Eisenstein was a Russian director, screenwriter and film theoretician. He began his career in the Moscow theatre group
Proletkult under Vsevolod Meyerhold guidance. He began by directing theatre plays and, after some time, entered a career in film. This, in turn, led him to write numerous essays on topics such as the editing of attraction, clashing scenes, associative editing and intellectual film. In 1924, he made his first film
Strike (Stachka), followed by the masterpiece
The Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin, 1925), which made him world famous. Although he later made
October (Oktyabr, 1928),
The Battleship Potemkin remains the last film over whose production he had complete control. Despite the fact that he was always politically connected and favored Stalin’s regime, he had many problems with censorship, and managed to finish only seven films, leaving many of his projects unfinished. After the film
Old and New/The General Line (Staroye i novoye, 1929), he made
ˇQue Viva Mexico! (1932) in Mexico. Due to a lack of financial resources, he never finished this film, and left the recorded material in the US. His other films include
Aleksandr Nevsky (Aleksandr Nevsky, 1938),
Ivan the Terrible, Part One (Ivan Groznyj I, 1945) and
Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyar's Plot (Ivan Groznyj II: Boyarsky zagovor, 1958). Eisenstein died at the age of fifty. He never completed his trilogy about Ivan Groznyj.
Filmography
-Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyar's Plot (Ivan Groznyj II: Boyarsky zagovor, 1958).
-Ivan the Terrible, Part I (Ivan Groznyj I, 1945)
-Aleksandr Nevsky (Aleksandr Nevsky, 1938)
-ˇQue Viva Mexico! (1932) (unfinished)
-Old and New/The General Line (Staroye i novoye, 1929)
-October (Oktyabr, 1928)
-The Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin, 1925)
-Strike (Stachka, 1924)