In Eisenstein's works and lectures
there are quite a few Marx quotes
of both a philosophical
and social nature.
But I'd like to paraphrase
a quote that
relates to the recollections
of his daughter Eleanor
about childhood and how Marx told
fairy tales to his daughters.
These fairy tales, it turns out,
were an exposition
of the same ideas
that Marx was working on while
creating the first volume of “Capital.”
Eleanor writes about a series
of fairy tales about Hans,
the owner of a toy shop
who was always tangled up in
financial problems.
It was full of the most wonderful things
but the owner of this shop
was always in debt to the devil
and had to send him toys,
which always returned
to the owner later.
And this is basically a
metaphorical expression
of the same ideas about labor, about
a person working for someone else,
who has to settle up
and is always in debt to
the person he works for,
but his strength comes
back to him again.
And when Eisenstein was thinking
in 1928 about creating a new film
from Marx's “Capital”, it was a
direct continuation of these fairy tales
that Marx told
his daughters,
an attempt to figuratively
depict and explain the contents
that were at the heart of Marx’s
philosophical and social thinking.
