Visions of Disrupted Chronologies: Sergei Eisenstein and Hedwig Fechheimer's Cubist Egypt.

By juxtaposing two ostensibly divergent characters, the Jewish art historian and Egyptologist Hedwig Fechheimer (1871–1942) and Soviet filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948), this paper investigates how both approaches folded time, creating Cubist chronologies. Fechheimer adapted the philological focus of her Berlin School contemporaries to create an ahistorical, anti-teleological grammar of ancient Egyptian art which espoused an artistic affinity between the Egyptians and the Cubist movement. Eisenstein, who held a copy of one of Fechheimer's books in his personal library, took a similar approach in the development of his critiques of historical allegory. This paper looks specifically at two shots of a sphinx during the bridge sequence in the 1927 film October to demonstrate how they correspond to Fechheimer's views on Egyptian art and also function peculiarly within the film. Ultimately, I aim to demonstrate how the interpellations of the sphinx demonstrate a particular critique of historicity that Eisenstein later expands upon in his Ivan the Terrible films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]