Some thoughts on Eisenstein

Reading: Sergei Eisenstein, "The Dramaturgy of Film Form (The Dialectical Approach to Film Form)"

The idea at the heart of Eisenstein is simple: conflict creates meaning. Because conflict creates meaning, and meaning has power, the root of cinema is within montage.

Simple, right?

There is no theory writing (that I've seen yet, anyway) quite like Eisenstein's. If I thought Vertov was manic, Eisenstein must have been his teacher. The reading says they were colleagues. That makes sense.

The layout of this piece is essentially montage itself. He is heavy-handed; he writes each phrase (albeit excitedly) with the intention of creating methodological building blocks. He communicates such a simple principle in a completely convoluted, conflicting way (which, of course, is the root of the principle itself).

My impression of Eisenstein is one of a mad scientist, a man in a laboratory that has somehow been converted into a place where film can be studied, looking as he does at a shot as "molecule" which "explodes" out of division into meaning (269). His language is scientific and haughty, but frenzied. I find his style stressful, which makes me question if I'll ever be able to fully engage with his writings, though the conclusions he draws about the nature of cinema hold impressively true today.