SCFZ poll: Sergei Eisenstein

[flip]

Polling the films of Sergei Eisenstein

The rules:

- your list can include no more than half* of the Eisenstein films you've seen, up to a maximum of 8. So if you've seen 6 films, you can vote for 3, and if you've seen 20, you can vote for up to 8.

* If you've seen an odd number, you can round up when deciding the length of your ballot -- e.g if you've seen 7, you can vote for 4, and if you've seen 15, you can vote for the maximum of 8.

- i'll assume ballots are ranked unless you tell me otherwise. unranked ballots are fine.

- deadline for ballots: next Tuesday, in seven days, whatever day that is

umbugbene created an index on letterboxd of all of our previous polls here: letterboxd.com/umbugbene/list/index-of-all-scfz-director-polls/

[rischka]

strike!
alexander nevsky
que viva mexico
ivan the terrible I
the general line

[flip]

Strike
Romance Sentimentale
Battleship Potemkin

seen four, obv need to see more -- edit: seen five

[wba]

seen 2 at least 20 years ago, both of which I hated back then, so I really can't say anything about Eisenstein at all.

[Curtis, baby]

seen 9

ivan the terrible PART TWO
alexander nevsky
ivan the terrile PART ONE
glumov's diary
strike

[...]

The General Line
Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars’ Plot
Ivan the Terrible, Part I
Battleship Potemkin
Glumov’s Diary

[ofrene]

Seen 7

Ivan the Terrible Part 2
October
Ivan the Terrible Part 1
The General Line

[brian d]

seen 9

¡que viva méxico!
alexander nevsky
ivan the terrible 1
ivan the terrible 2
the general line

unranked, since it's been too long

[oscarwerner]

seen 8. Impressive camera work in those big films.
October (Ten Days that Shook the World)
Battleship Potemkin
Ivan the Terrible, Part I
Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot

[flip]

I remember when I was first becoming interested in film, before I knew anything at all, and I was learning about films that (according to what I was reading) were considered the 'greatest ever made', i'd run into titles like citizen kane, seven samurai, the seventh seal, vertigo, tokyo story... and battleship potemkin. i wonder what impression someone new to film would get these days, but i suspect battleship potemkin might not have the same standing today that i thought it had back when. it certainly doesn't in our poll -- according to scfz, seven other films just by eisenstein alone are better. edit: it's risen a bit with new ballots

not sure everyone had a chance to vote, so i'll accept late ballots until this goes up on letterboxd (which won't happen until next week). if you'll be submitting late, please don't look at the results before you vote!

results
1. Alexander Nevsky (1938) — 21 pts
2. Ivan the Terrible Part 2 (1945) — 18 pts
2. Battleship Potemkin (1925) — 18 pts
4. Ivan the Terrible Part I (1944) — 17 pts
5. Strike! (1925) — 15 pts
6. The General Line (1929) — 12 pts
7. ¡Que Viva Mexico! (1932) — 9 pts
8. October (1928) — 7 pts
9. Glumov’s Diary (1923) — 3 pts
10. Romance Sentimentale (1930) — 2 pts
11. Frauennot - Frauengluck (1930) -- 1 pt

[...]

Heh, back in my early days, there wasn't even Tokyo Story mentioned and Vertigo was hard to see so more North by Northwesterly Hitchcocking. The Gold Rush was a big deal though, but Chaplin is another that's been losing steam in the decades since, just like Potemkin.

[Flakotaso]

seen 7

General Line
Battleship Potemkin
Frauennot - Frauenglück

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Yes, I agree that Potemkin's canonical status has fallen. This is true of silent films in general, in my opinion (see also, Chaplin) and I think that's to be regretted.

Potemkin was still perceived by me as high high canon when I was getting into film, but then, I was relying on older sources than, say, the IMDB 250. I think the only time I've seen Potemkin was in parts over days on a tube television in the hallway during high school. I was disappointed, but then, of course I was, because that wasn't exactly how Eisenstein envisioned people watching it.

