Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema

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Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema

• Presentation by
• Chris Schloemp
• Sources
• http//cinetext.philo.at/reports/sv.html
• http//ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Stephen_N
  ottingham/cintxt1.htm

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Soviet Cinema in the 1920s

• Vibrant film culture in the period following the
  Russian Revolution
• Influential developments in film theory
• Several films stand as landmarks in the history
  of world cinema

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Development of Formalism

• Dominant film theory of the silent era
• Applied to a range of arts, including literature
  and painting
• Holds that a works meaning exists primarily in
  its form or language, rather than its content or
  subject

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The Pioneer Lev Kuleshov

• Re-edited existing film stock to develop ideas of
  film grammar
• Formed workshops in 1920 at the State Film School
• Central belief the viewers response in cinema
  depends less on the individual shot and more on
  the editing or montage

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The Kuleshov Effect

• Famous experiment with shot juxtapositions
• First shot c/u of actor with neutral expression,
  then joined this shot to
• c/u of a bowl of soup
• c/u of a coffin with a corpse
• c/u of a little girl playing
• Test audiences praised the actors versatility in
  showing hunger, sorrow, and pride, even though
  the shot of the actor remained the same each time

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Dziga Vertov

• Enthusiastic about films potential as
  educational and propagandistic tool
• Since Russian society was composed of illiterate
  workers and peasants, they needed a different
  medium of instruction
• Believed that ideal medium was the documentary
  film

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Art is not a mirror which reflects the
historical struggle, but a weapon of that
struggle --Dziga Vertov
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Kino-Pravda

• Vertovs primary theory film-truth
• Fiction films, acted films as opiates, that
  prevented a necessary confrontation with reality
• Filmmaker sees beneath the surface chaos to
  reveal the underlying connections to the
  institutions of power
• Filmmaker as poet, as fuser of images

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Sergei Eisenstein

• Strike (1924)
• Battleship Potemkin (1925)
• October (1927)
• The General Line (1928)

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Theory of Intellectual Montage

• Film constructed as a series of colliding shocks
  or attractions
• Montage as a dialectical process (from Hegel
  thesis vs. antithesis synthesis)
• Meaning created by juxtaposition of shots, not
  the content of individual images
• Shocks created for ideological purpose

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Example of Montage

• Strike (1924)
• Nature of the slaughter perpetrated by the
  Cossack army is conveyed by juxtaposing
• scenes of advancing soldiers
• a bull being slaughtered
• ink being spilled over a street-map of the city
  being attacked

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Sound and the Rhythm of Editing

• Sound and vision could be treated independently
  or used in concert
• Shots in film and phrases of music could be timed
  together to increase the impact of a key shot
• Rhythm of music can accent the rhythm of editing,
  of montage

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Acting as Typage

• Eisenstein, like other Soviet filmmakers of his
  time, was not interested in using professional
  actors
• Asked amateurs to draw on their experiences of
  their own lives
• Typage when people in films represent archetypes
  due to their resemblance to universal groups in
  society

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V.I. Pudovkin

• Mother (1926)
• The End of St. Petersburg (1927)

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Relational Editing

• Different style of montage
• Seamless, without drawing attention to itself
• Used solely to support the films narrative
• Also known as linkage editing
• Similar to the editing style developed by D.W.
  Griffith in the US

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Dovzhenko and the Use of Tableaux

• Arsenal (1929) Earth (1930)
• Series of tableaux a linkage of still
  photographs
• Slow pace and solemn atmosphere
• Long shots of archetypal figures, often in
  silhouette

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Film as Propaganda

• All Soviet filmmakers worked under a unique set
  of social conditions after the Revolution of 1917
• Cinema regarded as educational tool to promote
  the ideals of communism
• Overtly political films images used to
  illustrate history in textbooks
• Limited to one basic storyline triumph of the
  people over bourgeois oppression

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Influences from Pavlov and Freud

• Sought fusion of art and science
• Pavlovs theories about conditioned reflexes to
  stimuli (the famous salivating dogs) very
  influential on montage theory
• Controlled series of shocks could produce
  predictable response
• Freuds theories of the unconscious also helped
  influence the use of symbols in Soviet films

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Lasting Impact

• Soviet cinema continues to inspire filmmakers
  today
• Emphasis on the process of film rather than the
  content of narratives seen in the work of 1960s
  film-makers
• Some contemporary filmmakers see the
  opportunities of using non-diegetic elements in
  montage sequences