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
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
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
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
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
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
“Art is not a mirror which reflects the
historical struggle, but a weapon of
that struggle”
--Dziga Vertov
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
Sergei Eisenstein
• Strike (1924)
• Battleship Potemkin
(1925)
• October (1927)
• The General Line
(1928)
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
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
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
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
V.I. Pudovkin
• Mother (1926)
• The End of St.
Petersburg (1927)
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
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
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
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
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