Among early directors, Sergei Eisentein
  stands alone as the maker of a fully historical cinema. James Goodwin treats
  issues of revolutionary history and historical representation as central to
  an understanding of Eisentein's work, which explores two movements within Soviet
  history and consciousness: the Bolshevik Revolution and the Stalinist state.
Goodwin articulates intersections
  between Eisentein's ideas and aspects of the thought of Walter Benjamin, Georg
  Lukács, Ernst Bloch, and Bertolt Brecht. He also shows how the formal
  properties and filmic techniques of each work reveal perspectives on history
  . Individual chapters focus on Strike, Battleship Potemkin, October, Old
  and New, projects of the 1930s, Alexander Nevsky, and Ivan the
  Terrible.