Download - Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema
![Page 1: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema
Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema
Presentation by
Chris Schloemp
Sources:
http://cinetext.philo.at/reports/sv.html
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Stephen_Nottingham/cintxt1.htm
![Page 2: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
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
![Page 3: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
Development of Formalism
• Dominant film theory of the silent era
• Applied to a range of arts, including literature and painting
• Holds that a work’s meaning exists primarily in its form or language, rather than its content or subject
![Page 4: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
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 viewer’s response in cinema depends less on the individual shot and more on the editing or montage
![Page 5: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
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 actor’s versatility in showing hunger, sorrow, and pride, even though the shot of the actor remained the same each time
![Page 6: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
Dziga Vertov
• Enthusiastic about film’s 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
![Page 7: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
“Art is not a mirror which reflects the historical struggle, but a weapon of that struggle”
--Dziga Vertov
![Page 8: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
Kino-Pravda
• Vertov’s 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
![Page 9: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
Sergei Eisenstein
• Strike (1924)
• Battleship Potemkin (1925)
• October (1927)
• The General Line (1928)
![Page 10: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
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
![Page 11: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
![Page 12: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
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
![Page 13: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
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
![Page 14: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
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
![Page 15: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
V.I. Pudovkin
• Mother (1926)
• The End of St. Petersburg (1927)
![Page 16: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
Relational Editing
• Different style of montage
• Seamless, without drawing attention to itself
• Used solely to support the film’s narrative
• Also known as linkage editing
• Similar to the editing style developed by D.W. Griffith in the US
![Page 17: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/17.jpg)
![Page 18: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/18.jpg)
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
![Page 19: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/19.jpg)
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
![Page 20: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/20.jpg)
Influences from Pavlov and Freud
• Sought fusion of art and science• Pavlov’s theories about conditioned reflexes to
stimuli (the famous salivating dogs) very influential on montage theory
• Controlled series of shocks could produce predictable response
• Freud’s theories of the unconscious also helped influence the use of symbols in Soviet films
![Page 21: Montage Theories of Soviet Cinema](https://reader034.vdocuments.us/reader034/viewer/2022051316/568151df550346895dc017cf/html5/thumbnails/21.jpg)
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