SERGEI M EISENSTEIN

goal was to encourage research and provide an orientation for courses taught in
the Institute’s Section on the History and Theory of the Cinema, but also to undertake
the publication of a universal history of cinema in seven volumes, 13
whosefoundationswouldbelaidoutintheseNotes.
His object, his method, and his writing are obviously the most interesting dimensions
to examine for our purposes. They provide the frameworks through
which the undertaking should be understood, as well as the modes of its implementation;
they are also part of Eisenstein’s great theoretical efforts of the time
(Metod, in particular), a foretaste of which is given by the 1944 article “Dickens,
GriffithandtheFilm Today.”
II.
What conception of history is put forth, and more specifically, what conception
offilmhistory?
Threeconcentriccircleswithdifferenttemporalitiesorganizethehistoricalapproach,definingthreeobjectsandthreetemporalities.Thefirstdefinesageneral
framework which belongs to the Marxist vulgate and is implicit, or sometimes
bluntlyexplicit,inallEisenstein’swritings:inshort,itrelatesculturalandartistic
phenomena as well as the evolution of techniques of expression to class struggle.
14 It is a long-term history, that of means of production and social formations,
with particular emphases that depend on more event-based political configurations
(as in the Bismarck/Wagner relationship). The second concerns the
evolution of the medium from its origins to its advent and its development, understood
in a general sense: the magic lantern, optical toys, photography, etc. It
pertains to a more detailed, more compact temporality (causality). It includes
what is usually called “precinema,” which it expands to encompass painting,
architecture, sculpture, stained glass, engraving, typography, etc., on the one
hand, and spectacles as a whole on the other (shadow shows, theater, music
hall, conjuring tricks, wax museums, etc.). The third involves yet another temporality,thatofhumanpsychologyanditsbasiccomponents(fearofdeath,need
to freeze time, desire to preserve the appearance of what was, etc.) as expressed
by beliefs, mythologies, or rituals in which practices such as embalming, mummification,
death masks, funerary monuments are privileged. This belongs in a
historicalanthropology.
III.
The issue in reading these notes may be one of determining which of these three
levels (and their sublevels) is most prominent in the exposition chosen, in the
writing of history involved, and accordingly which one considers the other two
as auxiliaries. That is, what object did Eisenstein give himself, and what form of
“the heritage we renounce”: eisenstein in historioraphy 269