fi lm. However, it is now most often used to describe a
particular mode of intellectual or non-realist editing that
creates meaning out of unrelated material. Montage is
heavily associated with the Soviet school of fi lm-making
of the 1920s and 1930s, although many of the principles
developed by those fi lm-makers have found their way
into mainstream cinema.
The Kuleshov experiment
Lev Kuleshov was a Soviet pioneer of montage. He conducted an experiment in which he took a shot of an impassive actor’s face and cut it together with shots of emotive material: a plate of food; a child’s body lying in a coffi n. The montage effect was such that viewers thought the actor was expressing an emotion even though he had no expression on his face. Cutting the face together with the food connoted hunger for instance. The actor was even praised for his performance!
This experiment, although the original footage is long lost, has had long-lasting repercussions for fi lm-makers, especially concerning actors’ performances. Film acting is often subtle, with emotional effects created in editing.
Recommended viewing
Alfred Hitchcock is famous for several of his montage sequences. The most famous is the shower sequence in Psycho (1960), in which Hitchcock uses montage to imply violence. The viewer never sees the knife enter the body. All of the cuts are fi lmic. Try watching this sequence again and think about how the editing makes you think you see things that aren’t really there.
The Kuleshov experiment
Although Kuleshov’s original experiment no longer exists, we can approximate it. Putting these two images together suggests a relationship between them, implying the woman is looking at the food and therefore hungers for it.
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D is c o n ti n u it y e d it in g > Mont age > S o u n d e d it in g a n d fi lmic s pace Montage sequences
Montage can also be used to describe a sequence that condenses narrative information into a short sequence of linked shots, often set to music. Wes Anderson uses this technique in Rushmore (2000) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) to quickly give the viewer narrative details in a fast and snappy way.
Perhaps the best-known sequence of this kind is a spoof in Team America: World Police (dir: Trey Parker 2004), a parody of training montages in fi lms such as Rocky (dir: John G. Avildsen 1976), set to a pulsating rock song called ‘Montage!’
Rear Window
(dir: Alfred Hitchcock 1954)
Hitchcock once said the best actors were good at doing nothing. James Stewart’s performance in Rear Window is minimal, with effects often created, Kuleshov-style, in the montage effect between his face and what he is looking at.
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Co n s tr uc ti ng m e a n in g Sergei Eisenstein
Undoubtedly, the master of montage was Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein developed his theories of attractional, agitational montage in the theatre following the Russian Revolution of 1917. He believed the business of fi lm was confl ict of all kinds: of lines, angles, colours and ideas.
The most signifi cant mode of montage is dialectical or intellectual. Here, the fi lm-maker takes two unrelated ideas and cuts them together to make a thematic or intellectual point. In Strike (1925), Eisenstein inserts non-diegetic shots of cattle being slaughtered into scenes of workers being massacred by government forces. The thematic point created makes a point about the mistreatment of collective groups, an important ideological concern in post-revolution Russia. Francis Ford Coppola uses the same cross-cutting technique in Apocalypse Now (1979) to juxtapose the murder of Colonel Kurtz with the killing of a cow, to comment on abuses of power.
The basic premise of Eisenstein’s method was a vulgar Marxist notion of dialecticism, derived from Lenin. His equation was simple:
Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis
Montage came in the moment of synthesis. This is where the intellectual concept was created, in the confl ict between two opposing ideas. There’s nothing particularly subtle about this method, nor was there intended to be: ‘It is not a cine-eye that we need,’ claimed Eisenstein, ‘but a cine-fi st.’
Eisenstein developed several other modes of montage that were intended to produce emotional, thematic and visual resonances in a fi lm:
• Metric: lengths of shots are determined by factors not depicted in the image, such as musical time signatures. Not favoured by Eisenstein, but still popular in music videos, and used by Martin Scorsese at the beginning of Mean Streets (1973), where a triple-cut is cut to the beginning of ‘Be My Baby’ by The Ronettes.
• Rhythmic: similar to metric montage, but the rhythm of shots is determined by material in the shots themselves. The ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) was an experiment in rhythmic montage, with the shots getting shorter as the action in the sequence accelerated. This is mimicked in The Untouchables (dir: Brian De Palma 1987).
• Tonal: montage determined by the dominant emotional tone of the sequence. The fog rolling into the port in Potemkin is one of the key examples of this form of montage in Eisenstein’s work. • Overtonal: the confl ict between different types of the above
montage effects. Darren Aronofsky creates some very aggressive and distressing effects from overtonal montage in Requiem for a Dream (2000).
Recommended reading
Eisenstein’s own writing is the main body of writing on montage. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory (1969) is the most signifi cant work of Eisenstein’s regarding the development of montage, as well as his theories on fi lm sound. Additionally, you should also look at Eisenstein’s fi lms for demonstrations of his technique, as these are discussed in his writings.
Glossary
Dialectic: The opposition
between two confl icting forces or elements.
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D is c o n ti n u it y e d it in g > Mont age > S o u n d e d it in g a n d fi lmic s pace Battleship Potemkin (dir: Sergei Eisenstein 1925)
The ‘Odessa steps’ sequence in Battleship Potemkin is an experiment in rhythmic editing. Eisenstein uses the pace of the editing to show the acceleration of the action. He also uses editing to signify violence; we don’t see the act of violence, which is implied in the cut.
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Co n s tr uc ti ng m e a n in g