, a sort of a common language if you like, certainly artistically.

Then on the right hand side, a very interesting image, which I’m sure not many people will know, I’m going to come up to this in a short while, Eisenstein did a whole trip, he did a two year trip around Europe, Paris, Berlin, London, and New York, and America, LA, and tried to get into the film industry in LA as well. Now this is Eisenstein, you can see the picture of him, if you look, he’s the second from the right, Eisenstein with the hair. And then next to him, the tall thin guy is a gentleman called Walt Disney, with little Mickey Mouse. And they were good friends, Walt Disney admired Eisenstein enormously, and vice versa. During this period when he was travelling in America he also became very friendly with Charlie Chaplin, who he absolutely admired, adored, respected, as one of the true great artists of the century. So it gives you an idea of the kind of people, just a tiny taste to start with, that this guy born in Riga, in Latvia, part Jewish, all the rest, what he’s going through with Stalin, the Russian Revolution, then later, the Second World War, The absolute extreme totalitarian rule of Stalin, and others, and yet he starts to forge artistic connections globally. The influence has spread globally during his own lifetime, and he’s the one going out and seeking it. He’s looking, how does sound work? How does Charlie Chaplin make film? How does Walt Disney? How does this, how does that?

He’s looking everywhere to find, to improve all the time, his understanding of the technique, the technology, and the art. Okay, so, it’s just an interesting picture, and there are others as well of him with Chaplain, et cetera, but this is with a young Walt Disney, which of course is fascinating. This picture, which I want to show here, and I thought about this, whether to include this or not, not only 'cause it’s Goya, he’s one of my all-time favourites in terms of artists, I think remarkable, remarkable artist. But what it does for me, it suggests an area of art which I think is linked to Eisenstein. Everyone knows this picture, I’m sure, “3rd of May, 1808,” which is painted in 1814. And the lighting, the one individual arms up, a little bit of a Christ-like image, but much more than that. The white shirt, the arms, the faceless soldiers, their faces hidden, their body’s hidden in black, and grey, and so on, and these long rifles. And we’ll see some echo of this in the “Battleship Potemkin” sequence I’m going to show as well. The bodies of course, the light in the dark, the shades, this for me does consciously, or unconsciously, refer to some of Eisenstein’s understanding of how on Earth do you put together a sequence of images? 'Cause film ultimately is frame after frame of image, how do you put together a sequence of image, not only to tell the story, or follow the character’s journey, but to produce an emotional effect in the audience, and an intellectual, a mind effect in the audience as well, which is beyond just showing images to tell a story.

And this to me influences with the idea of Eisenstein’s montage, and juxtaposition of images, which we’ll come on to. Okay, so Joseph Goebbels, once they got into power, of course, and he wrote, Goebbels raved about Eisenstein, even though he was part Jewish, let’s never forget it. But Goebbels, in his diaries, raves about Eisenstein, and Goebbels wrote this. He said that “I want the ‘Battleship Potemkin’ to serve as a model for the Nazi film industry. It is remarkable because of its ideological power. Someone with no firm ideological conviction "could be turned into a Bolshevik by this film alone.” Now, that’s Goebbels’ writing about a Bolshevik artist, in Goebbels’ perception, and part Jewish. Goebbels then he also wrote to the German filmmakers of his time, this is of course in the 30s, once the Nazis have taken power, and he urges them to “Please use the Potemkin new form as a model of truthful art, National Socialist Potemkin, that’s what I want.”

Eisenstein read this, was utterly indignant, and he wrote Goebbels an open letter in reply. This is the mark of Eisenstein, the mark of the human being. He’s going to be dealing with Stalin, he’s dealing with remarkable artists, America, England, elsewhere, film itself, the new medium, getting money for it and so on, but he’s not scared to write back to Goebbels. And he wrote to Goebbels an open letter saying, “Truth and National Socialism cannot be reconciled. He who is for truth is against you. How do you dare talk about life? You only bring death and banishment to everything good in your country, Germany. You bring it by using the executioners axe, and the machine gun.” This is Eisenstein writing to Goebbels, who’s already achieved power, the Nazis have taken power. So he’s aware of developments of politics, of historical forces, of individuals, artists all over the world, and he’s not scared, and he’s not scared to experiment with form, to try to make films. He’s not scared even later, to try and take on the notion of the strong leader, the tyrant, the fascist, et cetera, obviously allegory to Stalin, and so on.

