Classical Realist Texts: American
Films between 1916 and 1960
Montage
Montage in Classical American Films
• As mise-en-scène, montage must help a
narrative move on without distracting the
attention of the viewer from it.
• Smooth flow from a shot to the next shot
CONTINUITY EDITING
Montage in Classical American Films
Continuity editing
PURPOSES
• To tell a story coherently and clearly;
• To display the chain of actions in an undistracting way
Montage in Classical American Films
GRAPHIC CONTINUITY
• Shot-Reverse Shot
• The positions of figures, the balance of
compositions, and the set designs must be kept
consistent over shot-reverse shots.
• The overall lighting tonality and colour schema
must remain constant over shots.
1. Interior scene at Sam Spade’s office:
Medium shot of Sam in straight-one angle
2. Long shot of Effie over Sam’s shoulder
3. Medium shot of Effie in low angle
4. Reverse shot of Sam in straight-on angle
5a. Cut to the shot in which Effie inviting in a
client, Ruth Wonderly
5b. Sam gets up and the camera rises, too.
6a. Reverse shot of 5
6b. Both sit down at Sam’s desk
7. Reverse shot of 6 and straight-on angle
over Sam’s shoulder
8. Reverse shot of 7 over Ruth’s shoulder
9. Reverse shot of 8 in which Ruth speaks
10. Reaction shot of Sam while Ruth talking
11a. Reverse shot of 10 with Ruth still talking
11b. Ruth looks right out of frame when she hears the
sound of the door opening
12. Shot of Miles Archer, Sam’s partner private
eye, entering the office in eye-line match
13. Shot of the same set up as 6 with attention
directed to Miles out of frame
14a. Shot of Miles walking in
14b. The camera pans right and establish the
position of all three figures
14c. The position of the three figures
established and maintained
Non-Continuity Editing
• An example which ignores the rule of continuity
editing. Ozu’s Autumn Afternoon
Montage in Classical American Films
EYE-LINE MATCH
• Shot A presents someone looking at
something off-screen; shot B shows us what
is being looked at by him/her.
Montage in Classical American Films
• Eye-line match
• Alfred Hitchcock’s
Rear Windows (1954)
• In one shot Jefferies
looks through his
camera and the next
shot shows what he is
watching.
Montage in Classical American Films
180-DEGREE RULE
• Two characters (or other elements) in the
same scene should always have the same
left/right relationship to each other.
• The axis of action (or centre line, 180º line)
is assumed between two characters. Then,
this axis of action determines a half-circle,
or 180º area, where the camera(s) can be
placed to present action.
Montage in Classical American Films
• Examples of the scenes which blatantly
ignore the 180-degree rule
• Jean-Luc Godard, A bout de souffle (1960)
• Ozu Yasujiro, Tokyo Story (1953)
180-degree Rule
• The imaginary axis is established between Ruth
and Sam and the camera stays on in the same 180
degree area, on the door side of the room.
180-degree Rule
• Conscious rejection of the 180-degree rule
• Jean-Luc Godard’s A bout de souffle (Breathless,
1960)
Montage in Classical American Films
TEMPORAL CONTINUITY:
• Time, like space, is organized according to
the development of the narrative
• ORDER, FREQUENCY, DURATION
Montage in Classical American Films
• ORDER
• Continuity editing typically presents the story
events in a 1-2-3 order.
• With the exception of occasional flashbacks.
• Christopher Nolan’s Memento: its narrative told
in a backward 3-2-1 order
Montage in Classical American Films
• FREQUENCY
• Classical editing also typically presents only
once what happens in the story.
• Non-classical montage
• Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin
(1925)
• Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989)
Montage in Classical American Films
• DURATION
• In the classical continuity system, story
duration is seldom expanded or shortened.
The story time is equal to the film time.
• Story time is extended in the famous Odessa
Steps scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Montage in Classical American Films
• JUMP CUT
• A device to compress (dead) time. (A man
enters a large room at one end and must
walk to a desk at the other end. Jump cut
eliminates most of the action of traversing
the long room.)
Montage in Classical American Films
• Unobtrusive jump cut - a cut which does not
make the viewer aware of it.
• Excess dead time must smoothed over
either by cutting away to another element of
the scene or by changing camera angle
sufficiently so that the second shot is clearly
from a different camera placement.
•
Jump Cut Jump Cut 2
Formalist Montage
• Obtrusive, jugged jump cut
• An action is abruptly interrupted before it is
completed or a scene begins in the middle
of an action after it has already started.
• Jean-Luc Godard, A bout de souffle (1960)
• Lars von Trier, Dancer in the Dark (2000)
• One of the avant-garde’s favourite
expressive techniques.
• Making artificiality evident.
Formalist Montage
• CROSS CUTTING
• Alternates two or more lines of actions taking
place in different places simultaneously.
• Cross cutting could be employed to enhance
reality and truth effects, but is generally
associated with more formalist editing.
• Edward Yan’s Yi, Yi (A One and a Two, 2000)
• Francis Ford Coppola, Godfather
Formalist Montage
• David Lean as a master editor
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• Formative editing jumping thousands of miles in
space over two shots
Formalist Montage
• The most audacious editing
2001 Space Odyssay
• Time travels million years in one editing.
Classical Realist Montage
• Analyse a classical realist montage: David
Lean Great Expectations (1948)