Lev Kuleshov studied DW Griffith and other Hollywood directors and intro'd crosscutting and montage into Russian cinema. He found that people respond differently to the shot depending on what comes before and after. Alfred Hitchcock commented on this effect by showing himself looking, then smiling. In between these two reaction shots, he first placed a picture of a mother with a baby (which he said made him look like a genial man) and then a shot of a girl in a bikini (which made him look like a dirty old man). The same shots of the actor, but changing out what he's "looking at" changes how the audience feels about him.
Sergei Eisenstein was influenced by the culture post-revolution, and designed propaganda posters to keep morale up. He attended Kuleshov's workshop and came up with his own theories of montage:
metric (time creates method), rhythmic (could be cutting to sound or actions, marching etc.), tonal (lighting and different meaning based on those tones), over-tonal (top 3 mixed together to create meaning), intellectual (two images collided together to create new meaning that wasn't there).
Strike (1925) uses a shot of striking workers being attacked cut with a shot of a bull being slaughtered to create a film metaphor suggesting workers are treated like cattle. The meaning only arises when the two shots are juxtaposed.
Battleship Potemkin (1925) uses shots of stone lions interspersed with shots of slaughtered people to suggest that everyone should be outraged by what has happened. The baby carriage rolling down the steps unattended while the cossacks massacred the fleeing people is a sequence that has been referenced several times- in The Untouchables and parodied in Naked Gun.
The quick pace of editing mirrors the way our attention shifts when we panic.
The whole sequence is 8 minutes long. In real life, it would have been much shorter, but extending the time with the montage gives the chance to see three separate "stories" of people involved and to get terror of the event.
Brian DePalma The Untouchables (1987) uses the baby carriage scene from Battleship Potemkin to
create huge tension during a shoot out in Union Station between Elliot Ness and the men protecting the accountant he's attempting to bring in for questioning. The baby carriage has also been used in these films, too. In contrast to Eisenstein, DePalma uses long, slow cuts instead of frenetic montage.
Martin Scorcese discusses Eisenstein's influence on his movie making in this clip.
Dziga Vertov worked as newsreel cameraman and coined the term Kino eye (film eye). He believed the world is seen more truthfully through the camera eye than human eye. He tried to create a unique cinema language away from theatrical influences that captured real life. His montage style is frenetic and unmatched until the MTV era. He created one of earliest Russian animations, Soviet toys (1924).
Man with a Movie Camera (1929) experiments with jump cuts, superimpositions, split screen, stop motion, camera angles and shows life in cities from Moscow to the Ukraine.
His influence can be seen in films which devote themselves to showing life in a particular city like Bullitt (Peter Yates, 1968), or Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), which use San Francisco as almost another character.
Vsevolod Pudovkin thought that actors don't act- their context is what moves us- and this is established through montage and juxtaposing them with other things.
Pioneered 5 editing techniques:
contrast: two different things are juxtaposed to force the viewer to consider how they're different. Ex: Michael Corleone "renouncing Satan" at a child's christening and the murders of his rivals taking place all around NYC on his orders.
parallelism: used to jump from one time period to another in a more elegant way Ex: Indiana jones and last crusade cutting between young Indy getting his hat to 25 years later and older Indy on the boat in the same hat.
symbolism: two shots juxtaposed to underscore meaning Ex: Lawrence of Arabia blowing out lit match and the sun rising over the desert.
simultaneity: aka cross cutting Ex: silence of the lambs Buffalo Bill tries to save his dog and swat team outside prepares to storm the house. Both events are happening at the same time but we realize that the swat team is at the wrong house and Clarice is on her own at the murderer's house
leit motif: used in music to describe recurring piece to describe a character. Ex: in film it's used in Jaws as the underwater POV of the shark selecting a victim. the clock in High Noon is used again and again to show that Gary Cooper is trying to find an ally before time runs out.
Stanley Kubrick found Pudovkin's writings much more influential than Eisenstein's on the subject of film. He said:
“The most influential book I read at that time was Pudovkin’s Film Technique. It is a very simple unpretentious book that illuminates rather than embroiders. It certainly makes it clear that film cutting is the one and only aspect of films that is unique and unrelated to any other art form. I found this book much more important than the complex writings of Eisenstein.”
Notes on Pudokiv, Eisenstein and Vertov taken from Vaughn Millar's power point lecture.
We will be assed on an essay and our blog each semester.
Essay (1000 words) 30% of grade due Monday 13 June at 5pm
blog (assignments for topics will be given in class) 20% of grade due Monday 13 June at 5pm
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