Towards a Theory of Montage: Sergei Eisenstein Selected Works

We are delighted to announce the reissue in paperback of the definitive, most comprehensive edition, in the finest translations and fully annotated, of the writings of this great filmmaker, theorist and teacher of film -- and one of the most original aesthetic thinkers of the twentieth century.

The name of Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) is synonymous with the idea of montage, as exemplified in his silent classics such as The Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927). In the 1930s his style changed, partly to accommodate the arrival of sound, and his ideas on audio-visual counterpoint developed. Between 1937 and 1940 he elaborated his ideas on montage in a series of essays, most of which remained unpublished until after his death and which are published in English for the first time in this volume.  They present the essence of Eisenstein’s thinking on cinema and aesthetics more generally and reveal him as one of the most significant philosophers of art of the twentieth century.

Twelve essays were written between 1928 and 1945 that demonstrate key points in the development of Eisenstein’s film theory and in particular his analysis of the sound-film medium.