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

  Lukács, 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.