Soviet Montage

Overview

Soviet montage is a type of film theory focused on understanding and creating

cinema using specific film editing techniques. The theory was conceived in the
Soviet Union during the 1920's and was pioneered by such Soviet directors as
Alexander Dovzhenko, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Dziga Vertov, and most famously,
Sergei Eisenstein. Though many of these directors disagreed about montage,
Eisenstein's thinking was eventually viewed as "soviet montage." Eisenstein's
essays on film form and film theory revolutionized the view of film from simple
entertainment to intellectual artwork. However, they were a hybrid of the
theories collectively established by several Soviet directors.

The Kuleshov Experiment

Lev Kuleshov was an early Soviet director, possibly one of the first film theorists
of montage, who worked prior to Eisenstein's appearance in film. Kuleshov
viewed editing as a manipulation of the audience as much as a manipulation of
film, and he was intrigued by the way juxtaposition could change how the
audience felt about certain actors (wikipedia). He is most famous for the
Kuleshov Experiment, in which he intercut a single shot of one actor with various
images (a bowl of soup, a girl, a casket, etc.) and played it for his audiences
(Jones). Though the same shot of him was displayed every time, those who
viewed the film praised the actor's talent, believing he subtly changed his facial
expressions in reaction to each image. For Soviet filmmakers of the time, this
showed film as fragments that needed to be put together in an order to alter the
audience's mood. The final editing of the film was just as important, if not more
so, than what the actual shots were.

Pudovkin

Pudovkin was a student of Kuleshov's. He went on to famously state, which

many directors since have espoused as well, "The foundation of film art is
editing." Pudovkin's theory of montage focused not only on the juxtaposition of
shots through editing, but also the comparison of objects in the mise-en-scene.
Pudovkin saw actors more as objects on the screen rather than working actors.
He also saw montage as the key to revealing the emotion of a scene, including the
actors, by their relationship to other objects in the shot (Jones).

A major difference between Eisenstein and Pudovkin's use of montage was

Eisenstein's insistance on conflict, where not only was there conflict occuring in
the narrative, but even the editing would cut together conflicting shots,
sometimes disrupting the flow of the story. Pudovkin did not share this view and
often would not cut parts of his film to intentionally disrupt the narrative. His
view of montage was to create a powerful emotion and he wished to build up
that emotion with his narrative and editing.

Vertov

Vertov's ideas for montage differed from Eisensteins as well. He did not think
that montage was specific to editing and believed that every decision made by
the director qualified as montage. Vertov focuses less on the emotional aspect
that many other Soviets of the time found essential to the theory of montage.
Instead, he would create the plot of his films through the editing of shots. A
theme was selected (which Vertov regarded as an aspect of montage as well) and
from there the composition of shots created the feeling of a story line, left open-
ended to the audience (Kuscu).