SOURCE: "The Closed Mind of Sergei Eisenstein," in The Kenyon Review, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, Fall 1961, pp. 687-94.

In the following essay, Pechter questions the validity of Eisenstein's reputation as a great filmmaker.

The great success of the 1925 Moscow film season was not Potemkin, but some undistinguished Hollywood colossus; some thirty-five years later, Eisenstein had his season in New York. His huge presence looms even larger now than then; somehow, the twilight casts a more enhancing shadow than the dawn. The Museum of Modern Art Film Library is perforce becoming a mausoleum. Where will one today find a work so vast, so ambitious, as to challenge the pre-eminence of the early classics? Is it only twilight that descends, or some more permanent darkness?

In Eisenstein, the genius of an artist and the fervour of an inspired scholar were united; and his six completed films, though they represent but a...