Why read Eisenstein (again)?

More than thirty years ago, for his first guest appearance in Belgrade, violinist Nigel Kennedy made a public statement (which he would later, on different meridians, often mention and repeat) - that despite all the panegyrics showered on him, he still considers himself only a performer/interpreter, and not a music creator, which is a much higher and more prestigious category. There he pointed to the old dilemma of where craft ends and creativity begins, whether there is even a tangible boundary that separates mastery of craftsmanship from inspired creation. Things get even more complicated when we raise the stakes, introduce finesse into the story and notice that in the field of film, authorship is often reduced to a few of the most prestigious categories: screenplay, direction, director of photography... But where are the editors in all of this? If we accept the statement yes as an easily verifiable truth every movie, after a smaller or larger pre-production and production "limbo" (if not "hell"), actually arises in the editing, and that, along with the main cinematographers, the editors are the closest collaborators of the director, it turns out that the role of the editor is much more significant than it can be seen from the outside. That it is so, is evidenced by the republished essays of Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (first edition 1964, Nolit) Installation of attractions - Film essays.

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Like it or not, we have to admit that we live in an age of overabundance of easily accessible information, but also of shallow and superficial access to that information and instant knowledge, the republishing of one of the fundamental texts on film art is a kind of gift. Simply, if a more direct and concrete reason is needed at all, the very fact that modern film is obviously at a turning point, if not completely turning point, both in the presentational dimension and (let's hope) in the point that heralds the imminent collapse/end of that extremely questionable formula that insists on fascination with details and the meaninglessness of the whole, but that fact alone, therefore, is reason enough to pay special attention to this edition which, 61 years after Nolit's, makes us anew it reminds us how and with how much seriousness and inspiration, at least occasionally, people thought and wrote about film, about its potential, about the subtleties of film as its own medium, and to some extent about its limitations, which Eisenstein was also aware of at the time.

The book opens with Dušan Makavejev's long essay "Eisenstein - Red, Gold, Black", followed by Eisenstein's essays: title ("Montage of attractions"), "Through the theater to film", "Unexpected", "The basic principle of film and the ideogram", "Dialectical approach to the film form", "Third year", "Film form: New problems", "Close-up", "Synchronization of the senses", "Color and meaning", "Charlie The Kid, Dickens", "Griffith and we". Makaveyev recalls that Eisenstein left behind only seven completed films and two published books of essays on film, as well as that he often wrote and thought when he could not work, while he wrote about his creativity "limited and dry", while "he is much richer when he explains other people's films, when he imagines and plans and thinks about future creativity or talks about books, music, pictures, language, folklore". In addition, on the introductory pages, Makaveyev points out that "the reviews published in this book open up, we hope, the possibility of looking at the life of Sergei Eisenstein as a prolific researcher of human messages and an unsurpassed professor of non-human languages", and then the following judgement: "Some limiers and Edisons, Méliès and Griffiths were tinkering a little before he appeared, cinematography, stabbing like a blind hen at the grains of film art, producers of living photography. He is the only one, the creator and the legislator, proclaimed with his work the opening of a new world."

In the title essay, Eisenstein reflects on his concept of attraction from the point of view of the theater as the most natural beginning of the film, unequivocally pointing out, among other things, this idea of ​​his: "I introduce attraction as a regular, independent and primary element in the construction of a theatrical performance - as a molecular unity (that is, the unity of the constituent elements of the theater's effective power, and theater in general"), and then at the end of the essay he points out: "I believe that, in addition to mastering elements of filmic diction, framing technique and editing theory, we can cite another gain - insight into the traditions and methodology of literature. It is no coincidence that precisely in this period, when film was called upon to bring to life the philosophy and ideology of the political proletariat, a new understanding of film language was born, which was understood not as the language of film critics but as an expression of filmic thought (filmic, aesthetic, ideological, ideological), here is, there is no slowness, unforced, unpretended, organically unfurled, full of meaningful digressions that are by no means mere decorations, which can also be seen in the first following essay "Unexpected". In it, Eisenstein develops his fascination with kabuki theater, in which he quickly finds an analogy with film and its potential, and makes this observation and prediction: "Crossing the rubicons that flow between theater and film, film and sound film - we too must acquire that sense. We can learn from the Japanese how to develop this ability. Just as impressionism owes undeniably to Japanese woodcarving, and postmodernism to black sculpture, so sound film will be no less indebted to the Japanese."

The attractiveness of Eisenstein's essays does not tend to amaze and take your breath away, but rather invites thought, discussion, creation, a transition from one medium to another. In the essay "Synchronization of the Senses", Eisenstein, somewhat futuristically, considers the possible harmony of image and sound, and exultantly invokes the following: "To remove the obstacles between sight and hearing, between the seen and heard world! To establish a unique and harmonious relationship between these two opposite powers! What a difficult task! The Greeks and Diderot, Wagner and Scriabin - who all did not dream of this ideal?" This collection of essays somehow quite appropriately ends with essays inspired by Chaplin, Dickins, Griffith... and their works, opuses and peculiarities.

With just a little good-natured understanding of the diachronic context in which Eisenstein's essays were created, as well as accepting the equally common-sense advice that this book requires a careful, informed and focused (and above all a movie lover!) reader, it is easy to verify the truth in the opening paragraphs of Makaveev's ecstatic judgment about the uniqueness of that unique Russian master of spirit and craft. About 300 pages of the text of this book testify to this in favor of it, in addition to causing us to start thinking about the subtleties of film language and film as a medium as a whole in a different and more comprehensive way.