But he’s trying to find ways all the time to interact with the world, he’s living in the world, he’s not ivory tower. “Battleship Potemkin,” is ultimately a story of man’s struggle, rather, against injustice. For me, it’s not only about the Russian revolution, I’m sure everyone knows the story, I’m not going to repeat it, but the mutiny on the battleship, and then the sailors and the soldiers, and the battles between the workers, the peasants, the ordinary people, the citizens of Odessa, and also the sailors and royal power. So it ultimately, it goes beyond that specific revolution, and this, for me, is a remarkable achievement beyond that historical moment, and it touches for me on an eternal human theme, the struggle against injustice and tyranny, linking with mankind’s innate hunger for freedom. I really believe that’s what is inside the “Battleship Potemkin,” and why it is still studied a hundred years later, everywhere in the world. It’s watched, it’s probably the one of the most watched films, amongst not only film scholars, but film artists, and artists of any kind. So Eisenstein, so that’s why I wanted to include this, because I think he’s aware of all artistic and musical developments going on.

So going back to Eisenstein a little bit, he’s a pioneer then in the theory and practise of film, especially the idea of montage, which I’ll come to. He’s a pioneer in taking historical stories and turning them into works of art. “Ivan, the Terrible,” “Alexander Nevsky,” the historical event, the Potemkin, and so on. “Sight and Sound,” which is one of the most renowned film magazines, or film journals in the world, voted “Battleship Potemkin,” the 11th greatest film of all time, not just in the genre. And many others, BBC polls, other polls all over, it’s right up in the top 10 always. Eisenstein was born in Riga, in Latvia, of course, as we all know, it was then art of the Russian Empire, to a middle class family. He was not poor, his father was an architect who was born in Kiev, nothing more needs to be said. And his father’s father, his grandfather, was a Jewish merchant who had married a Swedish woman and those were his grandparents, and that’s the Jewish link.

Then his own father converted to the Russian Orthodox Church. His mother, Julia, was already a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, and she was the daughter of a pretty prosperous merchant. She leaves Riga in 1905, and she takes Eisenstein with her to St. Petersburg. She divorces the husband, and she leaves the family to go live in France. Eisenstein is raised as an Orthodox Christian, later becomes an atheist. He goes to Petrograd, and he studies architecture and engineering, and architecture was the profession of his father. 1918, he leaves school and he joins the Red Army to serve in the Russian Revolution, and his father supports the royalists, supports the other side. Eisenstein is transferred to a command position, he gets a promotion in Minsk after successfully providing propaganda for, in film, for the October Revolution. As I said, he explores kabuki theatre, he’s learning some Japanese, he’s looking at other forms of performance, especially from Asia, all over Europe, America, everywhere. He moves to Moscow in 1920, and of course 1925 was when he made Potemkin, and it’s immediately critically acclaimed worldwide. And I’m going to show the great scene on the Odessa Steps.

And I mean, this scene has been satirised, homage has been paid, by so many filmmakers from Woody Allen, Brian De Palma, I mean, just so, so many all over the world. And I want to show it right now, this is the great scene of the Odessa Steps on the “Battleship Potemkin,” and I think it’s fairly self-explanatory as you watch.

[Clips plays]

Okay, I want to go straight onto the next piece, because this is Roger Corman, who for me is a really interesting, contemporary, well he’s a bit older now, but this was filmed quite a few years ago. But his analysis of that scene, and he’s a Hollywood director of many movies, some have been called trashy, not, et cetera. But a highly intelligent analysis of this particular scene that we’ve just seen. And then I’m going to talk about it a little bit afterwards.

[Clip begins]

• I’ve chosen the Odessa Step sequence from the “Battleship Potemkin” by Eisenstein, because I think it’s a wonderful sequence by itself, and in addition, it occupies a unique place in the history of film. The Odessa Step sequence is the story of the soldiers sweeping down the steps at Odessa, during the mutiny of the sailors on the “Battleship Potemkin.” And what the soldiers do to the crowd, which is essentially drive the crowd away, killing a great number of them. Primarily a sequence of movement, of different camera angles, and of editing techniques to bring great emotion and excitement to that movement, and Eisenstein accomplishes this by various means.

