Soviet Montage 1924-1930

Soviet Cinema in the 1920s Vibrant film culture following the Russian Revolution Lenin: cinema would be the most important of the arts in the effort to reunite his nation power to attract and instruct/indoctrinate Influential developments in film theory: Character and Society Education/Propaganda The Kuleshov Effect Montage Editing

Soviet Film Theory: Character and Society Downplay individual characters characters are shown as members of society and of different social classes

Soviet Film Theory: Education/Propaganda Nationalized film industry, established a national film school All-Russian State University of Cinematography (VGIK) under the People's Commissariat for Education (Narkompros) Political leaders saw film as the key to involving audiences in political and intellectual revolution Limited to one basic storyline: triumph of the people over bourgeois oppression “Art is not a mirror which reflects the historical struggle, but a weapon of that struggle” --Dziga Vertov (contemporary of Eisenstein)

Soviet Film Theory: The Kuleshov Effect Lev Kuleshov teacher at VGIK Central belief: the viewer’s response in cinema depends less on the individual shot and more on the editing or montage 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

…The Kuleshov Effect Test audiences praised the actor’s versatility in showing hunger, sorrow, and pride, even though the shot of the actor remained exactly the same each time Hitchcock Definition: One of the basic theoretical principles of editing is that the meaning produced by joining two shots together transcends the visual information contained in each individual shot (A+B=C)

Soviet Film Theory: The Montage Believed in the power of montage to fragment and reassemble footage to manipulate the viewer’s perception and understanding Audiences could derive an emotional meaning from the juxtaposition of two completely unrelated shots

…The Montage Meaning created by juxtaposition of shots, not the content of individual images Sound and visual could be treated independently or used together 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/the montage (ex)

Sergei Eisenstein Strike (1924) Battleship Potemkin (1925) October (1927) The General Line (1928) equal to Griffith as a pioneering genius financed by the soviet government

Sergei Eisenstein regarded film editing as a creative and artistic process: one shot (thesis) collides with another shot of opposing content (antithesis) to produce a new idea (synthesis) forces the viewer to reach conclusions about the interplay between shots