Notes of a Film Director Quotes

“Geographical” escapism has been rendered ineffective by the spread of air routes. What remains is “evolutionary” escapism — a downward course in one's development, back to the ideas and amotions of “golden childhood,” which may well be defined as “regress towards infantilism,” escape to a personal world of childish ideas.
In a strictly-regulated society, where life follows strictly-defined canons, the urge to escape from the chains of things “established
once and for all” must be felt particularly strongly.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“Reality is like a grim “white-faced clown.” It seems wise and logical, prudent and far-seeing. But in the end it is fooled, ridiculed.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“Apparently,” he answers, “the possession of humour implies the possession of a number of typical habit-systems. The first is an emotional one: the habit of playfulness. Why should one be proud of being playful? For a double reason. First, playfulness connotes childhood and youth. If one can be playful, one still possesses something of the vigour and the joy of young life. If one has ceased to be playful, one writes oneself as rigidly old. And who wishes to confess to himself that, rheumatic as are his joints, his mind and spirit are really aged? So the old man is proud of the playful joke which assures him that he is still friskily young.
“But there is a deeper implication. To be playful is, in a sense, to be free. When a person is playful, he momentarily disregards the binding necessities which compel him, in business and morals, in domestic and community life. . …
“. . . Life is largely compulsion. But in play we are free! We do what we please...
“Apparently there is no dearer human wish than to be free.
“But this is not simply a wish to be free from; it is also, and more deeply, a wish to be free to. What, galls us is that the binding necessities do not permit us to shape our world as we please. . . . What we most deeply desire, however, is to create our world for ourselves. Whenever we can do that, even in the slightest degree, we are happy. Now in play we create our own world. . …
“To imply, therefore, that a person has a fine sense of humour is to imply that he has still in him the spirit of play, which implies even more deeply the spirit of freedom and of creative spontaneity.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“If we were looking for a typically German source we would turn to the metaphysicists; for a typically British source we would apply to the Essayists who, through their spokesman, Meredith, have proclaimed humour the privilege of the select minds. And so on and so forth.
But since we want to study the typically American approach and the typically American understanding of humour, we shall not turn to the metaphysicists, or to the satirists, or to the philosophers or Essayists.
We shall turn to the practics.
American pragmatism in philosophy is a reflection of this avid search for what is useful and applicable — in everything that interests the American.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“What we are interested in is the specifically American attitude towards the problem of the comic, just as we consider interesting the interpretations offered by Kant and Bergson primarily as individual and social “documents of their times,” and not as universal truths about the theory of the ridiculous embracing ridiculously little of the phenomenon.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“The cinema is the only plastic art that has resolved all these problems of painting without loss of representation and objectivity and with complete ease. At the same time the cinema is capable of communicating much more: it alone is able to reconstruct the inner movement of phenomena profoundly and fully.
The camera angle reveals the secrets of nature.
The juxtaposition of various camera angles reveals the artist's attitude to the phenomenon.
Montage structure unites the objective existence of the phenomenon and the artist's subjective attitude to it.
None of the severe standards modern painting sets for itself is relinquished. At the same time everything preserves the full vitality of the phenomenon.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“It is montage that produces the sense of the three-dimensional in the cinema.
How plastically flat are the representations of men, objects, settings and landscape shot in one piece, from one angle.
And how they come to life all of a sudden, how they become rounded and acquire volume, how they become spatial as soon as you begin juxtaposing in montage their individual aspects shot from different angles.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“For no montage can be accomplished if there is no inner “melody” to determine its construction!
This inner melody may resound so powerfully that sometimes it determines the rhythm of one's behaviour at the time one edits certain scenes.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“The unity of the visible form of an object and of its imagist generalization, achieved by means of the composition of the shot, is to us the most important feature of a truly realistic treatment of the shot. We consider that this ensures the emotional impression which the sight of the purely plastic images on the screen can excite. This imagist treatment of representations is the most important task the cameraman has; in fulfilling it, he permeates all the minutest details of the plastic solution of the film with the theme and his attitude to the theme.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“Every other line of the theoretical analysis of his new and enchanting acquaintance—the theory of art—was enshrouded with seven
veils of mystery.
And ocean of gauze!
As if it were a ball dress from Paquin.
But then it is well known that a sword cannot chop up a feather pillow. And no sword, however heavy and sharp, would enable one
to cut through this ocean of gauze.
A feather pillow can be cut up only with a sharp scimitar wielded by an experienced warrior—a Saladdin or a Suleiman.
A frontal attack would be of no avail.
The curvature of the scimitar is symbolic of the roundabout way to take to fathom the mysteries behind the seven veils.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“An adult spectator has greater command over his facial expressions, and it is perhaps for that very reason that fictitiously, that is, without a real cause or real action, he even more intensely lives through the entire gamut of noble and heroic feelings presented by the drama, or gives free rein in his imagination to the base and even criminal inclinations of his nature, the feelings he experiences being real, though his complicity in the crimes committed on the stage is fictitious.
What interested me most in this argumentation was the element of “fictitiousness.”
Thus art (so far in the form of theatre) enables man through co-experience fictitiously to perform heroic actions, fictitiously to experience great emotions, fictitiously to feel himself a hero like Franz Moor, to rid himself of base instincts with the assistance of Karl Moor, to regard himself as a sage like Faust, to feel inspired by God like Joan of Arc, to be an ardent lover like Romeo, to be a patriot like Count de Rizoor, to see his doubts dissipated by Kareno, Brand, Rosmer or Hamlet.
More. The best thing about it was that these fictitious actions brought the spectator real satisfaction.
Thus after seeing Verhaeren's Les aubes he feels he is a hero.
After seeing Calderon's El principe constante he feels he is a martyr.
After seeing Schiller's Kabale und Liebe he is overwhelmed by righteousness and self-pity.
“But this is horrible!” I shuddered as I was crossing Trubnaya Square (or was it Sretenskiye Gates?).
What infernal mechanics governed this sacred art whose votary I had become?
That was mere than a lie!
That was more than deceit!
That was downright dangerous.
Horribly, unspeakably dangerous.
Only think: why strive for reality, if for a small sum of money you can satisfy yourself in your imagination without moving from your comfortable theatre seat?”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“I was already familiar with James's famous dictum that “we weep' not because we are sad; we are sad because we weep.”
This formula appealed to me aesthetically —because of its paradoxic nature, in the first place, and because of the idea that a proper
display of details usually associated with an emotion can arouse the emotion itself.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta

“How grateful I was to fate for having subjected me to the ordeal of learning an oriental language, opening before me that strange way of thinking and teaching me word pictography. It was precisely this “unusual” way of thinking that later helped me to master the nature of montage, and still later, when I came to recognize this “unusual,” “emotional” way of thinking, different from our common “logical” way, this helped me to comprehend the most recondite in the methods of art. But of this later.
Thus my first infatuation proved to be my first true-love.
But this true-love was not all bliss; it was not only tempestuous, it was tragic.”
― Serguei Eisenstein, Reflexões De Um Cineasta