Top 8 Quotes & Sayings by Sergei Eisenstein

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Latvian director Sergei Eisenstein.

Last updated on December 3, 2024.

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a Soviet film director and film theorist, a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1925), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1928), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible. In its 2012 decennial poll, the magazine Sight & Sound named his Battleship Potemkin the 11th greatest film of all time.

Latvian - Director | January 22, 1898 - February 11, 1948

Source: Wikipedia

Language is much closer to film than painting is.

Sergei Eisenstein

Even in a less exaggerated description, any verbal account of a person is bound to find itself employing an assortment of waterfalls, lightning rods, landscapes, birds, etc.

Sergei Eisenstein

The profession of film director can and should be such a high and precious one; that no man aspiring to it can disregard any knowledge that will make him a better film director or human being.

Sergei Eisenstein

For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents - as an element - the greatest difficulty in manipulation.

Sergei Eisenstein

Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects?

Sergei Eisenstein

Books are attracted to me. They make a beeline for me, and stick to me. I have been so fond of them that at last they have begun to reciprocate. In my hands books burst like ripe fruit. Like magic flowers they unfold their petals to show me the vital thought, the suggestive word, the confirming quotation, the decisive illustration.

Sergei Eisenstein