First, he uses the traditional long shot to establish the geography, to see the soldiers appearing at the top of the steps, and to start their inexorable movement down the steps, driving the crowd beneath them. He intercuts these long shots with medium shots of the crowd, and then brilliantly composed a closeup of the guns firing, and wonderful closeups of the moving feet coming down. He counterpoints this with the medium shots of the people, and closeups of the people either fleeing, or being shot and falling. So it is a steady movement down the steps that we know cannot be stopped. Shortly thereafter, he reverses his downward movement and cuts to a woman carrying her dead son up the steps. The shocking effect of this one woman carrying the dead son, as if to say, “This is what you have done,” to the soldiers, is used to wonderful effect and breaks that movement down the steps, and brings a note of humanity to the clearly described inhumanity of the soldier’s movement.

He then cuts back and forth, and eventually cuts to the baby carriage, with a baby in it, coming wildly out of control, down the steps. At the same time, there are statues of lions at the bottom of the steps, and what Eisenstein does is to photograph those stone lions from different angles, And from the cutting you have the feeling that the lions are almost rising up in shock and anger, and potential opposition to what is going on. If I overstate, because it’s the audience’s impression that the lions are moving, obviously they’re not moving. At one point he intercut one shot of one cannon on the battleship firing, and the battleship clearly could not affect what was going on, the lions could not affect what was going on, the mutiny failed, the soldiers won, but I believe, and I may be reading more into this than was there, but I don’t think so, Eisenstein was a brilliant director.

What he was saying, through the brilliance of filmmaking he was also making a statement, which was that the mutiny for the moment was put down, because of the superior power, but there was potential strength in opposition to let you know that maybe, and of course we know it did happen eventually, the people would rise, and the soldiers, though they won that day, would eventually be defeated.

[Clip ends]

• Okay, I’m going to hold this here. For me, this is one of the most insightful and intelligent analysis of any scene in a film, by Roger Corman. It is so succinct and so accurate, I think it’s brilliant. I can’t do better than that, he gets it totally. And the key words there were counterpoint, the cutting from the long shot to the medium close, and then the very close up. The contrast of the movement coming down the steps, and then the one woman with the little son, walking slowly up. The shadow of the soldiers, all those guns, again, the feet, the feet, the marching, the sound, which is obviously echoed in the music itself. So sound is incorporated to enhance, or heighten the emotional impact on the audience. And it screams much louder, I mean, it’s probably only 50, 60 soldiers, but the sound is much louder, it feels like a whole battalion coming, and the long of the rifle always, and the faces hidden, and so on. And this goes to Eisenstein’s main idea, which he theorised, which is not only studied, but is used by every filmmaker on the planet, and many theatre makers. This idea of montage.

And we need to remember that he was the one who came up with it, it hadn’t existed before in filmmaking at all. And the main idea is how do you build tension and momentum? Through a rapid counterpoint of different images, different points of view, different camera angles, this cut from a close up of a face, a hand, a foot, a boot stepping on a neck, a face, the pram going down, but only for a second, and then you cut to something else, and then come back. Planting seeds all the time, and then how to make them resonant and echo in the audience’s imagination, so they become huge. You could probably imagine this written in a script would say “soldiers march down and shoot the people "as they march down the steps.” And then how you turn that into a work of brilliant art to capture an extraordinary moment of fascism, of tyranny, of injustice, and how do you capture the emotional impact is the question. So he manipulates across many different perspectives, and I think there are many things going on in this sequence, but they’re shown in separate frames.

He doesn’t try to overlay too much, but he echoes and repeats, just the chosen ones, the prams, the soldiers, the shadow, the feet, the boots, and so on. He changes the viewer’s perception of time, when those lions, they do look as if they’re getting bigger, but of course they’re not. He’s just using the camera angle, the way he’s angling and looking up at the lion. Even they are getting shocked. Well, who’s really the brutal creatures, the lion? Who’s the barbarian, the lion or the soldier? Time is constantly being expanded and contracted, expanded and contracted by this technique. And you’ve got this ongoing motion of this down the steps, down the steps, and then her motion slowly, up the steps as well. So you’ve got this inexorable drive of the steps, which is capturing the whole movement and then all these other sequences inside it. And it’s, for me, it’s time feels, it’s suddenly expands and contracts, that’s an extraordinary achievement for a film maker, or a theatre maker. And ultimately, this is a hundred years ago, almost, that this is made. The images for me remain quite horrifying, and profoundly moving.

