Documentary 1951-1960 Classics Jay Leyda Sergei M. Eisenstein USSR

Sergei M. Eisenstein & Jay Leyda – Eisenstein’s Mexican Film: Episodes for Study (1958)

adminDecember 25, 2019

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In 1954, Upton Sinclair donated 100,000 feet of film shot by Sergei Eisenstein in Mexico to the Museum of Modern Art. From this footage, Jay Leyda, assisted by Manfred Kirchheimer, created an almost four hour long assemblage titled “Eisenstein’s Mexican Film: Episodes for Study.” The film is silent with explanatory titles. The MOMA footage was later re-edited by Grigori Aleksandrov to create the 1979 version of “Que Viva Mexico”.

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In 1930, Eisenstein, Alexandrov and Tisse began their ambitious Mexican film, with financing collected by the Upton Sinclairs. A year later the backers halted the project before filming was completed. Since then, parts of the filmed footage have been released, but not in the form intended by its makers. The aim of the present film is instructional – to summarize Eisenstein’s film plan and to restore a few fragmentary sequences as they came from Tisse’s camera, without attempting to convey the final form this footage would have taken. The film includes material from the prologue and from the three novellas on which shooting was completed: “Sandunga,” “Fiesta” and “Maguey.”