Film and Video Editing Theory

5 Eisenstein and Montage

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898–1948) was the only son of a Jewish architect from Riga, and a mother who came from a well to do merchant family that was Russian Orthodox. The boy’s early family life was troubled by the authoritarian rule of his father, and he moved with his mother to St. Petersburg in 1905. His father joined them there in 1910, and his mother moved to Paris shortly thereafter, leaving Sergei in the care of his father. Eisenstein tried to follow in his father’s footsteps, studying civil engineering, but the 1917 Russian Revolution cut short his studies. He was drafted and sent to the front, and in 1918 he joined the Red Army while his father was allied with the White Guard, the anti-communist forces. ...