Classical Realist Texts: American
Films between 1916 and 1960
Montage
Table of Contents
1. Mise-en-scéne in classical American films
2. Montage in classical American films
Mise-en-scéne in classical American films
• Mise-en-scene ought to be motivated as
narrative is. The chain of cause and effect
dictates mise-en-scène (what and how to
shoot).
• e.g. When a character is a hero, he may be
placed in the centre of the frame. When he
walks into a room, the camera also moves
with him. When he is walking in the
darkness, no strong light is cast on his face.
Mise-en-scéne in classical American films
• F.W. Murnau, Sunrise: A
Song of Two Humans
(1927)
• Travelling shot from a
tram
• Motivated: when the
characters and the
vehicle on which they
are on move, the camera
moves.
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 map out the chain of actions in an undistracting way
Montage in Classical American Films
GRAPHIC CONTINUITY
• Shot-Reverse Shot
• The figures are balanced and symmetrically
deployed over shot-reverse shot.
• The overall lighting tonality remains
constant over shots.
Continuity Editing
Continuity Editing
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. In neither
shot are both looker and object present.
Montage in Classical American Films
• Eye-line match
• Alfred Hitchcock’s
Rear Window (1954)
• In one shot Jefferies
looks through his
camera and in the next
shot what he is
watching is shown.
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)
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.
Expressive Montage
• Obtrusive, jugged jump cut
• An action is abruptly interrupted without it
is completed.
• 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.
Expressive 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
Expressive Montage
• David Lean as a master editor
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• Formative editing jumping thousands of miles in
space over two shots
Expressive Montage
• The most audacious editing
• 2001 Space Odyssay
• Time travels million years in one editing.