Film Form

by Sergei Eisenstein

  As the basis of every art is conflict (an “imagist” transformation of the dialectical principle). The shot appears as the cell of montage. Therefore it also must be considered from the viewpoint of conflict.

  Conflict within the shot is potential montage, in the development of its intensity shattering the quadrilateral cage of the shot and exploding its conflict into montage impulses between the montage pieces. As, in a zigzag of mimicry, the mise-en-scène splashes out into a spatial zigzag with the same shattering. As the slogan, “All obstacles are vain before Russians,” bursts out in the multitude of incident of War and Peace.

  If montage is to be compared with something, then a phalanx of montage pieces, of shots, should be compared to the series of explosions of an internal combustion engine, driving forward its automobile or tractor: for, similarly, the dynamics of montage serve as impulses driving forward the total film.

  Conflict within the frame. This can be very varied in character: it even can be a conflict in—the story. As in that “prehistoric” period in films (although there are plenty of instances in the present, as well), when entire scenes would be photographed in a single, uncut shot. This, however, is outside the strict jurisdiction of the film-form.

  These are the “cinematographic” conflicts within the frame:

  Conflict of graphic directions.

  (Lines—either static or dynamic)

  Conflict of scales.

  Conflict of volumes.

  Conflict of masses.

  (Volumes filled with various intensities of light)

  Conflict of depths.

  And the following conflicts, requiring only one further impulse of intensification before flying into antagonistic pairs of pieces:

  Close shots and long shots.

  Pieces of graphically varied directions. Pieces resolved in volume, with pieces resolved in area.

  Pieces of darkness and pieces of lightness.

  And, lastly, there are such unexpected conflicts as:

  Conflicts between an object and its dimension—and conflicts between an event and its duration.

  These may sound strange, but both are familiar to us. The first is accomplished by an optically distorted lens, and the second by stop-motion or slow-motion.

  The compression of all cinematographic factors and properties within a single dialectical formula of conflict is no empty rhetorical diversion.

  We are now seeking a unified system for methods of cinematographic expressiveness that shall hold good for all its elements. The assembly of these into series of common indications will solve the task as a whole.

  Experience in the separate elements of the cinema cannot be absolutely measured.

  Whereas we know a good deal about montage, in the theory of the shot we are still floundering about amidst the most academic attitudes, some vague tentatives, and the sort of harsh radicalism that sets one’s teeth on edge.

  To regard the frame as a particular, as it were, molecular case of montage makes possible the direct application of montage practice to the theory of the shot.

  And similarly with the theory of lighting. To sense this as a collision between a stream of light and an obstacle, like the impact of a stream from a fire-hose striking a concrete object, or of the wind buffeting a human figure, must result in a usage of light entirely different in comprehension from that employed in playing with various combinations of “gauzes” and “spots.”

  Thus far we have one such significant principle of conflict: the principle of optical counterpoint.

  And let us not now forget that soon we shall face another and less simple problem in counterpoint: the conflict in the sound film of acoustics and optics.

  Let us return to one of the most fascinating of optical conflicts: the conflict between the frame of the shot and the object!

  The camera position, as a materialization of the conflict between organizing logic of the director and the inert logic of the object, in collision, reflects the dialectic of the cameraangle.

  In this matter we are still impressionistic and lacking in principle to a sickening degree. Nevertheless, a sharpness of principle can be had in the technique of this, too. The dry quadrilateral, plunging into the hazards of nature’s diffuseness . . .

  And once again we are in Japan! For the cinematographic method is used in teaching drawing in Japanese schools.

  What is our method of teaching drawing? Take any piece of white paper with four corners to it. Then cram onto it, usually even without using the edges (mostly greasy from the long drudgery!), some bored caryatid, some conceited Corinthian capital, or a plaster Dante (not the magician performing at the Moscow Hermitage, but the other one—Alighieri, the comedy writer).

  The Japanese approach this from a quite different direction: Here’s the branch of a cherry-tree.9 And the pupil cuts out from this whole, with a square, and a circle, and a rectangle-compositional units:

  He frames a shot!

  These two ways of teaching drawing can characterize the two basic tendencies struggling within the cinema of today. One—the expiring method of artificial spatial organization of an event in front of the lens. From the “direction” of a sequence, to the erection of a Tower of Babel in front of the lens. The other—a “picking-out” by the camera: organization by means of the camera. Hewing out a piece of actuality with the ax of the lens.

  However, at the present moment, when the center of attention is finally beginning, in the intellectual cinema, to be transferred from the materials of cinema, as such, to “deductions and conclusions,” to “slogans” based on the material, both schools of thought are losing distinction in their differences and can quietly blend into a synthesis.

  Several pages back we lost, like an overshoe in a street-car, the question of the theater. Let us turn back to the question of methods of montage in the Japanese theater, particularly in acting.

