EISENSTEIN AND TARKOVSKY: AN UNEXPECTED CONNECTION For the majority of film scholars, the names of Tarkovsky and Eisenstein represent an opposition between two radically different approaches to the art of cinema. This opposition has been established by Tarkovsky himself, when he wrote: I am radically opposed to the way Eisenstein used the frame to codify intellectual formulae. My own method of conveying experience to the audience is quite different. Of course it has to be said that Eisenstein wasn't trying to convey his own experience to anyone, he wanted to put across ideas, purely and simply; but for me that sort of cinema is utterly inimical. Moreover, Eisenstein's montage dictum, as I see it, contradicts the very basis of the unique process whereby a film affects the audience.(1) Here, Tarkovsky was referring to Eisenstein's earlier films such as Strike, Battleship Potemkin, and October, all made in...
