Sergei Eisenstein and Upton Sinclair: The Making & Unmaking of Que Viva Mexico!

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. Erich Salomon (Back cover photograph). xxix, [1], 449, [1] pages. Inscribed by Editor Geduld on fep. Inscription reads For Michael with every good wish-- from Harry. Previous owner's name stamped on fep. DJ has wear and soiling and is in a plastic sleeve. Frontispiece. Illustrations. Documentary and Pictorial Sources, Chronology and Itinerary. Glossary of Principal persons, Glossary of Places, Rough Outline of the Mexican Picture. Annotated Bibliography. Index. In 1963, Harry M. Geduld established the first film study course at Indiana University. He once said: "Since then I have taught or proposed most of the basic courses in film study at Indiana University. My writing and teaching have been intimately connected: The books I have published and the series I have edited have developed in response to practical pedagogical considerations. My introduction of courses on the study of television genres has followed the same lines as the film teaching. My writing and my teaching have always been expressions of passionate preoccupation. I constantly strive to break new ground, to teach new courses, to research and write about neglected or little-known subjects, and to create new interests for my students and readers. The reward is not only to succeed (at times), but also to have the pleasure of being among the first to see over the next hill." Since his retirement in 1996, Geduld has written a two-act play, three one-act plays, and a collection of four hundred limericks. Ronald Gottesman was the founding director of the Center for the Humanities at USC, and professor emeritus of English in USC College. A faculty member in the College from 1975 to 2001, Gottesman taught American literature and American studies, and authored numerous books and articles. He edited and commissioned more than 200 critical and reference volumes in at least six book series. Spanning a plethora of subjects, his research focused on diverse people and topics from Upton Sinclair, Sergei M. Eisenstein and Orson Welles, to William Dean Howells, Henry Miller and fictional ape King Kong. Other areas of expertise included textual editing, robots and film scholarship. He edited a major section of the Norton Anthology of American Literature and was founding editor of two quarterly journals: Quarterly Review of Film and Video and Humanities in Society. Most recently he co-edited Playing to the Camera: Film Actors Discuss Their Craft and served as editor-in-chief for three volumes of Scribner's Violence in America: An Encyclopedia. A highly decorated professor — he was a Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, and was senior research fellow at the Center for Twentieth Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin and the Yale University Humanities Center, to name a few honors — Gottesman's greatest legacy may be the pivotal role he played as mentor and friend to his students. Based in major part on the Einenstein-Sinclair correspondence, the book takes the form of a documentary account of the Period November 1930 to June 1932, during which the most famous cause celebre in the history of the film industry unfolded. The book provides a detailed and objective study of the conception, development, and abortive end of the film masterpiece and reveals the conflicts and pressures that involved the principals. It clarified the relationship between the Russian director and Upton Sinclair, who financed the picture, and reveals the causes and consequences of Sinclair's withdrawal of financial backing from the film. The fiasco that ended the project was to leave a permanent mark on Eisenstein's life and work, which for Sinclair it was to have international repercussions: he was vilified on both sides of the Atlantis as the desecrator of the most important work of the world's greatest motion picture director. The book presents the story of these events in a unique manner by embedding the actual correspondence of the main participants in a commentary by the editors.