Eisenstein: Cinema, Power, Women

Eisenstein: Cinema, Power, Women is an impartial study of one of the masters of early Soviet cinema by a historian and archivist. Vladimir Zabrodin goes beyond the myths about Eisenstein promulgated by two generations of Soviet biographers. More importantly he reveals the way Eisenstein himself created myths, a technique he used in his memoirs, and how the great director distorted the events of his own life, “refining” them in accordance with the aesthetic that he developed. The book presents a wide array of Eisenstein’s correspondence — with his mother, lovers, colleagues, friends and party functionaries — as well as drafts of articles and his daily journal. Readers can observe the contradictory process of an extraordinary personality as it emerges and develops, from Eisenstein’s early years to the period of his creative maturity. Zabrodin allows Eisenstein to speak for himself, and supplies readers merely with the necessary clarifications and remarks, the goal of which is to place Eisenstein in as many relevant contexts as possible. As a result, while at first blush the book seems to have a mosaic structure, it obtains the clarity and conclusiveness of a portrait of a person seen against the background of his era.