So his idea of montage was this juxtaposition of image. You don’t need to show everything, or just have a camera which follows, because the aim is not just to tell a story, the aim is to produce an emotional effect in the viewer. That’s the brilliance of what Einstein theorised, wrote about, and spent many, many hours trying to understand, and that’s the key, and Corman mentions that early on, he came under fire from the Soviet film community who accused him of abandoning, or not conforming to the doctrines of Socialist realism. And he was forced to issue articles in public of self-criticism about what he was doing. Interestingly, in 1926, this is one year after the film is made, Great Britain banned the film from 1926 until 1954. That’s a hell of a long time if you think about it, to ban one film, not because it was about Bolshevism, but because as the British censor said, “It might stir up other sailors to mutiny against the officers, and those in command and superiority.”

In 1926, the same year as the British, the French burn copies of the film at their customs on arrival. It was banned in Pennsylvania because to quote, as the Pennsylvania legislature said, “It might give American sailors a blueprint "as to how to conduct a mutiny.” While he was in Britain, ‘cause he went, as I said, he travelled afterwards, in the late 20s, early 30s, and he was travelling in Europe, and Britain, and America. He tried to get the ban lifted off the Potemkin film, but he couldn’t, and others tried to help with him, but the British government refused. Extraordinary, one film can have such an impact on global superpowers, that they have to spend a lot of time on banning it as much as other things. Then in 1937, now this is much later after he’s gone to Mexico, America, elsewhere, at the Cinema Workers Conference in Moscow, he is attacked, whether it’s out of jealousy from artists, or whether not conforming to the Socialist realism, or for seeming to be a little bit ambivalent about merely pushing Soviet and Communist propaganda, which is most likely the issue, or for not quite adhering to exactly what Stalin wanted, because Stalin was the one to often hire him, And Stalin would watch his films and give feedback. And if he didn’t like it, he would say it, somehow he survived, Stalin didn’t have him killed.

Anyway, in 1937 at the Cinema Workers Conference in Moscow, he’s forced to make a public apology for his “Political and artistic errors.” And then Stalin said, “Okay, you can live,” basically. But his films were always subject, obviously, to the scrutiny of the Communist Party. As I said, going on a bit about his life, he travels to Western Europe and America in the late 20s, early 30s, going touring all around. That’s where he met some of those people I mentioned and I showed you. Then he went on to Mexico, where he mixed with Frida Kahlo, the amazing, for me, fascinating surrealist painter, she’s amazing when you look at her work today. And Diego Rivera, her partner. Stalin sends a telegram to Eisenstein while he’s in Mexico, of concern, now that this is the level of absolute obsession, I mean he’s running a country, he’s got a revolution, he’s a total dictator, but he keeps tabs on Eisenstein, and you can imagine all the other artists, writers, painters, musicians, and so on. Stalin sends a telegram of concern that Eisenstein has become “A deserter,” and under pressure, Eisenstein blames the younger brother of one of his potential funders in America. He’s under extreme pressure, so he blames somebody who will never be taken back to the Soviet Union. So we all have to live lives.

This is, I just want to show you on a small level how he tries to find a way, all the time, to survive and make his art, make the work, in these extraordinary times that he’s living. Russian Revolution, Second World War, technological innovation, Germany, everything, being part Jewish, the whole thing. His foray to the West made the Stalinist film industry always look at him with suspicion after he came back from the West. 1933, he spends time in a mental hospital, but he recovers, and goes on to make his films, “Ivan the Terrible,” and so on, and always to theorise as well as make and find the money. Okay, I want to show one very short clip to illustrate the example of the idea of montage. And this is from Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” And we all know this absolutely, completely iconic moment here. And it’s exactly the example of juxtaposed two images, the knife, and the woman in the shower. And, Hitchcock is totally using the Einstein technique of montage. Show two contrasting images, and together you’ll produce a meaning out of the two, a third meaning, if you like, and feeling. But the way you do it is to use the technique. Sorry, it’s on this one here that Eisenstein wrote about.

