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In this paper I will discuss certain elements of Eisenstein’s later film theory and general aesthetic of the 1930s and 1940s. I will select a few elements in his theoretical interests that seem to be Marxist, with comments on one kind of imagination of the utopian. I will ask about some peculiarities in his very distinctive film and aesthetic theories, which could be read as interventions in official Soviet aesthetic theory, but are not only that. But we must start earlier. Between 1925 and 1929, Sergei Eisenstein burst onto the scene of world cinema with four silent films. His work was immediately declared by many inside and outside the Soviet Union, including himself, to be aesthetically and politically revolutionary. In these same years, he produced a stream of theoretical essays and articles that promoted his own approaches and special claims about the still new medium of cinema within the politicized Soviet avant-gardes. Certain of Eisenstein’s writings of the 1920s are now considered to be landmark texts in the history of film theory and also in the history of Marxist conceptions of cinema, mass art, and modernity. It is well known that in the 1930s, things were different. With socialist realism declared the official Soviet aesthetic, most avant-garde artistic tendencies were suppressed. Eisenstein’s very prominence mandated that he be criticized, and he was not allowed to realize several film projects. For a while his life was probably in danger, but he returned to intermittent official favor starting in 1938 with the release of Alexander Nevsky. Most important for present purposes, he continued to write theory throughout these years. By his death in 1948, he had produced thousands of additional pages of often unpublished theory, over and above his already canonical essays of the 1920s. This later theoretical work included something like complete drafts of at least two major books (now published as Non-Indifferent Nature and Towards a Theory of Montage) and work on a third (Method), as well as many additional essays and notes. In 1942, a few chapters from the montage books were published as an integral book in English, The Film Sense. In 1949, a couple of key chapters from Non-Indifferent Nature, were included in an English-language book, Film Form, which was a collection of some of his key writings organized chronologically to trace his 25-year theoretical trajectory.

Eisenstein’s Marxism, Marxism’s Eisenstein: Utopian Spectatorship and Aesthetic Collectivity