  The first and most striking example, of course, is the purely cinematographic method of “acting without transitions.” Along with mimic transitions carried to a limit of refinement, the Japanese actor uses an exactly contrary method as well. At a certain moment of his performance he halts; the black-shrouded kurogo obligingly conceals him from the spectators. And lo!—he is resurrected in a new make-up. And in a new wig. Now characterizing another stage (degree) of his emotional state.

  Thus, for example, in the Kabuki play Narukami, the actor Sadanji must change from drunkenness to madness. This transition is solved by a mechanical cut. And a change in the arsenal of grease-paint colors on his face, emphasizing those streaks whose duty it is to fulfill the expression of a higher intensity than those used in his previous make-up.

  This method is organic to the film. The forced introduction into the film, by European acting traditions, of pieces of “emotional transitions” is yet another influence forcing the cinema to mark time. Whereas the method of “cut” acting makes possible the construction of entirely new methods. Replacing one changing face with a whole scale of facial types of varying moods affords a far more acutely expressive result than does the changing surface, too receptive and devoid of organic resistance, of any single professional actor’s face.

  In our new film [Old and New] I have eliminated the intervals between the sharply contrasting polar stages of a face’s expression. Thus is achieved a greater sharpness in the “play of doubts” around the new cream separator. Will the milk thicken or no? Trickery? Wealth? Here the psychological process of mingled faith and doubt is broken up into its two extreme states of joy (confidence) and gloom (disillusionment). Furthermore, this is sharply emphasized by light—illumination in no wise conforming to actual light conditions. This brings a distinct strengthening of the tension.

  Another remarkable characteristic of the Kabuki theater is the principle of “disintegrated” acting. Shocho, who played the leading female rôles in the Kabuki theater that visited Moscow, in depicting the dying daughter in Yashaô (The Mask-Maker), performed his rôle in pieces of acting complete
ly detached from each other: Acting with only the right arm. Acting with one leg. Acting with the neck and head only. (The whole process of the death agony was disintegrated into solo performances of each member playing its own rôle: the rôle of the leg, the rôle of the arms, the rôle of the head.) A breaking-up into shots. With a gradual shortening of these separate, successive pieces of acting as the tragic end approached.

  Freed from the yoke of primitive naturalism, the actor is enabled by this method to fully grip the spectator by “rhythms,” making not only acceptable, but definitely attractive, a stage built on the most consecutive and detailed flesh and blood of naturalism.

  Since we no longer distinguish in principle between questions of shot-content and montage, we may here cite a third example:

  The Japanese theater makes use of a slow tempo to a degree unknown to our stage. The famous scene of hara-kiri in Chushingura is based on an unprecedented slowing down of all movement—beyond any point we have ever seen. Whereas, in the previous example, we observed a disintegration of the transitions between movements, here we see disintegration of the process of movement, viz., slow-motion. I have heard of only one example of a thorough application of this method, using the technical possibility of the film with a compositionally reasoned plan. It is usually employed with some purely pictorial aim, such as the “submarine kingdom” in The Thief of Bagdad, or to represent a dream, as in Zvenigora. Or, more often, it is used simply for formalist jackstraws and unmotivated camera mischief as in Vertov’s Man with the MovieCamera. The more commendable example appears to be in Jean Epstein’s La chute de la Maison Usher—at least according to the press reports. In this film, normally acted emotions filmed with a speeded-up camera are said to give unusual emotional pressure by their unrealistic slowness on the screen. If it be borne in mind that the effect of an actor’s performance on the audience is based on its identification by each spectator, it will be easy to relate both examples (the Kabuki play and the Epstein film) to an identical causal explanation. The intensity of perception increases as the didactic process of identification proceeds more easily along a disintegrated action.

  Even instruction in handling a rifle can be hammered into the tightest motor-mentality among a group of raw recruits if the instructor uses a “break-down” method.

  The most interesting link of the Japanese theater is, of course, its link with the sound film, which can and must learn its fundamentals from the Japanese—the reduction of visual and aural sensations to a common physiological denominator.*

  So, it has been possible to establish (cursorily) the permeation of the most varied branches of Japanese culture by a pure cinematographic element—its basic nerve, montage.

  And it is only the Japanese cinema that falls into the same error as the “leftward drifting” Kabuki. Instead of learning how to extract the principles and technique of their remarkable acting from the traditional feudal forms of their materials, the most progressive leaders of the Japanese theater throw their energies into an adaptation of the spongy shapelessness of our own “inner” naturalism. The results are tearful and saddening. In its cinema Japan similarly pursues imitations of the most revolting examples of American and European entries in the international commercial film race.

  To understand and apply her cultural peculiarities to the cinema, this is the task of Japan! Colleagues of Japan, are you really going to leave this for us to do?

