A Montage of Ideas

This week's reading comes from the notes of perhaps the most famous director to come out of the Soviet school of the silent era, Sergei Eisenstein. Other filmmakers employed techniques of montage, but few had such well developed theories about its effects. His writings elaborated on the technical approach that he took in creating his heavily cut sequences and the meaning behind them.

Today, montage has taken on a different meaning altogether. It is no longer thought of as analytical or symbolic, but most often as a tool to condense time or to present a lot of related information in an organized way, such as introducing a series of characters. For the Russian filmmakers like Eisenstein however, the approach was much more developed. It is not simply breaking down a scene into a series of shots, but it is about unifying each element to give greater meaning to the whole. His view is that as a filmmaker, he must find a way to place his audience in the frame of mind viewing his film that he had in making it.

Eisenstein relates his ideology to the paintings and theories of Leonardo DaVinci. For DaVinci, there was an almost scientific method to leading a viewer's eyes from one part of the canvas to the next so that they took in the painting not all at once, but in a sequential order that he felt led to a more complete understanding.



If we look at Eisenstein's use of montage, he found ways to integrate multiple storylines within the framework of a battle scene, beyond just the violent clash between two opposing sides. His most famous example of montage is the Odessa Staircase sequence from The Battleship Potemkin, which we will be looking at this week in class. It is a frantic scene filled with utter chaos, but somehow Eisenstein manages to weave in the struggle of individual characters from the child who is shot by a soldier and then trampled by the crowd and the mother who desperately tries to reach him, or another mother with her infant in a carriage, precariously lingering near the edge of the staircase. There are many other characters that Eisenstein focuses on at various points, even briefly, and through this, he is able to humanize the tragedy, rather than just create a scene filled with violence against nameless, faceless, masses.



I think it is also important to note how Eisenstein views the importance of the actors role in creating this realistic portrayal for the audience. It is interesting to me, because I have always thought of the Russian style as being stylized as opposed to realistic. But for Eisenstein, his method was a way of creating an ultimate realism by bringing all of these disparate elements together, and thereby giving a more complete picture to his audience. I thought it was particularly illuminating the way that he described his approach to a particular scene and thinking of the mindset of the characters in that instance, their expressions and gestures, as well as the sights and sounds that make up the atmosphere of the location. Once again, it goes back to finding that connection with your audience, so that they are experiencing the film through the same process that you went through in making it.

Most of all, I want to drive home the point that there is a significant thought process behind editing a film. It is not just about what seems right, but rather there should be thought put into why each shot is used in the order that it is laid down and how it moves forward the sequence and ultimately the film as a whole.