Sacred and profane in the late works of S.M. Eisenstein's art: 1940-1946

Abstract

S.M. Eisenstein is one of the key figures of the Russian - Soviet avant-garde art. The most significant feature of that artistic direction was the desire to break out of the narrow framework of art into life itself. Therefore, Eisenstein's artistic views and projects were often large-scale and radical. Behind them one could see a super-task - changing reality itself through the transformation of the audience' s minds. Eisenstein makes every effort to capture History as a process of the masses resistance of masses to violence and slavery, as a process of evolution of freedom in the human spirit. However, in reality that turns into myth-making. Myth becomes for Eisenstein a means of overcoming History. In his films of the late period, there are all signs of a myth. In the late works Eisenstein makes an attempt of using the myth to naturalize History, Culture, Religion, transfer them to another register, the original, the natural.