This Thing of Darkness, Joan Neuberger's engrossing production history of Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, is a major contribution to the study of Eisenstein and thus informs the history and theory of cinema and the study of Soviet culture and politics. Neuberger's ability to mine, interpret, and connect Eisenstein's voluminous, intriguingly digressive writings makes this book exceptional.- Karla Oeler, Stanford University

Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished masterpiece, Ivan the Terrible, was no ordinary movie. Commissioned by Joseph Stalin in 1941 to justify state terror in the sixteenth century and in the twentieth, the film's politics, style, and epic scope aroused controversy even before it was released. In This Thing of Darkness, Joan Neuberger offers a sweeping account of the conception, making, and reception of Ivan the Terrible that weaves together Eisenstein's expansive thinking and experimental practice with a groundbreaking new view of artistic production under Stalin. Drawing on Eisenstein's unpublished production notebooks, diaries, and manuscripts, Neuberger's riveting narrative chronicles Eisenstein's personal, creative, and political challenges and reveals the ways cinematic invention, artistic theory, political critique, and historical and psychological analysis went hand in hand in this famously complex film.

Neuberger's bold arguments and daring insights into every aspect of Eisenstein's work during this period, together with her ability to lucidly connect his wide-ranging late theory with his work on Ivan, show the director exploiting the institutions of Soviet artistic production not only to expose the cruelties of Stalin and his circle but to challenge the fundamental principles of Soviet ideology itself. Ivan the Terrible, she argues, shows us one of the world's greatest filmmakers and one of the 20th century's greatest artists observing the world around him and experimenting with every element of film art to explore the psychology of political ambition, uncover the history of recurring cycles of violence and lay bare the tragedy of absolute power.

About the Author

Joan Neuberger is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She has written extensively in print and online about Eisenstein, film, and modern Russian cultural history.

Reviews

A superbly informed, comprehensive reading of the films that may fairly be said to be the first fully to unpack and contextualize this still controversial masterpiece.

* Cineaste *

Joan Neuberger has given us a wonderful book. Anyone interested in Eisenstein, in Soviet film, in the ways Soviet artists and the institutions around them interacted, or in what happened to Soviet art during World War II will want to read this lively, well-researched, thought-provoking monograph a couple of times over-and then will be sure to keep it somewhere readily at hand, for easy access while teaching classes on film or Eisenstein or Russian history.

* Russian Review *

This fine monograph under review is an excellent addition to both Eizenshtein studies and to studies of Stalin-era Soviet films.

* Slavonic and East European Review *

Impressive in its profound scholarship and brilliant insight into Eisenstein's filmic and historical achievement, Joan Neuberger's This Thing of Darkness provides the most wide-ranging account to date of Eisenstein's classic and controversial film.... This book provides a scintillating new perspective not only of this film and director, but more broadly of how art was produced within the political culture of Stalin's Soviet Union.

* Citation from the 2020 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize Committee *

"A beautifully written microhistory of Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished cinematic trilogy, Ivan the Terrible. By means of a wide variety of sources, from Eisenstein's diaries and notes to archival materials, Neuberger ties in international and national politics to her analysis of the characters, content, and production of the film. Her brilliant analysis admirably demonstrates what happens to aesthetic theory and practice in the hands of a genius at an existential political moment."

* Citation from the American Historical Association's 2020 George L. Mosse Prize Committee *

Joan Neuberger's beautifully written and meticulously researched book tells the story of this film with a focus both on Eisenstein's creative process and his quixotic attempt to reconcile the official historiography and the aesthetic of socialist realism with his aspiration to make a film that critiqued Stalinism using the cinematic language of modernism.

* Journal of Modern History *


Awards
Winner of George L. Mosse Prize 2020 (United States). Runner-up for Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize 2020 (United States). Short-listed for Pushkin House Russian Book Prize 2020 (United States) and Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards 2020 (United States) and Robert W. Hamilton Book Author Awards Program 2020 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9781501732768
Author Joan Neuberger
Format Hardback
Page Count 424
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g