Metropolis much prefers to publish studies of film theory from among contemporary cinema aestheticians, Eisenstein can neither be described as contemporary nor modern: for a major period of cinematic theory he was one of the biggest founders of a theory of montage, someone who is mainly of historical importance.     One hitch in the train of thought in the first paragraph is that Eisenstein is not, or not only, a theorist of montage: our compilation puts greater emphasis on those parts of Eisenstein’s analytical work which up to now were not really represented in Hungary (precisely because of the overstress on montage). In some way we would like to show that Eisenstein’s theoretical work is not a historical curiosity, but in fact one of the richest available sources for modern-day film aesthetics.     At the time he made every film and wrote every piece of theoretical work, Eisenstein was faced again and again with an insoluble paradox: on one side film should have a practical effect on the viewer, on the other side that film should still more be a merely self-sufficient play of forms, able to express deeper ideas. Eisenstein’s cinema-theory can be grasped as a continuous subsequent experiment in resolving this paradox. The authors of the introductory study interpret Eisenstein’s later theoretical works, and they try to place them into a new interdependence.