Eisenstein
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.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few figures in the history of cinema loom as large as Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, the Soviet master whose revolutionary techniques transformed film from a novelty into an art form, and Eisenstein by Yon Barna stands as one of the most authoritative biographical accounts of this cinematic titan. Barna chronicles the director's turbulent life from his bourgeois origins in Riga, through his formative years in revolutionary Russia, to his celebrated creation of landmark films such as Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible, capturing both the extraordinary creative genius and the immense personal and political pressures Eisenstein endured under Stalin's regime. With a foreword by the distinguished film historian Jay Leyda, this volume benefits from an insider's scholarly context, lending additional weight to Barna's meticulous research and vivid narrative. Barna's prose is precise yet deeply evocative, presenting Eisenstein not merely as a filmmaker but as a complex intellectual whose theories of montage permanently altered the grammar of visual storytelling. The biography illuminates the painful contradictions of artistic ambition colliding with Soviet censorship, detailing projects left unfinished and masterworks suppressed, painting a portrait of a man perpetually at war with the forces that both enabled and constrained his genius. For anyone passionate about film history, world cinema, or the relationship between art and political power, this biography raises a compelling question: can true artistic freedom ever exist within the machinery of a totalitarian state?
Author: Yon Barna
Format: Hardback
Published: 1973, Secker & Warburg
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few figures in the history of cinema loom as large as Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, the Soviet master whose revolutionary techniques transformed film from a novelty into an art form, and Eisenstein by Yon Barna stands as one of the most authoritative biographical accounts of this cinematic titan. Barna chronicles the director's turbulent life from his bourgeois origins in Riga, through his formative years in revolutionary Russia, to his celebrated creation of landmark films such as Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible, capturing both the extraordinary creative genius and the immense personal and political pressures Eisenstein endured under Stalin's regime. With a foreword by the distinguished film historian Jay Leyda, this volume benefits from an insider's scholarly context, lending additional weight to Barna's meticulous research and vivid narrative. Barna's prose is precise yet deeply evocative, presenting Eisenstein not merely as a filmmaker but as a complex intellectual whose theories of montage permanently altered the grammar of visual storytelling. The biography illuminates the painful contradictions of artistic ambition colliding with Soviet censorship, detailing projects left unfinished and masterworks suppressed, painting a portrait of a man perpetually at war with the forces that both enabled and constrained his genius. For anyone passionate about film history, world cinema, or the relationship between art and political power, this biography raises a compelling question: can true artistic freedom ever exist within the machinery of a totalitarian state?