• The most complex, and most important of Eisenstein’s methods of montage was intellectual montage. It was through this kind of montage that he would use cinema to influence the way people think, and garner mass support for the Bolsheviks. The basis of Eisenstein’s montages was the idea of thesis and antithesis. A thesis is one idea, an antithesis is a different or conflicting idea.

• [Narrator 2] The intellectual montage being the synthesis of the thesis, I suppose, the thesis of art, the antithesis of science. So the collision between art and science, this new form of art and science that combined together for what you call this intellectual montage.

• [Narrator] It was through intellectual montage that Eisenstein combined his exploration of film methods with his encounters with the Soviet Union government, thus making it the most important kind of montage, combining all the other methods, and expressing Soviet beliefs. The massively revolutionary work of Sergei Eisenstein was actually mostly Soviet propaganda.

• And what Eisenstein was doing for the government was using his films, feature films, basically as a type of propaganda piece, but heavily artistic. So that’s the difference of some of the Nazi propaganda that was pure propaganda, less artistic, but for Eisenstein it was a propaganda that was very engaging and aesthetic.

• Eisenstein understands he wants to get people to–

[Clip ends]

• Okay, I’m sorry, it’s not on this here, the clip from “Psycho,” where you have the knife, and then the shower, it’s the two objects juxtaposed, which creates the emotional impact in the audience, because you simply see the knife, and you see the woman in the shower. We immediately make the connection in our imagination, so the actual act that comes afterwards is almost a cathartic, but it’s a third step. Eisenstein used obviously the Marxist jargon of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, and so on, the hegalion ideas. But I think he really used it just to placate the Soviet censors. I think he was really interested in understanding how the juxtaposition of images, cause it was happening in surrealism, it was happening in many other art forms as well. Hemingway wrote about it in terms of writing, and James Joyce, and others, the unconscious, et cetera. Dreams, all of this happening around his time, Freudian influence. And I think it’s the notion of counterpoint that is much more interesting, and that’s what Roger Corman uses, that word.

That for me is the key, it’s the counterpoint always, look for the counterpoint, and that’s what he will create in terms of juxtaposing the image, how to tell the story, how to, again, produce the emotional and intellectual effect. So I want to go on to here, this is from “Ivan the Terrible.” And “Ivan the Terrible” is interesting for me, because here he’s taking an historical figure, and what’s fascinating, and I know we’ve spoken often during lockdown, whether it’s the “Cromwell,” whatever, even “Judgement at Nuremberg,” whatever. How you take historical figures, or even iconic figures from history, and how do you portray them in film, which is of course driven by artistic technique, and craft, and fiction, you’ve got to deal with it, otherwise it’s just didactic, boring, or may as well just be a lecture, or it needs to be a documentary with some artistic influence. But how do you then turn it? And I think what this last guy was saying in the previous clip, the Nazi stuff is pure propaganda, and it’s obvious, it’s simple.

For the Nazis, this is right, this is wrong, goodie, baddy, et cetera. But for Eisenstein, he’s always trying to work with the system, incredibly rigid, and vicious system of censorship, he’s always trying to find the artistic. And that means he’s trying to find the eternal human theme inside it. So it’s not only about “Ivan the Terrible,” it’s about a leader who starts out as an innocent, beautiful boy, and becomes turned to becoming a vicious tyrant, and a hunger, a craving for power. Now that could be “Ivan the Terrible,” it could be many people from history, from our own times, whenever. He finds the universal human theme inside it, and that immediately gives the historical figure, the historical event, an entirely different interpretation and artistic portrayal. In “Ivan, the Terrible,” what he’s really looking for is to show how feelings, not only can be produced in the audience, but how emotion dictates to the tyrannical leader, or any leader, dictates their decisions.

So that emotion, not only the mind, rationality, is dictating more and more the decisions which affect millions, or thousands of people. “Ivan the Terrible,” he shows us the sheer tyrannical hunger for power, it could be Ivan, it could be many others. And to draw the viewers in, and engage our deepest feeling and complex thought, it’s the tyranny of power, and the collusion of those who want it. Whether it’s the people who vote for that tyrant, or whether it’s the people who get hypnotically caught up in the kind of movement, the momentum of history, and the crowd, and so on, and emotionally caught up. And how the leader manipulates emotion, but the leader also is making decisions based on emotion. And this for me is an amazing scene, the interview scene, where Ivan, the Terrible interviews a certain Heinrich von Staden, a German guy who’s come for a job.

Basically it’s a job interview, it’s a pretty tough job interview, from Eisenstein. But look how he’s manipulating colour, light and shade like Goya, and like we’ve seen in the Potemkin clip, look how he’s manipulating juxtaposition of image, and how the human face is almost, is exaggerated, in order to show us very specific emotions and thought. That’s Ivan the Terrible.

[Clip plays]

• I’m going to hold it there. So this guy’s come looking to try and help, or get a job as a soldier, and so on, for Ivan the Terrible, and he puts him through this extraordinary tension, which escalates through silence, the eyes, the glance, the look. It’s a very intimate filmmaking, very different to the grand, the big spectacle image of the Odessa Steps. And here, what for me, what he’s doing, Eisenstein, he’s going right inside the mind, and the tyrant is just toying, he’s just toying like a cat with a mouse, just toying. Is he going to have him killed, going to let him live? And you see the glee on the others, as they scent prey and blood, that Ivan might actually kill him, and chop his head off or whatever.

So I just wanted to show a little how Eisenstein works with an intimate scene the same idea of montage. Juxtaposed the faces, the light, the eyes, and it’s intentional that the acting is very heightened, or exaggerated. It’s intentional, so that the image burns into us again. He’s trying to maximise the emotional effect through the juxtaposition of images. And that image will burn into us, 'cause the eyes, it’s ridiculous on the one hand, it’s laughable, it’s gothic, it’s absurd, it’s silly, and so on, melodramatic. But something about it lures us in, and it’s that tension, how he creates the dramatic tension amongst all these figures and eyes. And then in contrast to this, we have one of the great dance scenes from “Ivan the Terrible.” And here this scene is really about are they going to be ordered to kill the others with axes, if they don’t obey.

[Clips plays]

• Okay, I’m going to hold it there. In this dance scene, obviously he’s using some Russian folk dance movements, and other things, et cetera. But what interests me is how the crowd gets going, how the crowd here is getting swept up, almost in an orgy, which could go towards violence, it could go towards sexuality, it could go towards celebration. It’s teetering on dangerous edges all the time, and we never know which way it’s going to go. And that’s through the tension of juxtaposing with the music, the remarkable music of Prokofiev, but the tension of juxtaposing which one when, and that’s precisely the technique that he does in Potemkin, that he does in the other sequences, and that he brought to film, because it’s telling a story. You know, who’s going to be killed? Who isn’t? Who’s really into it, who isn’t? It’s almost “Lord of the Fly,” stuff, you know? “Kill the pig, cut his throat, spill the blood.” You can feel the ritual of “Lord of the Flies,” feel the ritual of people who’ve lost it, just craving blood, or killing, or vengeance, whatever, and at the same time there’s a edge of control.

So it’s a playing with the dangerous, but exciting areas of human, group crowd experience, and how it’s all being crafted by Ivan, of course. So it’s the leader, and the mass, in this case, you know, his hirelings. So, but for me it’s how he’s creating all these things as we go along that is really fascinating. So just to show, this shows you a couple of clips of such a variety, and there are many, many more in “Ivan the Terrible,” “Potemkin,” “Alexander Nevsky” and so on. He also broke down every little bit of, in theatre Stanislavski at the time, in the Moscow Art Theatre, called it “The beats,” where you break down every tiny little change. And here he broke it down, and he called it “The essential bone structure.” Every element of the film image is what we now call a storyboard. We storyboard every image all the time, and you try and film according to that. You film according to a storyboard, not just the story, and that originates with Eisenstein, what he called “The bone structure.” And that’s why the actors have seemingly non-human, or inhuman poses, so that we, the viewer, can see every minute gesture in the eye, the look, the glance, ironically we can go deeper by them almost appearing a little bit more inhuman.

