PM Review

  I thought The General Line [1931] is the only movie Eisenstein had applied stills and added a graceful rendition to the Slide film list. But Bezhin Meadow [1937/1964] had reached its pinnacle of precision to uphold the new form of cinema in the art history. These two pairs of intertitles are enough for getting the thematic essence of Mr. Eisenstein Bezhin Meadow [1937/1964].   The production history and recreation of the film in the midst of Soviet sanctions and world war are as good as pivotal as its narrative and artistic formation and preservation. Are there any other movies whose are suffered such kind of blockage during its making? Maybe there are!   There was sharp censorial procedure to bring out the film that goes against the ruling power or majority feelings. Today I have come to know that Sudipto Sen’s The Kerala Story [2023] have been banned some states in India whereas Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kasmir Files [2022] had been applauded all over though bot...

Eisenstein’s  The General Line  [1929] is a series of intellectual montages consisting of stills which is more like a creative docufiction than feature narrative film. I think this one is a clean film following the principles and practices of Russian formalism in film.  Collage 1:  Eisenstein had an incredible artistic senses and skills to create a brief graphic narrative just by sequencing motion profiles and stills images. Collage 2:  Melting candles, slavering cattle, waving flags and weeping devotees composed one of the intellectual montages in the film. Collage 3:  The rebellious woman formed a cooperative to earn money and there was a conflict raised over profit distribution and followed a greedy and violent consequences. This is a prototype of collective operation. Collage 4: The woman in the slumber land dreaming of a herd of bovines at the beach and a god-like bovine appeared in the sky and poured milk on earth, this one so Dadaistic in nature...

Eisenstein’s first feature film starts with a walkout in “Strike” [1925] which had been followed by a mutiny in “Battleship Potemkin” [1925] and he broadened his horizon in “October”  [1928] that dealt with revolution. As if he had developed the themes of the cinemas organically.   The scene of raising the bridge to separate the center from the working class, hanging a horse on one side & a woman on the other are just majestic.   The use of rhythmic montage followed with intellectual montage using religious deities and political persona are one of the most ambiguous depictions Eisenstein created with his artistry.    The overtonal montages of dancing soldiers and broken deities and hiding statesmen felt a bit overly repetitive but deeply suspenseful.   Repetitive shallow depth of field, extreme close up shot, long and wide over head shots, high angled and low angled shots, dissolves and cross cutting are used in the film with artistry that make a deep e...

Is Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin [1925] the first film I have ever watched where the narrative structure has been followed mechanically by the theatrical form of drama, [five acts structure]? Maybe it was his first step to be formalistic in film making before imposing artistic principles on firm technical elements of film. I sometimes fall into a muddle thinking that can any medium of art carry the innate meaning and create value only based on its form without the author’s intentions and cultural stimulations. Eisenstein attempted his highest to be focused deeply on the film's formal signature but the narrative structure could not get rid of from its critical basis, the mutiny in 1905 in a Russian naval battle ship that was worked as one of the catalysts for Russian revolution in 1917. The Bengal mutiny in 1857 had also been a significant catalyst for the independence around the Indian subcontinent in 1947.   Though I have no wide-ranging knowledge about Marxism except Hegel’s h...

  It’s an utter coincidence that I had watched 2023 Eisenstein’s Strike [1925] on 4rth May, just following Chaplin’s feature oeuvre. And I was immensely moved by the movie not only for its narrative style and formal structure but also mostly the themes of human dignity and labor rights and their eternal conflicts with the owners’ interests.   The following morning, I came across a post on my Facebook News Feed about the strike of Writers Guild of America held on 2 nd  May, 2023 just day after the International Labor Day. The disputes are very crucial and contemporary. One is about cutting short the residual payments for Streaming platforms, another is a more delicate one. It is about the threat of human creativity and engagement of the entertainment industry. Employing AI based technologies especially ChatGPT and automations on creative process is minimizing their rooms to work under stable conditions.   Previously I wrote a brief review on Chaplin’s Modern Times rel...