Through theater to cinema

1. Sergi Eisenstein Through theater to cinema

2. Early 1920s • The Soviet cinema • Two of its features • Primo: photo-fragments of nature are recorded • Secundo: these fragments are combined in various ways • The shot (or frame) and montage

3. Photography: system of reproduction to fix real events and elements of actuality • Abstract formalism, with remnants of reality • Class-determined tendency • An arbitrary cinematographic relation to the object placed

4. The frame is much less independently workable than the word or the sound • Considering as material for the purpose of composition, the shot is more resistant than granite • Montage becomes the mightiest means for a really important creative remolding of nature

5. The minimum “distortable” fragment of nature is the shot; ingenuity in its combinations is montage • Not opposed to nor can they replace • The problem of story • Cinema principles

6. His film career is said to have begun with his production of Ostrovsky’s play, Enough Simplicity in Every Sage, at the Proletcult Theatre (Moscow, March 1923). • Not true: based solely on the fact that this production contained a short comic film • True: based on the character of the production • The first sign of a cinema tendency: one showing events with the least distortion

7. Beginning 3 years earlier • The Mexican (from Jack London’s story) • The play’s climax is the prize-fight • Take place backstage • The bull-fight in Carmen • First move: propose that the fight be brought into view

8. Working in the Stanislavskysystem • In turn was used as a means to affect the audience • In the fight scene the audience was excited directly • Employed realistic, even textural means - real fighting

9. His realization that he had struck new ore, an actual-materialistic element in theater • The tendency developed • From illusionary acting movement • Acrobatics • A gesture expands into gymnastics • rage is expressed through a somersault • exaltation through a salto-mortale • lyricism on “the mast of death.”

10. “real doing” & “pictorial imagination” • Tretiakov’s Gas Masks (1923-24) • “on the shelf” • October is pure “typage” • The overwhelming passions • The production of The Sage: the stage was shaped like a circus arena • The dialogue thus colliding, creating new meanings and sometimes wordplays

11. “Cutting” increased in tempo • Never became comical for comedy’s sake, but stuck to its theme, sharpened by its scenic embodiment • A piece of film • How neutral it remains • Wise and wicked art of reediting the work of others • Esther Schub, the Vassiliyev brothers, reworking ingeniously the films imported after the revolution

12. One montage tour de force of this sort, executed by Boitler • Danton • 2 tiny cuts reversed the entire significance of this scene • An “aroma” of montage in the new “left” cinema

13. Flaubert gave us one of the finest examples of cross-montage of dialogues • Madame Bovary • The young man was explaining to the young women that these irresistible attractions find their cause in some previous state of experience • Whose climax is reached through a continuation of this cross-cutting & word-play • “Chase tempos”

14. Meyerhold had not yet worked out • The actors on roller skates carried themselves about: the stage, “piece of city” • The intersection of man and milieu • The cubists • The “urbanistic” paintings of Picasso were of less importance here than the need to express the dynamics of the city – glimpses of facades, hands, legs, pillars, heads, domes • Special cubism of Gogol

15. Close-ups cut into views of a city • A film element that tried to fit itself into the stubborn stage • Double & multiple exposure – “superimposing” images of man onto images of buildings • “infantile malady of leftism” existing in these first steps of cinema

16. Potemkin • Not by trickery or double-exposure or mechanical intersection • But by the general structure of the composition • In the theater, the impossibility of the mise-en-scѐne • Sculptural details seen through the frame of the cadre, or shot, transitions from shot to shot, appeared to be the logical way out for the threatened hypertrophy of the mise-en-scѐne • Born the concept of mise-en-cadre • As the mise-en-scѐne is an interrelation of people in action, so the mise-en-cadre is the pictorial composition of mutually dependent cadres (shots) in a montage sequence

17. Theater accessories in the midst of real factory plastics appeared ridiculous • Strike [1924-25] reflected our production of Gas Masks • Insist on an understanding of the mass as hero • No screen had ever before reflected an image of collective action • Deviation: natural & necessary • Screen be first penetrated by the general image, the collective united & propelled by one wish, “individuality within the collective”

18. 1924 “Down with the story & the plot!” • The story “an attack of individualism,” returns in a fresh form, to its proper place • Lies the historical importance of the third half-decade of Soviet cinematography (1930-35) • The “story” film & the embroynes of the “plotless” film are calming down • Filmic diction, technique of the frame, theory of montage • Have another credit: traditions & methodology of literature • The cinema embodies the philosophy & ideology of the victorious proletariat

19. The new quality of literature • Forward to the synthesis of all the best done by our silent cinematography, towards today along the lines of story & Marxist-Leninist ideological analysis • The phase of socialist realism • Typage: the Commedia dell’arte • In audience conditioning