Soviet Montage

Soviet Montage

Soviet montage theory is an approach to filmmaking that relies heavily upon editing. It is the principal contribution of Soviet film theorists to global cinema, and brought formalism to bear on filmmaking.

Despite Soviet filmmakers disagreeing on how to view montage, the pioneer in the use of montage Sergei Eisenstein described it as a "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" and that "montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots" wherein "each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other." Alfred Hitchcock described editing as the lynchpin of worthwhile filmmaking. 

The Beginning of Soviet Montage Theory

Post revolution 1917, fresh film stock was in short supply, so filmmakers learnt by experimenting with found footage (shots from old films), looking at what happened if they put them together in different ways. They found that people would respond to a shot differently depending on what images came before and after it. In the “Kuleshov experiment” by pioneer film theorist Lev Kuleshov, audiences saw a close-up of an actor followed by a shot of a bowl of soup, a coffin, or an attractive woman. They thought the actor was great at looking hungry, sad or lustful – but actually each of his close-ups used exactly the same footage.

The Russian Revolution meant that there was a huge demand for propaganda. Revolutionaries like Lenin thought film was the ideal way to get revolutionary ideas across to people who couldn’t read.

Filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov thought the continuity system was ‘bourgeois’ because it faked reality. They believed in Marxist ‘dialectic’ which was about the conflict between ideas. Eisenstein wanted to use cinema to stir emotions and inspire the audience to get behind the revolution.

The Kuleshov Experiment

The Kuleshov Effect is a film editing (montage) effect demonstrated by Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s. It is a mental phenomenon by which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation.

An example of this is in 'Kuleshov Experiment' where a the footage consists of close-up of an actor followed by a shot of a bowl of soup, a coffin, and an attractive woman. The audience thought the actor was great at looking hungry, sad & lustful – but actually each of his close-ups used exactly the same footage.

Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein was 26 when he made his first feature film Strike, the first major film of the Montage movement. It was released in 1925. Potemkin, October, Old and New are three more important works from Eisenstein in that style. At the center of Sergei Eisenstein's concept of Montage was the collision of elements: shots should not be seen as linked, but rather as conflicting with one another. The spectator can create a new concept in her or his mind realising the conflict between elements.

Even today, the Soviet Montage style is very interesting to watch and very inspiring but the political aspects are much harder to follow today. The lack of individual protagonists is a factor that reduces the joy of viewing and makes it hard to follow the whole film. But one can get an idea how exciting it was to be part of the emergence of a new form of society.

The Odessa Steps

The most famous montage sequence of all is the Odessa Steps scene from Battleship Potemkin, where protesting citizens are mowed down by Tsarist troops. This sequence uses a whole range of montage techniques: punchy, graphic images; dramatic cuts from wide shots to extreme close-ups; and a sense of movement that’s conveyed by the editing, how the camera moves, and dramatic horizontal and diagonal compositions. It also uses ‘stretch time’:  the headlong rush down the steps that would probably only take a minute in reality, but on film it takes over seven minutes.

Modern Day Montages

In the Sergio Leone film 'The Good, The Bad and the Ugly,' contains lots of ideas from Soviet montage theory as can seen in the clip below.

Bibliography

http://learnaboutfilm.com/soviet-montage/