The essential elements of film theory were developed in the silent era by Soviet filmmakers intent on explaining the power of this new medium and in making of it a political and social tool, one that could be used in furtherance of the aims of the Soviet state. Indeed, the film theory that developed after 1917 mirrored the dialectics of Hegel, with successive shots seen as offering opposing ideas from which a synthesis was then produced that would have a certain effect on the viewer. Sergei Eisenstein represented one branch of Soviet film theory, a revolutionary branch that was exemplified in his films from the beginning and identified with his ideas of montage, or the ordering of individual shots to produce an effect. Eisenstein was a theorist as well as a filmmaker and was extremely influential through his writings on film as well as through the films he directed. He would fall out of favor in the Soviet system during the Stalinist era, but he would remain at the forefront of world cinema, with a strong reputation based in particular on his classic works Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky, and Ivan the Terrible: I and II.
A contemporary of Eisenstein, director Grigori Kozintsev, said of his colleague:
In Eisenstein's case the most important thing to consider is not so much his place in the history of the contemporary cinema, but in the history of modern culture as a whole. to say that Eisenstein was one of the greatest film directors of our time is to say something both very obvious and very little. I believe myself that he was essentially an investigator, in search of an art form that had not yet been created, and his films were just the first steps in the development of that art (Swallow 42).
Yet, these films were giant steps, taking the incipient artistry of the motion picture to the level of an art form and creating for it an aesthetic that differentiated it from other art forms. Eisenstein was not a prolific filmmake...