The Cinema of Eisenstein

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Summary: A Film Freak's Guide to the Great Eisenstein
Review: David Bordwell, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, has produced as complete and insightful a guide to the cinemagraphic artistry of Sergei Eisenstein as any film lover could hope for. In addition to covering the director's life and "rehabilitation" to rightful prominence years after his death, Dr. Bordwell spends measured time dissecting and describing Eisenstein's theories of montage and "Social Realist" cinema in a most understandable and fluent way. For anyone who has marveled at the dramatic power of the "Odessa Steps" sequence in "The Battleship Potempkin" or the heroic sweep of "Alexander Nevsky," this book will take you behind the scenes and reveal how these masterworks were made, and why. Very readable, and filled with hundreds of illustrations from films both completed and unmade, "The Cinema of Eisenstein" will satisfy the serious movie-goer and the student of Soviet cultural history. A compendious bibliography and suggested reading list is included. Comrades, get this book!