A completely false concept!
This would mean the defining of a given object solely in relation to the nature of its external course. The mechanical process of splicing would be made a principle. We cannot describe such a relationship of lengths as rhythm. From this comes metric rather than rhythmic relationships, as opposed to one another as the mechanical-metric system of Mensendieck is to the organic-rhythmic school of Bode in matters of body exercise.
According to this definition, shared even by Pudovkin as a theoretician, montage is the means of unrolling an idea with the help of single shots: the “epic” principle.
In my opinion, however, montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots—shots even opposite to one another: the “dramatic” principle.*
A sophism? Certainly not. For we are seeking a definition of the whole nature, the principal style and spirit of cinema from its technical (optical) basis.
We know that the phenomenon of movement in film resides in the fact that two motionless images of a moving body, following one another, blend into an appearance of motion by showing them sequentially at a required speed.
This popularized description of what happens as a blending has its share of responsibility for the popular miscomprehension of the nature of montage that we have quoted above.
Let us examine more exactly the course of the phenomenon we are discussing—how it really occurs—and draw our conclusion from this. Placed next to each other, two photographed immobile images result in the appearance of movement. Is this accurate? Pictorially—and phraseologically, yes.
But mechanically, it is not. For, in fact, each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other. For the idea (or sensation) of movement arises from the process of superimposing on the retained impression of the object’s first position, a newly visible further position of the object. This is, by the way, the reason for the phenomenon of spatial depth, in the optical superimposition of two planes in stereoscopy. From the superimposition of two elements of the same dimension always arises a new, higher dimension. In the case of stereoscopy the superimposition of two nonidentical two-dimensionalities results in stereoscopic three-dimensionality.
In another field: a concrete word (a denotation) set beside a concrete word yields an abstract concept—as in the Chinese and Japanese languages,* where a material ideogram can indicate a transcendental (conceptual) result.
The incongruence in contour of the first picture—already impressed on the mind—with the subsequently perceived second picture engenders, in conflict, the feeling of motion. Degree of incongruence determines intensity of impression, and determines that tension which becomes the real element of authentic rhythm.
Here we have, temporally, what we see arising spatially on a graphic or painted plane.
What comprises the dynamic effect of a painting? The eye follows the direction of an element in the painting. It retains a visual impression, which then collides with the impression derived from following the direction of a second element. The conflict of these directions forms the dynamic effect in apprehending the whole.
I. It may be purely linear: Fernand Léger, or Suprematism.
II. It may be “anecdotal.” The secret of the marvelous mobility of Daumier’s and Lautrec’s figures dwells in the fact that the various anatomical parts of a body are represented in spatial circumstances (positions) that are temporally various, disjunctive. For example, in Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithograph of Miss Cissy Loftus, if one logically develops position A of the foot, one builds a body in position A corresponding to it. But the body is represented from knee up already in position A + a. The cinematic effect of joined motionless pictures is already established here! From hips to shoulders we can see A + a + a. The figure comes alive and kicking!
III. Between I and II lies primitive Italian futurism—such as in Balla’s “Man with Six Legs in Six Positions”—for II obtains its effect by retaining natural unity and anatomical correctness, while I, on the other hand, does this with purely elementary elements. Ill, although destroying naturalness, has not yet pressed forward to abstraction.
IV. The conflict of directions may also be of an ideographic kind. It was in this way that we have gained the pregnant characterizations of a Sharaku, for example. The secret of his extremely perfected strength of expression lies in the anatomical and spatial disproportion of the parts—in comparison with which, our I might be termed temporal disproportion.
