Release CalendarTop 250 MoviesMost Popular MoviesBrowse Movies by GenreTop Box OfficeShowtimes & TicketsMovie NewsIndia Movie Spotlight
    What's on TV & StreamingTop 250 TV ShowsMost Popular TV ShowsBrowse TV Shows by GenreTV News
    What to WatchLatest TrailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb SpotlightFamily Entertainment GuideIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsCannes Film FestivalStar WarsAsian Pacific American Heritage MonthSummer Watch GuideSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll Events
    Born TodayMost Popular CelebsCelebrity News
    Help CenterContributor ZonePolls
For Industry Professionals
  • Language
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Watchlist
Sign In
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Use app
  • Biography
  • Awards
  • Trivia
IMDbPro

Sergei Eisenstein(1898-1948)

  • Director
  • Writer
  • Editor
IMDbProStarmeterSee rank
Still of Sergei M. Eisenstein in the original 9 mins version of this 16 mm film which dedicated to the legacy of Sergei M. Eisenstein and the Soviet Film Culture.
A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resulting street demonstration which brought on a police massacre.
Play trailer1:33
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
1 Video
7 Photos
The son of an affluent architect, Eisenstein attended the Institute of Civil Engineering in Petrograd as a young man. With the fall of the tsar in 1917, he worked as an engineer for the Red Army. In the following years, Eisenstein joined up with the Moscow Proletkult Theater as a set designer and then director. The Proletkult's director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, became a big influence on Eisenstein, introducing him to the concept of biomechanics, or conditioned spontaneity. Eisenstein furthered Meyerhold's theory with his own "montage of attractions"--a sequence of pictures whose total emotion effect is greater than the sum of its parts. He later theorized that this style of editing worked in a similar fashion to Marx's dialectic. Though Eisenstein wanted to make films for the common man, his intense use of symbolism and metaphor in what he called "intellectual montage" sometimes lost his audience. Though he made only seven films in his career, he and his theoretical writings demonstrated how film could move beyond its nineteenth-century predecessor--Victorian theatre-- to create abstract concepts with concrete images.
BornJanuary 22, 1898
DiedFebruary 11, 1948(50)
BornJanuary 22, 1898
DiedFebruary 11, 1948(50)
IMDbProStarmeterSee rank
  • Awards
    • 4 wins & 1 nomination total

Photos6

View Poster
View Poster
View Poster
View Poster
View Poster
View Poster

Known for

Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944)
Ivan the Terrible, Part I
7.7
  • Director
  • 1944
Alexander Nevsky (1938)
Alexander Nevsky
7.5
  • Director(as S. Eisenstein)
  • 1938
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Battleship Potemkin
7.9
  • Director(as S.M. Eisenstein)
  • 1925
Que Viva Mexico (1979)
Que Viva Mexico
7.4
  • Director(as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
  • 1979

Credits

Edit
IMDbPro

Director



  • Que Viva Mexico (1979)
    Que Viva Mexico
    7.4
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1979
  • Eisenstein's Mexican Project (1958)
    Eisenstein's Mexican Project
    7.4
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1958
  • Oleg Zhakov in Ivan the Terrible, Part III (1946)
    Ivan the Terrible, Part III
    7.3
    Short
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1946
  • Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot (1946)
    Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot
    7.7
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1946
  • Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944)
    Ivan the Terrible, Part I
    7.7
    • Director
    • 1944
  • Seeds of Freedom
    6.6
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1943
  • Zapotecan Village
    6.4
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1941
  • Spaniard and Indian
    6.5
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1941
  • Mexico Marches
    7.0
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1941
  • Mexican Symphony
    6.9
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1941
  • Land and Freedom (1941)
    Land and Freedom
    7.3
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1941
  • Idol of Hope
    6.5
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1941
  • Conquering Cross
    6.6
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1941
  • Time in the Sun (1940)
    Time in the Sun
    6.1
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1940
  • The Fergana Canal
    6.7
    Short
    • Director (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1939