It’s a hodgepodge of visual styles, of gothic, of tragedy, melodrama, satire, comedy, all of it, it doesn’t matter, it’s mixed because it’s driven by this idea again, of the montage. And we end up with a fragmented, contradictory understanding of human nature. That’s the brilliance of what the technique of the montage creates ultimately in the audience, which I think is quite amazing. And how do we live out love, affection, tyranny, crowds, power, state power, individual power? And he’s taking this, and yes, of course, he’s certainly aware of Stalinism, and other mass fascist movements, but trying to find a deeper way in all ways, which is the artistic, humanist impulse, to try and understand why and how, not just present a two-dimensional propaganda image. When Stalin actually commissioned “Ivan the Terrible,” and he expected Eisenstein to celebrate Ivan as the first czar, progressive, visionary leader, founder of the unified, centralised, modern Russian state, which of course Stalin wanted that as his own image. The way it made it tricky was that of course Stalin has carried out his own ruthless campaign of terror, which Ivan does.

So Eisenstein walks that very fine razors edge between satirising Stalinism, and following the story of Ivan as the leader. Is it worth all the deaths, all the violence, in order to have the state ends and means the endless human debates? But he brings that endless human quality theme into it all the time. So it wasn’t only a shrewd critique of Stalin, but it raises profound questions of the nature of power, violence, crowd, tyranny, and state power, not only individual power. So it’s all of this is ultimately used to explore how Ivan goes from an innocent kid to absolute power, and tyranny, and violence. There are all sorts of complications, how the film was made, because of the Germans, and it’s about the Teutonic knights coming to invade, and trying to stop it, et cetera. Anyway, aside from all that, that’s more interesting historically, what we’re looking at here is more of artistry. He’s Artistic Director of the Moscow Film Studio. He’s put in charge as the Germans get closer to Moscow. He is responsible for taking all the filmmakers, including the propagandists, all the way to Kazakhstan. Stalin sends them all there to make the propaganda films against the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. He died in 1948, at the age of 50.

For me, he’s achieved so much in theory, in technique, in artistry, in trying to understand human nature, engaging, not being scared, to get letters from Stalin, and write back to Stalin. Goebbels, to go off to America and meet those people, England, elsewhere. He wins Stalin prizes, he wins the Order of Lennon, and he goes on to make “Alexander Nevsky,” which unfortunately I’m not really going to have the time for. But I wanted to do, which is a another amazing film, but I’d rather go into a bit of depth with less, than try and skim over more, because this is one of the great, great filmmakers of all time, and the great pioneers in terms of, as I said, artistry, technique, and if you like, intellectual endeavour to understand the theory of filmmaking, which he has given, or bequeathed to everybody today, so many follow all of this, a single filmmaker that I’ve ever heard of who doesn’t refer back to him. This is one of the last shots in Ivan the terrible. Those are all the people, now, are they merely his ants? Are they his functionaries? Are they peasants? Are they just the people? Why is that a snaking crowd, a snake image? He introduces us for the first time, and here’s Ivan. Is he haunted by the terror and the evil that he’s done? Is he not? Is he reflective?

The great leader figure, the image of the face, and all the people, he has absolute power. They are mere ants, they can be squashed in a second and killed, they can be allowed to live, they can go on a trek, God knows where, or whatever. He has absolute power, and he’s established. But is he happy? Is he relaxed? Is he calm? Certainly not. Is he plagued, and tormented, and tortured? All of these ambiguities are in the face, and that’s Eisenstein directing, and creating not a simple solution at all, but ultimately his obsession with authority, and power, and the state, and how do you show this effectively in film? Okay, so thank you everybody. I’ll hold it there, and hold on “Alexander Nevsky,” and other stuff done by Eisenstein.

• [Host] Thanks David, do you have time for a few questions?

Q&A and Comments

• Yeah, sure. Okay. So aimed the score, yeah, Prokofiev, absolutely. Marion, come out of Liverpool, I don’t even know, don’t tell me the score please. Okay, Rose, “Thanks for your,” okay, “my South African accent.” Yeah, well that’s there forever, thank you.

