Word: eisenstein
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...changing everyone's ideas of what films could be even while Intolerance was in production, dealt with members of two families in a historical context, tracing individuals' emotions through a war. The Expressionist practice of basing films on myths about existence postulates Intolerance by a few years, and Eisenstein's theory that films are the interplay of ideas cannot be found in the period before Intolerance -the period Eisenstein regarded as "prehistory." Finally, the embodiment of abstract themes in specific characters-the narrative feature film as we know it-was developed by Griffith only after this grand experiment...
Still, the proceedings-adapted from Peter Shaffer's opulent play-are well managed by Director Irving Lerner in a style that might be called Eisenstein modern, and devotees of the Hollywood spectacular will cherish the bravado of the two leading actors. Robert Shaw bellows and glowers in his ornate armor like a psyched-up Errol Flynn. Christopher Plummer, in cloak, loincloth, gold necklaces and flowing hair, looks like the lead singer of a particularly exotic rock group, and his attempts at a Peruvian dialect occasionally make him sound like one. His performance is unabashed camp, consisting about equally...
...personal experience and development in which the characters expressed whatever the film's makers wanted to say. The physical and spiritual effect of events on the characters was the means of describing their physical and social environments. (An example of a different sort of drama is seen in Eisenstein. He composed masses of people in images whose dynamics directly express his intended meaning without the mediation--reactions--of individual figures...
...classical" is tossed around a lot ("classical" is what you say when you know someone is a great film-maker but can't explain why except in literary terms--Hawks being the prime example of a victim of creeping "classicism"). Strictly speaking there are two classical directors, Griffith and Eisenstein, both of whom continue to exert a major influence over all narrative film-making. In one sense all narrative is "classical" in that cutting dependent on continuity of movement is basic montage (two shots put together to imply a nonexistent visual relationship) and consequently follows the teaching of Eisenstein...
...feels Eisenstein's intelligence at work in every frame of the film. What is most fascinating about Potemkin is ultimately very individualistic. It is the virtuosity of the director. The drama of Potemkin is of an artist making a masterpiece out of his raw materials as we watch. Motion is created before our eyes, from still shots, as in the montage on the steps, or the three shots of stone lions whose juxtaposition makes the Czarist lion seem to stand up and roar. The very astringency of the proletariat form seemed to bare, as in any stylized form, the sinews...