On The Detective Story

Few figures in cinema history are as towering as Russian filmmaker and theorist Sergei Mikhailovitch Eisenstein 18981948. 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 Terriblehe 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 the Detective Story presents Eisensteins elaborate study in four essays and fragments of the use of dialectical thinking in the creation of art and literature. Drawing on major works from Shakespeare Tolstoy Balzac Gogol Mayakovsky Dostoevsky and more and ranging from folk tales to contemporary detective stories it shows the keenly analytic quality of Eisensteins mind when it turned to questions of creative work.