Savage Junctures: Sergei Eisenstein and the Shape of Thinking

Anne Nesbet

Jul 2003 · I.B.Tauris

About this ebook

Eisenstein delighted in unlikely juxtapositions, being apt to cite from Stalin and Disney in one breath. The heterogeneity underlying his work is breathtaking and his lack of decorum and refusal to be categorised tend to make critics uneasy but not Anne Nesbet. Based on extensive research in the Eisenstein archives, her book is an original, beautifully written exploration of Eisenstein’s omnivorous consumption of high and low culture and his wide-ranging experiments in ‘thinking in pictures’. Savage Junctures provides fresh insights into Eisenstein’s films and writings. It examines the multiple contexts within which his films evolved and Eisenstein’s appropriation of all of world culture as his source. Like Eisenstein himself, Anne Nesbet is particularly interested in the possibilities of visual image making and each chapter addresses the problem of his image-based thinking from a different perspective. Each chapter also offers a fundamentally new interpretation of the films and writings that make up his oeuvre. This is a major new contribution to studies in Soviet cinema and culture and to the field of film studies.