Eisenstein, Part 2: '[As] in Life Itself' – Montage from 1930

Few artists have tried harder than Sergei Eisenstein to understand what they were doing, how and why, as they fashioned early on the works that made them famous, and no one among them has ever affirmed later on – with such clarity and conviction – how and why they had at the time misconceived what they were doing, and what lessons they had learned about their art from having done so. Though some filmmakers understood afterwards what Eisenstein had achieved by rethinking what he had done, few commentators, unable to sense hands-on its impetus or consequences, have proven capable of acknowledging it.

Within this essay (Part II of two on the evolution of Eisenstein's conjectures about 'montage') I shall unpack what Eisenstein said in 1938 of the mistake that he had made early on and how to correct it, reaffirming thereby, though unwittingly, that Pudovkin had been right all along.