The Shadow Riders

David Bordwell continues his distinguished career with The Cinema of Eisenstein, which should revive the flagging fortunes of this path-breaking director with a new generation of film buffs. Bordwell has a firm grasp of the Russian master's theories of film technique, and of course Eisenstein and semantics are almost synonymous. Bordwell's style is articulate and never patronizing, and his frame enlargements are crystal-sharp compared with those in most books. -- International Film Guide <p> The last two decades have witnessed a glorious renaissance of the Russian filmmaker who must rank among the greatest ever to have taken up cinema's cause...Bordwell has provided much more than the 'straightforward introduction to [Eisenstein's] accomplishments' he too modestly states as his book's purpose. He sketches Eisenstein's life in the artistic and political context in which he worked. He patiently traces the complex roots of Eisenstein's film theory and pedagogy in often arcane currents of Russian and European intellectual history. Finally, Bordwell offers compelling close readings of all the major films in a way that substantially enhances our understanding of the master's methods and accomplishments. Effectively illustrated and containing a superb bibliography, this lucid and persuasive account is a model of economy and insight from which future research will proceed. Everyone from the serious general reader to the old Eisenstein hand can read it profitably. -- Choice <p> Bordwell gives us the best technical survey of Eisenstein's many cinemagraphic innovations that are readily available in a single volume...[He] puts [Eisenstein's] considerable achievement in historical perspective andprovides detailed analysis of his innovations. -- Reader's Review <p> The Cinema of Eisenstein is a magnificent achievement, an academic yet highly readable discussion of all the director's films and with a lengthy examination of Eisenstein's theoretical writings. The book briefly examines Eisenstein's life and in more detail discusses his place in Soviet cinema. -- Classic Images <p> David Bordwell has succeeded in drawing a picture of Eisenstein's evolution and of his major achievements...[The book] explores its protagonist's biography and the social and cultural context of his work, and extensively analyzes his films...[It is] a very competent and very balanced work which will be uses for a long time in universities as a standard work on Eisenstein. --Mikhail Yampolsky, Slavic Review <p> The Cinema of Eisenstein is a treasure in disguise. Its cover is painfully plain, contrary to the flamboyance of the great director [and] its title is awkward in English...It was only on re-reading The Cinema of Eisenstein that I recognized the enormity of David Bordwell's achievement. Making the complex accessible, an 'introduction' scholarly, theoretical explanations jargon-free is no mean feat, and yet Bordwell has done all these things superbly. He sketches Eisenstein's life efficiently, explicates the film theories and places them in cultural context, discusses Eisenstein's posthumous waxing and waning and waxing, and most importantly, offers such highly intelligent readings of the films that one wants to see them again even if one has watched them (as I have) many times. These analyses also serve as model illustrations to what Vlada Petric calls 'the filmic way of seeing' and bear norelation to the dry narrative descriptions that we too often find in film histories. Furthermore, Bordwell, a film scholar who is not a Slavicist (and indeed, who does not know Russian), has written a history which satisfied this historian in almost every way...In sum, Bordwell's book is the rare scholarly work that can be recommended--with enthusiasm--to students, scholars, and cineastes alike. --David J. Youngblood, Slavic and East European Journal <p>