Q: Ron, “What about his films upset the Soviets?” A: Well, he didn’t conform to, they wanted Socialist realism, they didn’t want his experimenting, and his idea of montage, and his bringing artistry into it, and the juxtaposition of images and so on. They just wanted Socialist realism. Here’s the bank manager who’s the baddy, and here’s the bank clerK, or here’s the peasant and here’s the farmer and there’s the landowner, whatever, they wanted very simplified propaganda, basically, And what they called Socialist realism. And they wanted realism, it’s as close to mirroring so-called real life as possible, and not all this artistry. And I think they could obviously sense that he’s at least questioning what is a leader? What is a tyrant? What is state power? All these things that I mentioned earlier. He’s challenging.

Q: Romaine, “What current directors pay homage?” A: Well, Brian De Palma in “The Untouchables,” the scene with the pram, and Kevin Costner grabs it at the last second, shoots. The shooting of the guy in the eye of Bugsy Siegel. Then there’s Woody Allen, uses a similar scene a couple of times, the step scene basically. And “The Godfather” at the end of “The Godfather,” the opera in Palermo, where Pacino and the daughter are walking down the steps, and they get shot by the killer from the bottom, the very end of “Godfather 2,” I think it is, or was it 3? Anyway, two, I can’t remember, the steps again. And there’s so many others, I could go on. Hitchcock, the scene of the knife and the female character in behind the shower curtain, and then the stabbing scene.

Ron, “Interesting notes by Roger Corman. Read Between the Lions on the steps of Russia.” Reading between the lions, yeah, exactly, great. But even just take something as simple as a statue, and an ordinary filmmaker would just, “Okay, there’s the statue of the lions. Wouldn’t think, "Well actually I can make those lions seem animated and shocked at what the soldiers are doing.” Who’s really the barbarian on the block?

Francine, “The shadow in Ivan the Terrible looks like a Russian Black bear.” Great. Barbara, “These films have unbelievable power.” Yeah, and these are a hundred years ago, 90-100 years ago, and let’s never forget he’s pioneering all of this. None of this has been done before, and with the light and everything. Estelle, “A lot of red in the dance scene.” Yeah, absolutely, before Technic, yeah. I mean if we can do it with all the colour now, we digitise, et cetera. I’ve just chosen to show in the more original. Teddy, “I thought there’s a period of silent movies and colour only came out later.” Yeah, I mean the colour and sound issue as well, when he uses it, when he doesn’t. Part of the reason he went to Hollywood was because he wanted to talk to Chaplain about sound in silent film, and others, not only Chaplain, and Walt Disney, and many others. He was fascinated how Disney, Walt Disney, was trying to do it with animation. So he was completely in touch with all the artists. I think his main passion was absolutely the artistry of filmmaking. But because of the historical times, he can’t ignore, he takes it on fully, instead of trying to avoid it.

Q: Romaine, “Think Kubrick was a follower?” A: Yes. There are certain scenes which Kubrick is absolutely, I mean he references them, without doubt.

Q: Beverly, “Do you have any comment on William Kendrick’s film techniques?” A: For me, yes, wherever you have the idea of montage, I mean, it’s now it’s almost a cliche, and it’s so well known nobody really talks about it, but it originates with him. If you look at films before, D.W. Griffiths, and maybe some others, but the films before, they just try and tell the story, they are not aware of producing emotion by editing contrasting images, to tell the story with emotion.

Donna, “Thank you, everyone, thank you.” Okay, Henry,

Q: “Is Ivan a reflection of Stalin?” A: I think it is, I think he’s taking on Stalin without a doubt. With Stalin maybe a little bit aware. But Stalin knows that he’s, he lets him live, and lets him make it. In fact Stalin commissions it, commissions him, and Stalin watched some of the rushes. So in the end he didn’t like it, but he agreed it was okay.

Okay, Dino, “Thank you.” Myrna “Tarantino?” Yes, there are references with Tarantino, without a doubt, there’s too many to go into now, but I really come back to what I said at the beginning, for me, he’s the Freud, the pioneer, the originator of so many of these approaches, and what we just take totally for granted today in film.

Okay, thank you very much everybody, hope you have a wonderful rest of Saturday and Sunday.