Generally termed “irregularity,” this spatial disproportion has been a constant attraction and instrument for artists. In writing of Rodin’s drawings, Camille Mauclair indicated one explanation for this search:
The greatest artists, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Delacroix, all, at a certain moment of the upthrusting of their genius, threw aside, as it were, the ballast of exactitude as conceived by our simplifying reason and our ordinary eyes, in order to attain the fixation of ideas, the synthesis, the pictorial handwriting of their dreams.6
Two experimental artists of the nineteenth century—a painter and a poet—attempted esthetic formulations of this “irregularity.” Renoir advanced this thesis:
Beauty of every description finds its charm in variety. Nature abhors both vacuum and regularity. For the same reason, no work of art can really be called such if it has not been created by an artist who believes in irregularity and rejects any set form. Regularity, order, desire for perfection (which is always a false perfection) destroy art. The only possibility of maintaining taste in art is to impress on artists and the public the importance of irregularity. Irregularity is the basis of all art.7
And Baudelaire wrote in his journal:
That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.8
Upon closer examination of the particular beauty of irregularity as employed in painting, whether by Grünewald or by Renoir, it will be seen that it is a disproportion in the relation of a detail in one dimension to another detail in a different dimension.
The spatial development of the relative size of one detail in correspondence with another, and the consequent collision between the proportions designed by the artist for that purpose, result in a characterization—a definition of the represented matter.
Finally, color. Any shade of a color imparts to our vision a given rhythm of vibration. This is not said figuratively, but purely physiologically, for colors are distinguished from one another by their number of light vibrations.
The adjacent shade or tone of color is in another rate of vibration. The counterpoint (conflict) of the two—the retained rate of vibration against the newly perceived one-yields the dynamism of our apprehension of the interplay of color.
Hence, with only one step from visual vibrations to acoustic vibrations, we find ourselves in the field of music. From the domain of the spatial-pictorial—to the domain of the temporal-pictorial—where the same law rules. For counterpoint is to music not only a form of composition, but is altogether the basic factor for the possibility of tone perception and tone differentiation.
It may almost be said that in every case we have cited we have seen in operation the same Principle of Comparison that makes possible for us perception and definition in every field.
In the moving image (cinema) we have, so to speak, a synthesis of two counterpoints—the spatial counterpoint of graphic art, and the temporal counterpoint of music.
Within cinema, and characterizing it, occurs what may be described as:
visual counterpoint
In applying this concept to the film, we gain several leads to the problem of film grammar. As well as a syntax of film manifestations, in which visual counterpoint may determine a whole new system of forms of manifestation. (Experiments in this direction are illustrated in the preceding pages by fragments from my films.)
For all this, the basic prem
ise is:
The shot is by no means an element of montage.
The shot is a montage cell (or molecule).
In this formulation the dualistic division of
Sub-title and shot
and
Shot and montage
leaps forward in analysis to a dialectic consideration as three different phases of one homogeneous task of expression, its homogeneous characteristics determining the homogeneity of their structural laws.
Inter-relation of the three phases:
Conflict within a thesis (an abstract idea) —formulates itself in the dialectics of the sub-title—forms itself spatially in the conflict within the shot—and explodes with increasing intensity in montage-conflict among the separate shots.
This is fully analogous to human, psychological expression. This is a conflict of motives, which can also be comprehended in three phases:
Purely verbal utterance. Without intonation—expression in speech.
Gesticulatory (mimic-intonational) expression. Projection of the conflict onto the whole expressive bodily system of man. Gesture of bodily movement and gesture of intonation.
Projection of the conflict into space. With an intensification of motives, the zigzag of mimic expression is propelled into the surrounding space following the same formula of distortion. A zigzag of expression arising from the spatial division caused by man moving in space. Mise-en-scène.
This gives us the basis for an entirely new understanding of the problem of film form.
We can list, as examples of types of conflicts within the form—characteristic for the conflict within the shot, as well as for the conflict between colliding shots, or, montage:
1. Graphic conflict (see Figure 1).
2. Conflict of planes (see Figure 2).
3. Conflict of volumes (see Figure 3).
4. Spatial conflict (see Figure 4).
5. Light conflict.
6. Tempo conflict, and so on.*
Nota bene: This list is of principal features, of dominants. It is naturally understood that they occur chiefly as complexes.
For a transition to montage, it will be sufficient to divide any example into two independent primary pieces, as in the case of graphic conflict, although all other cases can be similarly divided:
Some further examples:
7. Conflict between matter and viewpoint (achieved by spatial distortion through camera-angle) (see Figure 5).
8. Conflict between matter and its spatial nature (achieved by optical distortion by the lens).
9. Conflict between an event and its temporal nature (achieved by slow-motion and stop-motion)
and finally
10. Conflict between the whole optical complex and a quite different sphere.
Thus does conflict between optical and acoustical experience produce:
sound-film,
which is capable of being realized as
audio-visual counterpoint.
