“Without a clear idea of the why and wherefore of a film one cannot, in my view, start work. Without knowing which latent moods and passions one has to speculate on one cannot create…” He goes on to say that tendentiousness doesn’t have to be political but it must be present. “…if people think of film as a plaything to pass the time, as a means of lulling and putting to sleep, then this lack of tendentiousness seems to me merely to reinforce the tendentious view that people are leading a glorious and contented existence”.
“Eisenstein on Eisenstein,” The Eisenstein Reader, Richard Taylor, ed., p 65
To me, simply put, this means that the maker must have a clear vision, direction and reason for creating and it must include making the audience think. Goes back to examining the classic hollywood happy ending as lacking that tendentiousness and lulling audiences…no point…jj