Sergei Eisenstein And Upton Sinclair: The Making & Unmaking Of Que Viva Mexico!
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: Previous owner
Few collaborations in cinema history have been as turbulent, visionary, and ultimately tragic as the partnership between Soviet master filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and American socialist novelist Upton Sinclair, whose ill-fated joint venture to create an epic portrait of Mexico in the early 1930s stands as one of the great unfinished monuments of world cinema. This meticulously assembled volume, edited by Harry M. Geduld and Ronald Gottesman, chronicles the dramatic rise and catastrophic collapse of ¡Que Viva Mexico! through a rich trove of primary documents — including letters, telegrams, contracts, and personal accounts — that lay bare the clash of artistic ambition, financial pressure, and ideological difference that doomed the project. Beyond its value as a forensic account of a legendary production, the collection illuminates the broader tensions between art and commerce, between the revolutionary impulse and the demands of capital, that defined so much of twentieth-century cultural life. Eisenstein's bold, montage-driven aesthetic vision — conceived on location amid Mexico's ancient landscapes and vibrant traditions — collides on every page with Sinclair's increasingly desperate calculations as a producer and financier. Geduld and Gottesman present their editorial hand with scholarly precision, yet the assembled documents carry the raw urgency of a real human drama. For anyone captivated by cinema history, the politics of artistic patronage, or the myth of the masterpiece that never was, this volume asks a question that still haunts film scholars: what might Eisenstein's Mexico have become?
Author: Harry M. Geduld & Ronald Gottesman
Format: Hardback
Published: 1970, Thames and Hudson
Genre: Movies & entertainment
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: Previous owner
Few collaborations in cinema history have been as turbulent, visionary, and ultimately tragic as the partnership between Soviet master filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and American socialist novelist Upton Sinclair, whose ill-fated joint venture to create an epic portrait of Mexico in the early 1930s stands as one of the great unfinished monuments of world cinema. This meticulously assembled volume, edited by Harry M. Geduld and Ronald Gottesman, chronicles the dramatic rise and catastrophic collapse of ¡Que Viva Mexico! through a rich trove of primary documents — including letters, telegrams, contracts, and personal accounts — that lay bare the clash of artistic ambition, financial pressure, and ideological difference that doomed the project. Beyond its value as a forensic account of a legendary production, the collection illuminates the broader tensions between art and commerce, between the revolutionary impulse and the demands of capital, that defined so much of twentieth-century cultural life. Eisenstein's bold, montage-driven aesthetic vision — conceived on location amid Mexico's ancient landscapes and vibrant traditions — collides on every page with Sinclair's increasingly desperate calculations as a producer and financier. Geduld and Gottesman present their editorial hand with scholarly precision, yet the assembled documents carry the raw urgency of a real human drama. For anyone captivated by cinema history, the politics of artistic patronage, or the myth of the masterpiece that never was, this volume asks a question that still haunts film scholars: what might Eisenstein's Mexico have become?