"Director: Sergei M. Eisenstein"

• Alexander Nevsky | DVD | (21/03/2000) from £11.93   |  Saving you £8.06 (67.56%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Alexander Nevsky, Sergei Eisenstein's landmark tale of Russia thwarting the German invasion of the 13th century, was wildly popular with home-grown audiences back in 1938, quite intentionally so, given the prevailing Nazi geopolitical advancement and destruction at the time. It can still be viewed as a masterful use of imagery and music, with the "Battle on the Ice" sequence as the obvious highlight. Unfortunately, the rest of the film pales in comparison. A great score by Prokofiev was effectively integrated by the Russian filmmaker, but stands on its own merit as well. --Bill Desowitz, Amazon.com

• October 1917 - Ten Days That Shook The World | DVD | (08/05/2000) from £3.98   |  Saving you £18.00 (904.52%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Commissioned by the October Revolution Jubilee Committee (Chairman Nikolai Podvolsky) for the tenth anniversary of the revolution Sergei Eisenstein's third major feature film ""October 1917"" is a marvelous reconstruction of the events from February leading up to the revolution and the Bolshevik's overthrow of the czarists and Kerensky's provisional government in 1917. True to the communist philosophy there were no main characters; the proletariat providing the 'heroic' star quality

• Battleship Potemkin | DVD | (17/04/2000) from £8.98   |  Saving you £13.00 (185.98%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Sergei Eisenstein's revolutionary sophomore feature has so long stood as a textbook example of montage editing that many have forgotten what an invigoratingly cinematic experience he created. A 20th-anniversary tribute to the 1905 revolution, Eisenstein portrays the revolt in microcosm with a dramatisation of the real-life mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin. The story tells a familiar party-line message of the oppressed working class (in this case the enlisted sailors) banding together to overthrow their oppressors (the ship's officers), led by proto-revolutionary Vakulinchuk. When he dies in the shipboard struggle the crew lays his body to rest on the pier, a moody, moving scene where the citizens of Odessa slowly emerge from the fog to pay their respects. As the crowd grows Eisenstein turns the tenor from mourning a fallen comrade to celebrating the collective achievement. The government responds by sending soldiers and ships to deal with the mutinous crew and the supportive townspeople, which climaxes in the justly famous (and often imitated and parodied) Odessa Steps massacre. Eisenstein edits carefully orchestrated motions within the frame to create broad swaths of movement, shots of varying length to build the rhythm, close-ups for perspective and shock effect, and symbolic imagery for commentary, all to create one of the most cinematically exciting sequences in film history. Eisenstein's film is Marxist propaganda to be sure but the power of this masterpiece lies not in its preaching but its poetry. --Sean Axmaker

• Ivan The Terrible - Part 2 | DVD | (03/09/2001) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-4.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In 1564 Ivan suddenly changed his methods of ruling and moved his family to his estate at Uglich outside Moscow. As a result of the pilgrimage to this country retreat by the populous of Moscow Ivan is persuaded to return to the city. Taking advantage of this mass support he now has the backing to make his rule more powerful and decisive than ever. The boyars were forced to to accept some drastic changes including the formation of wo different goverenments in Russia so that Ivan cou

• Ivan The Terrible - Part 1 | DVD | (03/09/2001) from £9.98   |  Saving you £6.01 (60.22%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Sergei Eisenstein's two-part epic chronicling the life of the 16th Century Tsar Ivan Grozny is one of film's most artistic and absorbing creations. Over three years in the making ""Ivan the Terrible"" features an operatic score by the esteemed Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev. The story begins with Ivan's coronation at the age of sixteen. One month later contrary to custom that demanded he marry a foreing princess he marries Anastasia a Russian girl from the Romanov family - m

• The Eisenstein Collection Vol.2 | DVD | (20/09/2010) from £26.19   |  Saving you £33.80 (129.06%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Collection Comprises: Bezhin Meadow (1937) Alexander Nevsky (1938) Ivan The Terrible Part 1 (1944) Ivan The Terrible Part 2: The Boyars Plot (1958)

• Ivan The Terrible - Part 1 And Part 2 - The Boyars Plot | DVD | (12/06/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Sergei Eisenstein's saga of Czar Ivan IV continues with the struggle for power and the use of secret police, a controversial segment that caused the film to be banned by Stalin in 1946 (the film was not released until 1958). The predominantly black-and-white film features a banquet dance sequence in colour. Obviously the two parts must be viewed as a whole to be fully appreciated. Many film historians consider this period in Eisenstein's career less interesting than his silent period because of a sentimental return to archaic forms (characteristic of Soviet society in the 1930s and '40s). Perhaps it was just part of his maturity. --Bill Desowitz, Amazon.com

• Strike | DVD | (17/07/2000) from £19.65   |  Saving you £0.34 (1.73%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Sergei Eisenstein's debut film is more than a landmark of Soviet cinema; it's easily one of the most thrilling and inventive films to emerge from the silent era of Russian film making. Eisenstein was a theatre director and stage designer with some very specific ideas about the cinema, and he put them into practice telling the story of a worker's strike in pre-Revolution Russia, portraying the struggle not of leader against leader, but of the proletariat against the factory owners, enlivened by a conspiratorial subplot involving a quartet of insidious spies sent to infiltrate the ranks of the workers. The subject matter is at times didactic and the acting often hammy and overwrought, but the technique is vibrant and the images striking. Eisenstein's compositions reflect the graphic boldness of contemporary poster art, mixing poetic realism with grotesque expressionism in a gripping style, and his famous montage editing style (to be perfected in his next film, Battleship Potemkin) is raw, experimental and energetic. Eisenstein's later films are more consistent and elegant, but none of them have the sheer cinematic invention and energy of this first film. The new score, composed and performed by the idiosyncratic Alloy Orchestra, combines a mix of martial and mood music on synthesiser with the driving percussion of drums, wood blocks, bells and wrecking yard of clanging metal objects--a dynamic soundtrack to one of the most auspicious directoral debuts ever. --Sean Axmaker