Writer



  • Taiwanese School: The Experiment of Sergei Eisenstein's Montage Theory (2009)
    Taiwanese School: The Experiment of Sergei Eisenstein's Montage Theory
    5.7
    Short
    • concept (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 2009
  • Sergey Eyzenshteyn. Meksikanskaya fantasiya (1998)
    Sergey Eyzenshteyn. Meksikanskaya fantasiya
    7.0
    • original "Que viva Mexico" conception and notes (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1998
  • Sergei Eisenstein: Autobiography (1995)
    Sergei Eisenstein: Autobiography
    6.2
    • autobiography (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1995
  • The Eleventh Hour (1982)
    The Eleventh Hour
    TV Series
    • writer
    • 1986
  • Que Viva Mexico (1979)
    Que Viva Mexico
    7.4
    • original screenplay (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1979
  • Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot (1946)
    Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot
    7.7
    • writer (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1946
  • Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944)
    Ivan the Terrible, Part I
    7.7
    • Writer
    • 1944
  • Seeds of Freedom
    6.6
    • Potemkin sequences (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1943
  • Time in the Sun (1940)
    Time in the Sun
    6.1
    • Writer (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1940
  • Alexander Nevsky (1938)
    Alexander Nevsky
    7.5
    • Writer (as S. Eisenstein)
    • 1938
  • Bezhin lug (1937)
    Bezhin lug
    6.6
    Short
    • Writer (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1937
  • Martín Hernández and Julio Saldívar in Thunder Over Mexico (1933)
    Thunder Over Mexico
    7.1
    • story (uncredited)
    • 1933
  • La destrucción de Oaxaca (1931)
    La destrucción de Oaxaca
    6.5
    Short
    • Writer (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1931
  • Sentimental Romance (1930)
    Sentimental Romance
    6.5
    Short
    • Writer (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1930
  • The Storming of La Sarraz
    6.0
    • writer (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1929

Editor



  • Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944)
    Ivan the Terrible, Part I
    7.7
    • Editor (as Sergei Eizenshtein)
    • 1944
  • Alexander Nevsky (1938)
    Alexander Nevsky
    7.5
    • Editor (uncredited)
    • 1938
  • Sentimental Romance (1930)
    Sentimental Romance
    6.5
    Short
    • Editor (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1930
  • Women's Misery - Women's Happiness (1930)
    Women's Misery - Women's Happiness
    6.3
    • Editor (as Sergei M. Eisenstein)
    • 1930
  • Battleship Potemkin (1925)
    Battleship Potemkin
    7.9
    • Editor (uncredited)
    • 1925
  • Theo Matejko in Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)
    Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
    7.8
    • Editor (1924 re-edit Soviet Union version)
    • 1922

  • In-development projects at IMDbPro

Videos1

Battleship Potemkin
Trailer 1:33
Battleship Potemkin

Personal details

Edit
  • Alternative names
    • S. M. Eisenstein
  • Height
    • 5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
  • Born
    • January 22, 1898
    • Riga, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire [now Latvia]
  • Died
    • February 11, 1948
    • Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia](heart attack)
  • Spouse
    • Pera AtashevaOctober 27, 1934 - February 11, 1948 (his death)
  • Other works
    Book: "The Film Sense"
  • Publicity listings
    • 10 Biographical Movies
    • 31 Print Biographies
    • 1 Portrayal
    • 7 Articles
    • 1 Magazine Cover Photo

Did you know

Edit
  • Trivia
    Spoke fluent Japanese, and used the haiku as a model for his theories on montage.
  • Quotes
    The hieroglyphic language of the cinema is capable of expressing any concept, any idea of class, any political or tactical slogan, without recourse to the help of a rather suspect dramatic or psychological past.
  • Trademarks
      [Montage] Considered the father of the cinematic montage, he often used heavily edited sequences for emotional impact and historical propaganda (his most famous being the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin (1925) [Battleship Potemkin]).

Related news

Contribute to this page

Suggest an edit or add missing content
  • Learn more about contributing
Edit page

More to explore

Recently viewed

Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
Get the IMDb app
Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
Follow IMDb on social
Get the IMDb app
For Android and iOS
Get the IMDb app
  • Help
  • Site Index
  • IMDbPro
  • Box Office Mojo
  • License IMDb Data
  • Press Room
  • Advertising
  • Jobs
  • Conditions of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Your Ads Privacy Choices
IMDb, an Amazon company

© 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc.