The Eyes in Close-Up: Surveillance, Control, and Montage in Three Works by Sergei Eisenstein

This article outlines the central role of the human eye as a consistent and recurring aesthetic strategy in the cinematic oeuvre of Sergei Eisenstein via an investigation of three films—Strike (1925), Potemkin (1925), and the unfinished, two-part Ivan the Terrible (1945, 1958). It analyses seeing, being seen, and shut and open eyes, in conjunction with the use of the close-up, as crucial to Eisenstein’s visual vocabulary and argues for the need to think about the persistent focus on eyes and vision in terms of panoptic mechanisms of political surveillance and control. Meaning is generated from eye to eye, through configurations of looking and spying, revealing and concealing—formal and aesthetic strategies which condition the gaze of the spectator, creating sites of affect that provide continuity between the films. It furthermore contextualises Soviet montage and Eisenstein’s work in relation to European avant-gardes, specifically French Impressionism and German Expressionism, whose influence on the director’s filmography has received little scholarly attention.