Born in Riga in 1898 and died in Moscow in 1948, Eisenstein trained as an engineer and theatre designer before becoming the great theorist and practitioner of Soviet montage. He argued that meaning springs from the collision of shots, and his silent films of the 1920s made editing a force of political drama. His later work, including Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, was made under the pressure of Stalinist censorship.
Filmography
- Strike (1925)
- Battleship Potemkin (1925)
- October (1928)
- The General Line (1929)
- Alexander Nevsky (1938)
- Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944)
- Ivan the Terrible, Part II (1958)