SOURCE: "Eisenstein's Aesthetics: A Dissenting View," in Sight and Sound, Vol 43, No. 1, Winter, 1973-74, pp. 38-43.

An American educator and critic, Seydor is the author of a study of the westerns of director Sam Peckinpah. In the following essay, he contends that Eisenstein was a purveyor of doctrine whose films manipulate through excessive emotionalism, and whose aesthetic deliberately "keeps reality at arm's length."

Everybody 'seriously interested' in film pays obeisance to Sergei Eisenstein in one way or another. Even those few critics, scholars and knowledgeable lay moviegoers who don't like his work feel compelled to preface or conclude unfavourable remarks about even its gross defects by praising his style, his craftsmanship, his cinematic sophistication and—this always—his genius (although some of the less generous among this dissenting contingent may qualify that with 'misguided' or similar euphemisms). Many auteuristes and other self-appointed taste-makers are more certain: Eisenstein is...