  [1929]

  A Dialectic Approach To Film Form

  In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it, and over it.

  GOETHE1

  According to Marx and Engels the dialectic system is only the conscious reproduction of the dialectic course (substance) of the external events of the world.2

  Thus:

  The projection of the dialectic system of things

  into the brain

  into creating abstractly

  into the process of thinking

  yields: dialectic methods of thinking;

  dialectic materialism—

  PHILOSOPHY.

  And also:

  The projection of the same system of things

  while creating concretely

  while giving form

  yields:

  ART.

  The foundation for this philosophy is a dynamic concept of things:

  Being—as a constant evolution from the interaction of two contradictory opposites.

  Synthesis—arising from the opposition between thesis and antithesis.

  A dynamic comprehension of things is also basic to the same degree, for a correct understanding of art and of all art-forms. In the realm of art this dialectic principle of dynamics is embodied in

  CONFLICT

  as the fundamental principle for the existence of every artwork and every art-form.

  For art is always conflict:

  (1) according to its social mission,

  (2) according to its nature,

  (3) according to its methodology.

  According to its social mission because: It is art’s task to make manifest the contradictions of Being. To form equitable views by stirring up contradictions within the spectator’s mind, and to forge accurate intellectual concepts from the dynamic clash of opposing passions.

  According to its nature because: Its nature is a conflict between natural existence and creative tendency. Between organic inertia and purposeful initiative. Hypertrophy of the purposive initiative—the principles of rational logic—ossifies art into mathematical technicalism. (A painted landscape becomes a topographical map, a painted Saint Sebastian becomes an anatomical chart.) Hypertrophy of organic naturalness—of organic logic—dilutes art into formlessness. (A Malevich becomes a Kaulbach, an Archipenko becomes a waxworks side-show.)

  Because the limit of organic form (the passive principle of being) is Nature. The limit of rational form (the active principle of production) is Industry. At the intersection of Nature and Industry stands Art.

  The logic of organic form vs. the logic of rational form yields, in collision,

  the dialectic of the art-form.

  The interaction of the two produces and determines Dynamism. (Not only in the sense of a space-time continuum, but also in the field of absolute thinking. I also regard the inception of new concepts and viewpoints in the conflict between customary conception and particular representation as dynamic—as a dynamization of the inertia of perception—as a dynamization of the “traditional view” into a new one.)

  The quantity of interval determines the pressure of the tension. (See in music, for example, the concept of intervals. There can be cases where the distance of separation is so wide that it leads to a break—to a collapse of the homogeneous concept of art. For instance, the “inaudibility” of certain intervals.)

  The spatial form of this dynamism is expression.

  The phases of its tension: rhythm.

  This is true for every art-form, and, indeed, for every kind of expression.

  Similarly, human expression is a conflict between conditioned and unconditioned reflexes. (In this I cannot agree with Klages, who, a) does not consider human expression dynamically as a process, but statically as a result, and who, b) attributes everything in motion to the field of the “soul,” and only the hindering element to “reason.”3 [“Reason” and “Soul” of the idealistic concept here correspond remotely with the ideas of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes.])

  This is true in every field that can be understood as an art. For example, logical thought, considered as an art, shows the same dynamic mechanism:

  . . . the intellectual lives of Plato or Dante or Spinoza or Newton were largely guided and sustained by their delight in the sheer beauty of the rhythmic relation between law and instance, species and individual, or cause and effect.4

  This holds in other fields, as well, e.g., in speech, where all its sap, vitality, and dynamism arise from the irregularit
y of the part in relation to the laws of the system as a whole.

  In contrast we can observe the sterility of expression in such artificial, totally regulated languages as Esperanto.

  It is from this principle that the whole charm of poetry derives. Its rhythm arises as a conflict between the metric measure employed and the distribution of accents, over-riding this measure.

  The concept of a formally static phenomenon as a dynamic function is dialectically imaged in the wise words of Goethe:

  Die Baukunst ist eine ertarrte Musik.

  (Architecture is frozen music.)5

  Just as in the case of a homogeneous ideology (a monistic viewpoint), the whole, as well as the least detail, must be penetrated by a sole principle. So, ranged alongside the conflict of social conditionality, and the conflict of existing nature, the methodology of an art reveals this same principle of conflict. As the basic principle of the rhythm to be created and the inception of the art-form.

  Art is always conflict, according to its methodology.

  Here we shall consider the general problem of art in the specific example of its highest form—film.

  Shot and montage are the basic elements of cinema.

  Montage

  has been established by the Soviet film as the nerve of cinema.

  To determine the nature of montage is to solve the specific problem of cinema. The earliest conscious film-makers, and our first film theoreticians, regarded montage as a means of description by placing single shots one after the other like buildingblocks. The movement within these building-block shots, and the consequent length of the component pieces, was then considered as rhythm.