EISENSTEIN

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein ( 22 January 1898 – 11 February 1948) was
a Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage.
He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1925), Battleship Potemkin (1925)
and October (1928), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the
Terrible (1944, 1958).
Eisenstein montage theory
A montage sequence is a technique in editing (i.e. using rapid editing, special effects and music)
in a series of short shots edited into a sequence to condense narrative. It is usually used to
advance the story as a whole (often to suggest the passage of time), rather than to create
symbolic meaning as it does in Soviet montage theory. From the 1930s to the 1950s, montage
sequences often combined numerous short shots with special optical effects (fades, dissolves,
split screens, double and triple exposures) and music. Soviet montage theory is an approach to
understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing (montage is French for
"putting together"). Although Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s disagreed about how exactly to
view montage, Sergei Eisenstein marked a note of accord in "A Dialectic Approach to Film
Form" when he noted that montage is "the nerve of cinema," and that "to determine the nature of
montage is to solve the specific problem of cinema."
Eisenstein 5 methods of montage
Eisenstein believed that film montage could create ideas or have an impact beyond the individual
images. Two or more images edited together create a "tertium quid" (third thing) that makes the
whole greater than the sum of its individual parts.
1. Metric - where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical
nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image. This
montage is used to elicit the most basal and emotional of reactions in the audience. * Metric
montage example from Eisenstein's October.
2. Rhythmic - The cutting happens for the sake of continuity. This creates visual continuity but it
may also be used in order to keep with the pace of the film. includes cutting based on time, but
using the visual composition of the shots -- along with a change in the speed of the metric cuts --
to induce more complex meanings than what is possible with metric montage. Once sound was
introduced, rhythmic montage also included audial elements (music, dialogue, sounds). *
Rhythmic montage example from The Battleship Potemkin's "Odessa steps" sequence.
3. Tonal - a tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots -- not just manipulating the
temporal length of the cuts or its rhythmical characteristics -- to elicit a reaction from the
audience even more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping
baby would emote calmness and relaxation. * Tonal example from Eisenstein's The Battleship
Potemkin. This is the clip following the death of the revolutionary sailor Vakulinchuk, a martyr
for sailors and workers. Montage: methods of montage cont.
4. Overtonal/Associational - the overtonal montage is the cumulation of metric, rhythmic, and
tonal montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated
effect. * Overtonal example from Pudovkin's Mother. In this clip, the men are workers walking
towards a confrontation at their factory, and later in the movie, the protagonist uses ice as a
means of escape.
5. Intellectual - uses shots which, combined, elicit an intellectual meaning. * Intellectual
montage examples from Eisenstein's October and Strike. In Strike, a shot of striking workers
being attacked cut with a shot of a bull being slaughtered creates a film metaphor suggesting that
the workers are being treated like cattle. This meaning does not exist in the individual shots; it
only arises when they are juxtaposed.
Eisensteins contribution to editing
Eisenstein believed that editing was the foundation of film art. For Eisenstein, meaning in
cinema lay not in the individual shot but only in the relationships among shots established by
editing. Translating a Marxist political perspective into the language of cinema, Eisenstein
referred to his editing as "dialectical montage" because it aimed to expose the essential
contradictions of existence and the political order. Because conflict was essential to the political
praxis of Marxism, the idea of conflict furnished the logic of Eisenstein's shot changes, which
gives his silent films a rough, jagged quality. His shots do not combine smoothly, as in the
continuity editing of D. W. Griffith and Hollywood cinema, but clash and bang together. Thus,
his montages were eminently suited to depictions of violence, as in Strike , Potemkin , and Ten
Days . In his essays Eisenstein enumerated the numerous types of conflict that he found essential
to cinema. These included conflicts among graphic elements in a composition and between shots,
and conflict of time and space created in the editing process and by filming with different camera speeds.