Eisenstein, Sergey

Eisenstein, Sergey (Mikhaylovich)

(born Jan. 23, 1898, Riga, Latvia—died Feb. 11, 1948, Moscow, U.S.S.R.) Russian film director and theorist. He began his career at a workers' theatre in Moscow in 1920, designing costumes and scenery. After studying stage direction with Vsevolod Meyerhold, he turned to filmmaking. In Strike (1924) he introduced his influential concept of film montage, adding startling and often discordant images to the main action to create the maximum psychological impact. He further developed the style in The Battleship Potemkin (1925), a commissioned propaganda film that is one of the most influential films of all time. Among his other films are October (Ten Days That Shook the World; 1928) and The General Line (1929). After a frustrating period in Hollywood and Mexico (1930–33), he returned to the Soviet Union and made two more classics, Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (2 parts, 1945–46).