SERGEI M EISENSTEIN

11. “Synthesis” of the
Arts or “Friendly
Cooperation” between
the Arts? The General
History of Cinema
According to Eisenstein
Pietro Montani
I.
Inhisincessanttheoreticalreflection,Eisensteinlingersmorethanonceoverthe
historiographic question of where to locate cinema within the modern system of
the arts. His well-known thesis is that cinema meets all the requirements necessary
to occupy the very top of this system. Though the thesis remained constant
throughout the years, one cannot say the same for the argumentations used to
expound and justify it. Two different formulations of this thesis merit particular
attention. According to the first, widely diffused throughout the whole of Eisenstein’s
theoretical writings, cinema would perform a “synthesis” of the arts preceding
it. The word “synthesis” entails some presuppositions that are anything
but innocent, of which Eisenstein is well aware; I will examine them in the first
part of this text. The second formulation of the thesis on the primacy of cinema
is less structured and therefore more plastic, more open to reconsideration and
significantreformulations.Oneofthesereformulationscanbefoundpreciselyin
the Notes for a General History of Cinema published in this volume, the vast historiographical
project on which Eisenstein worked between 1946 and 1948, during a
periodofforcedinactivityfollowinghisfirstheartattack.Here,Eisensteinspeaks
of cinema as “the heir of all artistic cultures”; 1 and, in a paragraph entitled
“A Synthesis of the Arts” (sintez iskusstv), he uses the expression “friendly cooperation”
(sodruzhestvo iskusstv) with great emphasis (he places an exclamation
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