Montage in Films of Sergei Eisenstein
Avant-Garde Cinema: 1900-1950
(Short Paper) 1,500
Drawing on Sergei Eisenstein 's writings and examples from his films outline his ideas about film montage ' and its role in shaping audience responses. You should include analysis of at least one segment from Eisenstein 's films
Sergei Eisenstein 's theories, and practical realisations, of film montage serve to create a foundation on which Eisenstein, and many other filmmakers, have been able to build an understanding of the nature of film production. It is through Eisenstein 's intellectual theories that he is able to link every aspect of a film together into a realized whole, from the initial concept to how it is shot and how it is edited, the end product is a conscious understanding of how the audience is going to respond to the work. It is this intellectual approach to filmmaking that enabled Eisenstein to keep the true intent of a film intact, " if the art-work does not represent an embodiment of the original idea, we shall never have as result an art-work realized to its utmost fullness."1
In Eisenstein 's essays he outlines five different concepts of Film montage; Metric Montage, Rhythmic Montage, Tonal Montage, Overtonal Montage and his most acclaimed/criticised, Intellectual Montage. Each of these types of montage is built on its predecessor, and thus each type is more complex then the last.
Metric Montage is the easiest, and therefore base, of Eisenstein 's theories, and is described by Eisenstein as a " formula-scheme corresponding to a measure of music "2
This simply means that, although not always determined by music, with Metric Montage the length of the scene is already fixed and therefore the shots within the scene are cut and arranged in order to express the concepts within a piece without extending outside of the predetermined framework of the scene.
Rhythmic Montage takes the concepts of Metric Montage and adds consideration to the content of the shot. The classic example
(Short Paper) 1,500
Drawing on Sergei Eisenstein 's writings and examples from his films outline his ideas about film montage ' and its role in shaping audience responses. You should include analysis of at least one segment from Eisenstein 's films
Sergei Eisenstein 's theories, and practical realisations, of film montage serve to create a foundation on which Eisenstein, and many other filmmakers, have been able to build an understanding of the nature of film production. It is through Eisenstein 's intellectual theories that he is able to link every aspect of a film together into a realized whole, from the initial concept to how it is shot and how it is edited, the end product is a conscious understanding of how the audience is going to respond to the work. It is this intellectual approach to filmmaking that enabled Eisenstein to keep the true intent of a film intact, " if the art-work does not represent an embodiment of the original idea, we shall never have as result an art-work realized to its utmost fullness."1
In Eisenstein 's essays he outlines five different concepts of Film montage; Metric Montage, Rhythmic Montage, Tonal Montage, Overtonal Montage and his most acclaimed/criticised, Intellectual Montage. Each of these types of montage is built on its predecessor, and thus each type is more complex then the last.
Metric Montage is the easiest, and therefore base, of Eisenstein 's theories, and is described by Eisenstein as a " formula-scheme corresponding to a measure of music "2
This simply means that, although not always determined by music, with Metric Montage the length of the scene is already fixed and therefore the shots within the scene are cut and arranged in order to express the concepts within a piece without extending outside of the predetermined framework of the scene.
Rhythmic Montage takes the concepts of Metric Montage and adds consideration to the content of the shot. The classic example
Bibliography: David Bordwell, Eisenstein 's Epistemological Shift, Screen (Winter 1974/5), p29-46 Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, edited and translated by Jay Leyda, (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1949) Dan Shaw, Sergei Eisenstein, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/04/eisenstein.html, January 2004, date accessed 18 September 2005. Richard Taylor & Ian Christie, The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896-1939 (Routledge & Kogan Paul 1988)