Characteristic Features of Soviet Montage Filmmaking Application in Eisenstein’s Strike and Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera

Characteristic Features of Soviet Montage Filmmaking Application in Eisenstein’s Strike and Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera

Soviet montage style of filmmaking engages the audience in a collection of short shots that have been edited to form a sequence that creates a symbolic meaning. These films are often created with the aim of fostering opposite emotional effects in an effort to push the audience to the suspense and cause them to create a feeling of vertigo such as the Odessa Steps sequence (Sarkar, 2017). These films are characterized by the aspect of downplaying characters who act as the center of attention while single members get shown as individuals from different social classes who are imitating the Marxist Concept that believes in the society more than on individuals.

Eisenstein’s Strike

Eisenstein Strike has adopted the characteristics of soviet montage filmmaking in that there is one character who has been named in the whole film individually. This illustrates that the theory of collectivism instead of individualism in a bid to propagate the notion that people are united against the undesired political climate and environment in Russia.

Soviet Montage filmmaking has the aspect of editing where cuts are intended to stimulate the audience. Instead of editing in continuity, this style of cutting creates the aspect of overlapping or the feature of elliptical temporal relations which creates an opposite effect from the expected (Bourbeau, 2016) This aspect causes a section of the action to be assumed such that the action happens in a shorter time than in reality.

Eisenstein adopted the aspect of elliptical editing in Strike as a type of the jump cut whereby Eisenstein editing cuts from the scene of a police officer to that of a butcher who is killing an animal which happens in the form of a jump cut. This aspect informs the audience that the butcher is not part of the story, but they should have the ability to relate the previous action with the current and come to the conclusion that workers got slaughtered like the animals being killed in reality.

Vertov a

Vertov man’s covers varying types of events in the scene of a “day in the life” including dance, football, funerals, swimming, factory workers, and firemen answering calls at an accident. In the morning scene, Vertov adopts various parts of objects, different shapes and patters, and the feature of high and low shots to create the aspect of time and space (BFI, 2015). Towards the end, Vertox adopted a powerful aspect where there was a rapid pileup of different shots where different images get overlaid on each other, and elements of animation and split screen. An animated camera at the end nods and takes a bow which allows one to see the audience, the cameraman, and Elizaveta (Vertov’s wife) editing the work.

According to Sarkar (2017), Sergei Eisensten and Dziga Vertov identified advanced ways of combing and contrasting different images in order to get ideas across in a special manner similar to the soviet montage style of filmmaking. They realized how the pace of editing, rhythm, and the use of music in a special manner that helps to stir emotions. While common films adopt the aspect of continuity, Dziga and Eisenstein believed that the contuity aspect was bourgeois in that it assumed reality. Instead, their movies adopted the Marxist dialectic which had the feature of conflict between various ideas.

Using André Bazin and David Cook discuss characteristic features of film realism. Application in Zero for Conduct, Boudu Saved From Drowning And Paisan that support the authors’ views.

Film realism is a highly contested term in cinema in that cinematic realism is not movement or a genre and it has neither particular subject matter nor some right formal criteria. However, as explained by David Cook and Andre Bazin, film realism is a useful concept that tends to asks questions on the credibility of images, cinematographic images, and the credibility of images. It also questions the role played by cinema to organize and understand the world.

Zéro de conduit by Jean Vigo

In this film, Jean Vigo portrays short scenes such as when a body threw a ball into the air before it was made to disappear in mid-air by a jump cut. This scene depicts a brief inconsequential moment that adds a certain degree of playfulness which tends to border on magical realism. In the late night fun pillow fight which paves the way for climatic uprising, Vigo uses slow motion and produces an indoor snowfall that using a purely conventional method. He uses this feature to showcase his skill at turning something that is quite ordinary into an enchanting beauty that is created out of childhood rebellion (Public Domain Movies, 2013). Although Vigo adopted the use of a combination of fragments that are well-staged instead of a continuous narrative, the movie is presented in a magical manner. It has adopted a poetic realism in that it is filled with anger at the authority and hurls disrespect and has adopted realism that attempts to get its freedom and rise freely to the skies.

Boudu sauvé des eaux

Jean Renoir’s worked was admired by most people including Andre Bazin who was regarded by most people as a father figure and supreme antecedent in film realism. The movie has adopted Bazin’s theory of realism especially in the physical aspects of space and time which are exemplified in long takes, depth of the field, movement of the camera, and the elements of character to character and action to action (Pathe, 2015). The element of foreground to background suggests the existence of a world that is beyond the visible frame (Cardullo, 2011). Using actual locations rather than studio sets and the subversive aspects of material and the aspect of moral freedom that combines with technical freedom as well as the love of actors and performance add to the ambitions of realism as explained by Bazin.

Pasin

In this movie, Rossellini has made a successful attempt to portray reality – as explained by Bazin – before the camera. The reality of the Sicilian girl is found in authenticity and independence of spirit as well as her distance from other Sicilian villagers. The piece was in alignment with Andre Bazin’s explanation of the ability to capture reality (Dross87, 2008). According to Bazin, the attempt pf Rossellin in Pasin to achieve reality through the use of images and grasp of reality is achieved through strange amalgamation of documentary fiction and technique.

Bazin and Cook’s interest in film realism was in the ability to achieve a realistic aspect of cinematic technique which was achieved perfectly in the above mentioned films. They have managed to break away from standard tropes to avoid a cinema with a conventional narrative. As explained by the authors, the strength and essence of every cinema lays in the ability to capture essential aspects the experience gained from living (MacCabe, 2010) This is essential since the narrative potential is often best fulfilled by cinemas that engage the audience in ways that are comparable to real-world understanding and understanding as depicted in Parsan, Zéro de conduit by Jean Vigo and Boudu sauvé des eaux.

References

Bourbeau, A., (2016, July 20). Strike (Eisenstein, 1925) – English Intertitles – HD Quality. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG_yM7We0C8

Betancourt, M. (2016). Beyond spatial montage: windowing, or the cinematic displacement of time, motion, and space. Routledge.

BFI (2015, July 15). Man with a Movie Camera (2014 Restoration trailer) In UK cinemas 31 July 2015 | BFI Release | BFI. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/subscribetotheBFI.

Dross87 (2008, October 24). Paisa – Roberto Rossellini. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV6_Q0jQ7_o

Elsaesser, T., & Hagener, M. (2015). Film theory: An introduction through the senses. Routledge.

MacCabe (2010, January 26). Paisan: More real than real. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved from https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1357-paisan-more-real-than-real

Pathe (2015, March 4). Boudu sauvé des eaux – 1932 – Bande-annonce HD. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4xHL6CG0QQ

Public Domain Movies (2013, March 17). Zero for Conduct[1933] – Old Cinema [FRENG,subs, public domain]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUkW1LBuQcg

Sarkar, S. (2017). Montage, collage and bricolage: the application, function and interpretation of assemblage in various forms of media (doctoral dissertation, the university of calcutta). Bazin, A., & Cardullo, B. (Eds.). (2011). André Bazin and Italian Neorealism. A&C Black.