On Disney

by Sergei Eisenstein, Alan Upchurch (Translator), Jay Leyda (Editor)

Few figures in cinema history are as towering as Russian filmmaker and theorist Sergei Mikhailovitch Eisenstein (1898–1948). Not only did Eisenstein direct some of the most important and lasting works of the silent era, including Strike , October , and Battleship Potemkin , as well as, in the sound era, the historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible —he also was a theorist whose insights into the workings of film were so powerful that they remain influential for both filmmakers and scholars today.

Seagull Books is embarking on a series of translations of key works by Eisenstein into English.   On Disney , which was begun in 1940 but was never finished, was part of a series of essays Eistenstein wrote on masters of cinema; for Eisenstein, Walt Disney offered a way to think about how such impulses and animism and totemism survived in modern consciousness and art. This edition presents the original, unfinished essay along with material on Disney that Eisenstein worked on in subsequent years but never succeeded in integrating with the original.

Genres: Nonfiction, Read For School, Film

256 pages, Paperback

Published December 15, 2017

About the author

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a Soviet film director and film theorist, a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1925), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1928), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958). In its 2012 decennial poll, the magazine Sight & Sound named his Battleship Potemkin the 11th greatest movie of all time.

Eisenstein was among the earliest film theorists. He believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through a "linkage" of related images. He developed what he called "methods of montage":
1) Metric
2) Rhythmic
3) Tonal
4) Overtonal
5) Intellectual

Eisenstein's articles and books—particularly Film Form and The Film Sense—explain the significance of montage in detail. His writings and films have continued to have a major impact on subsequent filmmakers.

Reviews

[Zachary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love reading Eisenstein's film theory, and still find him one of the most cogent and original thinkers on film. And I love Disney films, and the fact that Eisenstein has written on Disney is fascinating--but the actual product is...maybe a little less so? I am trying to give this book grace given that it is an incomplete manuscript, effectively constructed out of fragments of notes that he had been making for years. This I understand, and can agree with. But I do wonder, honestly, if those notes deserved to be collected in this form. Sometimes they are simply too fragmented, too sporadic, too unfocused for the reader to follow. Maybe if I had read more of the mythologies and poems that he references I would understand more, but somehow I doubt it. Most often in these pages Eisenstein notes to himself a connection between works that is then never materialized in any way in the rest of the book's prose.

The clear ideas that do emerge are phenomenal, and the question that he starts with--how logic and emotion can coexist in film, specifically in Disney's animation--is something film theorists are still wrestling with. But I think the main essay here could have been offered on its own, rather than with some of the accompanying baggage. This book is a great curiosity for students of animation or Eisenstein or embodied theories of animation and film, but probably won't amount to too much else for other audiences.

[gadabout · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is something that would have done far better condensed into an essay than a combined series of notes. There was no cohesiveness or proper takeaway so much as there was the same thing being unnecessarily elaborated on and stated multiple times, in scarcely different fashions.
It was a bit of a drag to read, and I really got nothing from this book that couldn't be said with an extra sentence or two added to the summary.

[Jon Shai · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a collection of notes from Eisenstein later compiled into a book about Walt Disney. That's how it reads, disjointed, almost stream-of-consiousness, notes. The first 25 pages are good, and they talk about Eisensteins general view and theories of Disney the man and his creative abilities. I found that interesting.

[Evan Frew · Rating 3 out of 5]

He do be rambling a lot... Still an interesting perspective

[clarino910 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sergei Eisenstein was the first Disney Adult.

[Rosalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty much using Disney for his Marxist propaganda, which is actually really impressive considering Merbabies was more concerned with trying to keep everyone from wondering how babies can run a circus than whether or not late-stage capitalism was going to be the reason Battleship Potemkin doesn't get a three-month run on Netflix someday. Is Disney's later long-form content all that separates it from the obliviousness of other animated projects Eisenstein criticizes? Is it safe to assume Disney means to criticize Christianity and capitalism all in one Donald Duck telephone smashing machine act? But this book is truly like three books in one, as Eisenstein quickly abandons the economic ties to this style of filmmaking and gets really psychological. His chapters on human fascination with fire are really great. Later, he outright compares himself with Disney, but unfortunately, neither saved us from our countries' economic failures, though I suspect only the former would have been mad about that (hard to confirm Disney's views, though). Overall, the book is well devised and very useful for understanding the impact of animation on modern society and film theory.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disney, or rather the mid-20th century Walt Disney's Mickey and the anthropomorphism of other creatures -- totemism, animism, the protean element, plasmaticness, it is art, and not mere childish cartoons. Disney did something wonderful and amazing with his free, creative, bounteous with energy and the hidden fire and synchronization with music to liberate the American peoples of their capitalist bounds.

I will not look at Disney in the same light again.