A film review by Jamie Stuart
Sergei Eisenstein was cinema’s foremost
proponent of montage theory. He argued that the sum was greater than the
individual parts and was thus comparable to Marx’s dialectic. His writings,
including “Film Form,” are as ubiquitous to film students as Syd Field’s
“Screenplay” is to fledgling screenwriters. The problem with the former is
that it attempts to explain in literary terms what its author best described
through filmed images, and the problem with the latter is that it was written by
somebody who’s never actually had anything of his filmed.
I had the pleasure of watching Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Parts I
& II, at the Walter Reade Theater yesterday as part of its Soviet Sounds
series. It was an awesome experience to see Eisenstein’s work on the big
screen. His first feature, The Battleship Potemkin, is uniformly
considered to be one of the ten greatest films ever made. He had a preternatural
sense of composition and editing, influencing everybody from Orson Welles (Falstaff:
The Chimes at Midnight) to Stanley Kubrick (Full Metal Jacket, Barry
Lyndon) to Brian DePalma (The Untouchables).
Eisenstein’s greatest fault as a filmmaker was that
he was better known for his ideas expressed about film than his ideas expressed
on film. His work took place under the auspices of Stalinist Soviet Union, and
therefore had to conform to its standards. Alexander Nevsky, generally
regarded a masterpiece, is possibly the jokiest, most blatant piece of appeasing
war propaganda I’ve ever seen. Stanley Kubrick, whose sense of composition was
obviously inspired by Eisenstein, often accused him of being nothing more than a
“visualist,” and claimed to greatly prefer watching Charlie Chaplin’s
films because they were about ideas.
Ivan the Terrible was originally intended as a 3-part film, however,
Eisenstein had worked on only two of them before his death in 1948. The acting
is highly stylized and impressionistic, almost comical at times. There’s a
slight distance to the drama, as it’s never entirely told from Ivan’s point
of view, allowing equal screen time for his plotters. It does set up an
interesting modern conundrum, in that while he is the main character, it’s hard to decide whether to actually root for him. Was this
isolated despot an admirable character, or did he live up to his name? Those
seeking to undo him, including the powerful clergy and aristocrats, are no less
self-interested. We’re shown through great spectacle how scheming and ruthless
they all were -- all battling for their own gain under the banner of Russia’s
glory -- however, it’s Ivan, who in Communist terms battled for secular rule
and an end to inherited wealth, that is seen in the right.
My companion commented afterward that it could just as easily have been a silent
film. She was right. The film theory is so refined that it truly is a story told
with pictures. It would do a lot of modern filmmakers a monster service to
return to a film like this to see how pictures should be assembled.
It’s great that venues like Lincoln Center show films like this. There are too
many older films that were designed for the big screen before TV or home video
had ever been conceived of. Watching these films at home renders them more study
objects than anything else, rather than the full blown experiences they were
intended to be.
(“Soviet Sounds: Russian and Soviet Composers in the Cinema” plays from
January 24-30, at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center. For a complete
schedule go to: Eisenstein’s greatest fault as a filmmaker was that
he was better known for his ideas expressed about film than his ideas expressed
on film. His work took place under the auspices of Stalinist Soviet Union, and
therefore had to conform to its standards. Alexander Nevsky, generally
regarded a masterpiece, is possibly the jokiest, most blatant piece of appeasing
war propaganda I’ve ever seen. Stanley Kubrick, whose sense of composition was
obviously inspired by Eisenstein, often accused him of being nothing more than a
“visualist,” and claimed to greatly prefer watching Charlie Chaplin’s
films because they were about ideas.
Ivan the Terrible was originally intended as a 3-part film, however,
Eisenstein had worked on only two of them before his death in 1948. The acting
is highly stylized and impressionistic, almost comical at times. There’s a
slight distance to the drama, as it’s never entirely told from Ivan’s point
of view, allowing equal screen time for his plotters. It does set up an
interesting modern conundrum, in that while he is the main character, it’s hard to decide whether to actually root for him. Was this
isolated despot an admirable character, or did he live up to his name? Those
seeking to undo him, including the powerful clergy and aristocrats, are no less
self-interested. We’re shown through great spectacle how scheming and ruthless
they all were -- all battling for their own gain under the banner of Russia’s
glory -- however, it’s Ivan, who in Communist terms battled for secular rule
and an end to inherited wealth, that is seen in the right.
My companion commented afterward that it could just as easily have been a silent
film. She was right. The film theory is so refined that it truly is a story told
with pictures. It would do a lot of modern filmmakers a monster service to
return to a film like this to see how pictures should be assembled.
It’s great that venues like Lincoln Center show films like this. There are too
many older films that were designed for the big screen before TV or home video
had ever been conceived of. Watching these films at home renders them more study
objects than anything else, rather than the full blown experiences they were
intended to be.
(“Soviet Sounds: Russian and Soviet Composers in the Cinema” plays from
January 24-30, at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center. For a complete
schedule go to: www.filmlinc.com)
-Copyright 2003 by
Jamie
Stuart