37 Facts About Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein was a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage.

Sergei Eisenstein was born on 22 January 1898 in Riga, Latvia, to a middle-class family.

Sergei Eisenstein's family moved frequently in his early years, as Eisenstein continued to do throughout his life.

Sergei Eisenstein's father, the architect Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein, was born in the Kiev Governorate, to a Jewish merchant father, Osip, and a Swedish mother.

Sergei Eisenstein was raised as an Orthodox Christian, but became an atheist later in life.

At the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, Sergei Eisenstein studied architecture and engineering, the profession of his father.

In 1920, Sergei Eisenstein was transferred to a command position in Minsk, after success providing propaganda for the October Revolution.

Sergei Eisenstein moved to Moscow in 1920, and began his career in theatre working for Proletkult, an experimental Soviet artistic institution which aspired to radically modify existing artistic forms and create a revolutionary working-class aesthetic.

Sergei Eisenstein began his career as a theorist in 1923, by writing "The Montage of Attractions" for art journal LEF.

For Sergei Eisenstein it was an opportunity to see landscapes and cultures outside the Soviet Union.

Sergei Eisenstein spent the next two years touring and lecturing in Berlin, Zurich, London, and Paris.

Sergei Eisenstein accepted a short-term contract for $100,000 and arrived in Hollywood in May 1930, along with Aleksandrov and Tisse.

Sergei Eisenstein proposed a biography of arms dealer Basil Zaharoff and a film version of Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw, and more fully developed plans for a film of Sutter's Gold by Blaise Cendrars, but on all accounts failed to impress the studio's producers.

Sergei Eisenstein completed a script by the start of October 1930, but Paramount disliked it and, additionally, they found themselves attacked by Major Pease, president of the Hollywood Technical Director's Institute.

On October 23,1930, by "mutual consent", Paramount and Sergei Eisenstein declared their contract null and void, and the Sergei Eisenstein party were treated to return tickets to Moscow at Paramount's expense.

Sergei Eisenstein was faced with being seen a failure in the USSR.

Sergei Eisenstein had long been fascinated by Mexico and had wanted to make a film about the country.

At their departure Sergei Eisenstein had not yet determined a direction or subject for his film, and only several months later produced a brief outline of a six-part film; this, he promised, would be developed, in one form or another, into a final plan he would settle on for his project.

Under pressure, Sergei Eisenstein blamed Mary Sinclair's younger brother, Hunter Kimbrough, who had been sent along to act as a line producer, for the film's problems.

Sergei Eisenstein hoped to pressure the Sinclairs to insinuate themselves between him and Stalin, so Sergei Eisenstein could finish the film in his own way.

Sergei Eisenstein toured the American South instead of going directly to New York.

Sergei Eisenstein never saw any of the Sinclair-Lesser films, nor a later effort by his first biographer, Marie Seton, called Time in the Sun, released in 1940.

Sergei Eisenstein apparently spent some time in a mental hospital in Kislovodsk in July 1933, ostensibly a result of depression born of his final acceptance that he would never be allowed to edit the Mexican footage.

Sergei Eisenstein was assigned a teaching position at the State Institute of Cinematography where he had taught earlier, and in 1933 and 1934 was in charge of writing the curriculum.

Sergei Eisenstein unilaterally decided to film two versions of the scenario, one for adult viewers and one for children; failed to define a clear shooting schedule; and shot film prodigiously, resulting in cost overruns and missed deadlines.

Sergei Eisenstein returned to teaching, and was assigned to direct Richard Wagner's Die Walkure at the Bolshoi Theatre.

Sergei Eisenstein corresponded with Prokofiev from Alma-Ata, and was joined by him there in 1942.

Sergei Eisenstein's contemporaries believed that Eisenstein was gay, though it is possible that he was celibate all his life.

Sergei Eisenstein suffered a heart attack on 2 February 1946, and spent much of the following year recovering.

Sergei Eisenstein died of a second heart attack on 11 February 1948, at the age of 50.

Sergei Eisenstein briefly attended the film school established by Lev Kuleshov and the two were both fascinated with the power of editing to generate meaning and elicit emotion.

Sergei Eisenstein felt the "collision" of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors.

Sergei Eisenstein believed that an idea should be derived from the juxtaposition of two independent shots, bringing an element of collage into film.

Sergei Eisenstein taught film-making during his career at VGIK where he wrote the curricula for the directors' course; his classroom illustrations are reproduced in Vladimir Nizhnii's Lessons with Sergei Eisenstein.

Sergei Eisenstein's narratives eschewed individual characters and addressed broad social issues, especially class conflict.

Sergei Eisenstein used groups as characters, and the roles were filled with untrained people from the appropriate classes; he avoided casting stars.

Sergei Eisenstein later passed these drawings to Andrei Moskvin for safekeeping, and after perestroika Moskvin's heirs sold them abroad.