[flip]

Yes, I agree that Potemkin's canonical status has fallen. This is true of silent films in general, in my opinion (see also, Chaplin) and I think that's to be regretted.

it's interesting because i have the impression if i was getting into film now, i might think a buster keaton film (sherlock jr or the general probably) belongs in that short list of canon films i posted earlier (well, if i made it a list of ten or twenty films anyway), but probably not battleship potemkin or any chaplin. i guess what i find interesting is how everyone's impression of the 'canon' is influenced by what we're exposed to, and this thing i probably thought there was a consensus around, way back before i knew anything, is really malleable and mutable. and it's interesting how changes to film culture and internet etc have changed the standing of various films. of course one of the things i like about scfz is that many people here have reservations about or objections to even the idea of a canon, and that a film like battleship potemkin can come in 7th in an eisenstein poll.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

it's interesting because i have the impression if i was getting into film now, i might think a buster keaton film (sherlock jr or the general probably) belongs in that short list of canon films i posted earlier (well, if i made it a list of ten or twenty films anyway), but probably not battleship potemkin or any chaplin. i guess what i find interesting is how everyone's impression of the 'canon' is influenced by what we're exposed to, and this thing i probably thought there was a consensus around, way back before i knew anything, is really malleable and mutable. and it's interesting how changes to film culture and internet etc have changed the standing of various films. of course one of the things i like about scfz is that many people here have reservations about or objections to even the idea of a canon, and that a film like battleship potemkin can come in 7th in an eisenstein poll.

Oh yes, I agree with this. I wouldn't want to defend the preservation of a single shared canon, and certainly not a static one.

Still, I'm saddened to see that representations of the Canon, as given by TSPDT and Sight and Sound, are getting less and less silent and indeed less and less pre-1960s. I've noticed a disproportionate favouring of post-60s movies in such polls these days. For example, there were 434 films receiving votes in the 2012 S&S poll released in the 1970s. For the 1890s, 1900s, '10s, '20s, '30s, and '40s combined it's 437. Since those six decades are my favourites, I always find that a tad dispiriting, even if I'm not especially invested in the idea of a Canon.

Of course, that's why I enjoy SCFZ so much, because here we can spend a month doing a deep dive into 1929 and sharing obscure finds and no body looks at you funny for doing so

[...]

Oh, almost forgot, but "The Bicycle Thief", as it was then called, was another of the major canonical films and Italian cinema was still seen as being as vital as the French and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari was the key German film studied for the expressionist influence.

The problem is, if you throw out the idea of a canon completely, then there's little to hold as having any shared lasting cultural value that can be pointed to and what comes instead is individual preference based around pleasure, which erodes the place of art by the torrent of entertainment and leads to art being discussed either as academic theory or of "liking", neither a really satisfying alternative.

[flip]

oh great call about the bicycle thief, i just forgot about that film but back when i was talking about, that would have been one of four or five films (along with the ones i mentioned) that i'd seen described as 'the greatest film of all time', another film that might not have the status now it once had, possibly because of the recency bias evelyn mentions.

i find it helpful to understand at least what is considered 'canon', regardless of how i feel about the concept, just because so many people who get into film get into it through whatever they think of as 'canon' (i doubt many people start out watching mizoguchi's 15th most famous film ), and so it's probably an important thing to everyone at some point, no matter what perspective one takes of it after engaging with film more widely,

[St. Gloede]

I'll mess up the results a little. Seen 8:

Battleship Potemkin
Aleksandr Nevskiy
Ivan the Terrible, Part I
Que Viva Mexico

(While Ivan the Terrible, Part I is a favourite I was severely disappointed by part 2. This is mainly as I found the impromptu singing and the colour scene entirely out of place)

[nrh]

wherever eisenstein's films land i think his writing will always be considered seminal. and there has been much more interest in him as a queer figure in recent years.

potemkin's place in the canon has always been as much a totemic object representing a set of values more than just as a film (i'd argue it's the weakest of his silents), and i'd argue bicycle thieves and to a lesser extent umberto d. used to function that way as well. but then when i encountered all this for the first time something like vertov's kino pravda movies, or rossellini's bergman and history films, were totally unavailable.

[flip]

so potemkin keeps climbing the rankings with each new ballot, so my earlier post might have started from a faulty premise

[john ryan]

seen 9

1. Alexander Nevsky
2. Strike!
3. Battleship Potemkin
4. Ivan The Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot
5. The General Line

[ororama]

1. Battleship Potemkin
2. Strike!
3. Alexander Nevsky

I've seen 7.

[flip]

and after all that discussion, the late ballots ended up elevating battleship potemkin into a tie for 2nd, so it did quite well after all. the final list is up at letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-301/