Eisenstein, Cinema, and History

Among early directors, Sergei Eisentein stands alone as the maker of a fully historical cinema. James Goodwin treats issues of revolutionary history and historical representation as central to an understanding of Eisentein's work, which explores two movements within Soviet history and consciousness: the Bolshevik Revolution and the Stalinist state. Goodwin articulates intersections between Eisentein's ideas and aspects of the thought of Walter Benjamin, Georg Luk¦cs, Ernst Bloch, and Bertolt Brecht. He also shows how the formal properties and filmic techniques of each work reveal perspectives on history . Individual chapters focus on *Strike, Battleship Potemkin, October, Old* *and New,* projects of the 1930s, *Alexander Nevsky,* and *Ivan the* *Terrible.*