Classical Realist Texts: American Films between 1916 and 1960

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Classical Realist Texts American Films between
1916 and 1960

• Montage

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Table of Contents

• 1. Mise-en-scène in classical American films
• 2. Montage in classical American films

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Montage in Classical American Films

• As mise-en-scène, montage must help a narrative
  move on without distracting the attention of the
  viewer from it.
• Smooth flow from a shot to the next shot
• CONTINUITY EDITING

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Montage in Classical American Films

• Continuity editing
• PURPOSES
• To tell a story coherently and clearly
• To map out the chain of actions in an
  un-distracting way

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Montage in Classical American Films

• GRAPHIC CONTINUITY
• Shot-Reverse Shot
• The positions of figures, the balance of
  compositions, and the set designs must be kept
  consistent over shot-reverse shots.
• The overall lighting tonality and colour schema
  must remain constant over shots.

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Continuity Editing
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Continuity Editing
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Non-Continuity Editing

• An example which ignores the rule of continuity
  editing. Ozus films

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Montage in Classical American Films

• EYE-LINE MATCH
• Shot A presents someone looking at something
  off-screen shot B shows us what is being looked
  at by him/her.

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Montage in Classical American Films

• Eye-line match
• Alfred Hitchcocks Rear Windows (1954)
• In one shot Jefferies looks through his camera
  and the next shot shows what he is watching.

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Montage in Classical American Films

• 180-DEGREE RULE
• Two characters (or other elements) in the same
  scene should always have the same left/right
  relationship to each other.
• The axis of action (or centre line, 180º line) is
  assumed between two characters. Then, this axis
  of action determines a half-circle, or 180º area,
  where the camera(s) can be placed to present
  action.

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Montage in Classical American Films

• Examples of the scenes which blatantly ignore the
  180-degree rule
• Jean-Luc Godard, A bout de souffle (1960)
• Ozu Yasujiro, Tokyo Story (1953)

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Montage in Classical American Films

• TEMPORAL CONTINUITY
• Time, like space, is organized according to the
  development of the narrative.
• ORDER, FREQUENCY, DURATION

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Montage in Classical American Films

• ORDER
• Continuity editing typically presents the story
  events in a 1-2-3 order.
• With the exception of occasional flashbacks.
• Christopher Nolans Memento its narrative told
  in a backward 3-2-1 order

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Montage in Classical American Films

• FREQUENCY
• Classical editing also typically presents only
  once what happens in the story.
• Non-classical montage
• Sergei Eisensteins Battleship Potemkin (1925)
• Spike Lees Do the Right Thing (1989)

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Montage in Classical American Films

• DURATION
• In the classical continuity system, story
  duration is seldom expanded or shortened. The
  story time is equal to the film time.
• Story time is extended in the famous Odessa Steps
  scene in Sergei Eisensteins Battleship Potemkin
  (1925)

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Montage in Classical American Films

• JUMP CUT
• A device to compress (dead) time. (A man enters
  a large room at one end and must walk to a desk
  at the other end. Jump cut eliminates most of
  the action of traversing the long room.)

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Montage in Classical American Films

• Unobtrusive jump cut - a cut which does not make
  the viewer aware of it.
• Excess dead time must smoothed over either by
  cutting away to another element of the scene or
  by changing camera angle sufficiently so that the
  second shot is clearly from a different camera
  placement.
• Jump Cut

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Expressive Montage

• Obtrusive, jugged jump cut
• An action is abruptly interrupted before it is
  completed or a scene begins in the middle of an
  action after it has already started.
• Jean-Luc Godard, A bout de souffle (1960)
• Lars von Trier, Dancer in the Dark (2000)
• One of the avant-gardes favourite expressive
  techniques.
• Making artificiality evident.

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Expressive Montage

• CROSS CUTTING
• Alternates two or more lines of actions taking
  place in different places simultaneously.
• Cross cutting could be employed to enhance
  reality and truth effects, but is generally
  associated with more formalist editing.
• Edward Yans Yi, Yi (A One and a Two, 2000)
• Francis Ford Coppola, Godfather

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Expressive Montage

• David Lean as a master editor
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• Formative editing jumping thousands of miles in
  space over two shots

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Expressive Montage

• The most audacious editing
• 2001 Space Odyssay
• Time travels million years in one editing.