SERGEI M EISENSTEIN

EarlySovietCulture(DeKalb:NorthernIllinoisUniversityPress,2009),andforcinema,
journalism, and photography, see Aya Kawamura, “La création collective dans le
documentaire soviétique: photographie, cinéma et ‘correspondants-ouvriers,’” in
1895 Revue d’histoire du cinéma 63 (2011).
66. Eisenstein, Psychology of Composition, p. 1.
67. “Pioneers and Innovators,” here, p. 250.
68. “The Heir,” here, p. 115.
69. Denounced in the first issue of LEF with the slogan “Do not make business on
Lenin!”and which will be discussed in regards to the representation of Lenin in
October, for which Eisenstein was criticized. Vertov, like Rodchenko, opposes the
living archive of the film to the dead imagery of painting and various effigies (see
Rodchenko,“Protivsummirovannogoportretazamomental’nyisnimok,”NovyLEF4
[1928], p. 14; reprinted in Alexandr Rodchenko: Experiments for the Future: Diaries, Essays,
LettersandOtherWritings,ed.andwithaprefacebyAlexanderN.Lavrentiev,trans.and
annotatedbyJameyGambrell,andwithanintroductionbyJohnE.Bowlt(NewYork:
MoMA, 2004).
70. The convention, in its meeting of the 28 floréal, year II (May 17, 1794), adopted a
decree concerning public festivals. Robespierre speaks of them as the “most
magnificent of all spectacles,” “that of a great people assembled.” In the national
festivals ofGreece, he says,“one sawaspectacle greaterthan thegames, namelythe
spectators themselves, the people who had triumphed over Asia, whose republican
virtues had sometimes elevated them above humanity. One saw great men who had
saved or brought great honor to the nation: father showing to their sons Miltiade,
Aristide, Epaminondas, Timoleon, whose presence alone was a living lesson in
magnanimity, justice, and patriotism.” Cited by Ernest Lalanne in Les Fêtes de la
révolution (Paris: Société d’édition et de publication, 1900), pp. 8-9.
71. AloisRiegl,ProblemsofStyle:FoundationsforaHistoryofOrnament(Princeton:Princeton
University Press, 1992); Stilfragen. Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik
(Berlin: Siemens, 1893).
72. This “urge,” this drive (Trieb) that he constantly invokes, has some proximity to the
Kunstwollen(willtoart):thehistoricalmovementfromclose,haptic vision,tofar-off,
optical vision (present in “Rodin and Rilke” and here in regard to the passage from
contour to tattooing and representation.)
73. “In Praise of the Cine-chronicle,” here, p. 225.
74. Ibid.
75. The Russian version of “El Greco and the Cinema,” “El Greco i kino,” can be found
in S.M. Eisenstein, Montazh (Moskva: Muzei kino, 2000), pp. 404-463. A French
translation with the title in Spanish “El Greco y el cine” can be found in Eisenstein,
Cinématisme, pp. 65-128.
76. For Plato the visible and verisimilar image (the icon of semiology) is called eidolon
(idol). The icon (eikon) is a symbol, a rhetorical figure (like the cave in The Republic).
77. In Storm over Toledo, El Greco adopted a geographically impossible point of view to
paint the city, the Alcántara bridge, and the Tajo, imaginarily placing himself at an
impossible height. Furthermore, he changed the proportions and placements of
496 notes