Eisenstein, Sergei Mikhailovich 1898-1948
Russian film director

Born in Riga, Russia (now Latvia), he served in the Red Army during the Russian Revolution (1916-18), and after training in theatrical scene painting was appointed to make propaganda films on the history of the Revolution with The Battleship Potemkin (1925, on the 1905 mutiny), and Ten Days That Shook The World (1928), on the October Revolution. His substitution of the group or crowd for the traditional hero, and his consummate skill in cutting and recutting to achieve mounting impressionistic effects, especially in the macabre Odessa steps sequence of The Battleship Potemkin, greatly influenced film art. Later he made the patriotic epic Alexander Nevski (1938), The Magic Seed (1941), the masterpiece Ivan the Terrible (1944), and its sequel, The Boyars Plot, which was banned in the USSR for many years.

Bibliography: Yon Barna, Eisenstein (1973)