This winter we celebrate the centenary of Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, but it is a double anniversary-Eisenstein's 100th birthday on January 23, and the fiftieth anniversary of his death on February 10. A too-short life produced the most brilliant career in film history. He was "a titan, a cinematic genius, a Renaissance man with a deep understanding of the arts," film historian Georges Sadoul said of the great Soviet filmmaker and theoretician who was influenced by clowns, Kabuki, and commedia dell'arte as well as by Marx. It was only a matter of time before Eisenstein's theatrical "montage of attractions"-the shock theory of the avant-garde Proletkult Theatre-evolved into a new language of cinema, a dialectic he called "intellectual montage," and later, "polyphonic" or "sensual montage." For Eisenstein, as for the Surrealists in France, juxtaposition was a language in itself; he too fragmented the language and reassociated the parts, but to a different end. Similarly, the caricatured types of the avant-garde theater became powerful collective symbols, the unforgettable "face" of Eisenstein's essentially humanist revolutionary art. Long after he came into official disrepute as a formalist in socialist-realist times, Sergei Eisenstein remained the greatest realist of them all. Seen today, the films shock with their extraordinary beauty, the beauty of thought made visible.We are pleased to have Professor Anne Nesbet of UC Berkeley's Department of Slavic Languages and Literature and Film Studies Program introduce each program in our retrospective. Professor Nesbet received the 1997 Hellman Family Faculty Fund award for her work on The Dialectical Image, and has recently completed a book, Savage Junctures: The Figurative Philosophy of S. M. Eisenstein. This retrospective, featuring many rare prints in the PFA Collection, is made possible through the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Museum Collections Accessibility Initiative.Programs introduced by Professor Anne NesbetBruce Loeb on Piano: Strike, Battleship Potemkin, October, and The General LineThursday January 22, 1998