Formulation and investigation of the phenomenon of cinema as forms of conflict yield the first possibility of devising a homogeneous system of visual dramaturgy for all general and particular cases of the film problem.
Of devising a dramaturgy of the visual film-form as regulated and precise as the existing dramaturgy of the film-story.
From this viewpoint on the film medium, the following forms and potentialities of style may be summed up as a film syntax, or it may be more exact to describe the following as:
a tentative film-syntax.
We shall list here a number of potentialities of dialectical development to be derived from this proposition: The concept of the moving (time-consuming) image arises from the superimposition—or counterpoint—of two differing immobile images.
I. Each moving fragment of montage. Each photographed piece. Technical definition of the phenomenon of movement. No composition as yet. (A running man. A rifle fired. A splash of water.)
II. An artificially produced image of motion. The basic optical element is used for deliberate compositions:
A. Logical
Example 1 (from October): a montage rendition of a machine-gun being fired, by cross-cutting details of the firing.
Combination A: a brightly lit machine-gun. A different shot in a low key. Double burst: graphic burst + light burst. Close-up of machine-gunner.
Combination B (see Figure 6): Effect almost of double exposure achieved by clatter montage effect. Length of montage pieces—two frames each.
Example 2 (from Potemkin): an illustration of instantaneous action. Woman with pince-nez. Followed immediately—without transition—by the same woman with shattered pince-nez and bleeding eye: impression of a shot hitting the eye (see Figure 7).
B. Illogical
Example 3 (from Potemkin): the same device used for pictorial symbolism. In the thunder of the Potemkin’s guns, a marble lion leaps up, in protest against the bloodshed on the Odessa steps (see Figure 8). Composed of three shots of three stationary marble lions at the Alupka Palace in the Crimea: a sleeping lion, an awakening lion, a rising lion. The effect is achieved by a correct calculation of the length of the second shot. Its superimposition on the first shot produces the first action. This establishes time to impress the second position on the mind. Superimposition of the third position on the second produces the second action: the lion finally rises.
Example 4 (from October): Example 1 showed how the firing was manufactured symbolically from elements outside the process of firing itself. In illustrating the monarchist putsch attempted by General Kornilov, it occurred to me that his militarist tendency could be shown in a montage that would employ religious details for its material. For Kornilov had revealed his intention in the guise of a peculiar “Crusade” of Moslems (!), his Caucasian “Wild Division,” together with some Christians, against the Bolsheviki. So we intercut shots of a Baroque Christ (apparently exploding in the radiant beams of his halo) with shots of an egg-shaped mask of Uzume, Goddess of Mirth, completely self-contained. The temporal conflict between the closed egg-form and the graphic star-form produced the effect of an instantaneous burst— of a bomb, or shrapnel (see Figure 9).* (Figure 10, showing the opportunity for tendentious—or ideological—expressiveness of such materials, will be discussed below.)
Thus far the examples have shown primitive-physiological cases—employing superimposition of optical motion exclusively.
III. Emotional combinations, not only with the visible elements of the shots, but chiefly with chains of psychological associations. Association montage. As a means for pointing up a situation emotionally.
In Example I, we had two successive shots A and B, identical in subject. However, they were not identical in respect to the position of the subject within the frame:
producing dynamization in space—an impression of spatial dynamics:
The degree of difference between the positions A and B determines the tension of the movement.
For a new case, let us suppose that the subjects of Shots A and B are not identical. Although the associations of the two shots are identical, that is, associatively identical.
This dynamization of the subject, not in the field of space but of psychology, i.e., emotion, thus produces:
emotional dynamization.
Example 1 (in Strike): the montage of the killing of the workers is actually a cross montage of this carnage with the butchering of a bull in an abattoir. Though the subjects are different, “butchering” is the associative link. This made for a powerful emotional intensification of the scene. As a matter of fact, homogeneity of gesture plays an important part in this case in achieving the effect—both the movement of the dynamic gesture within the frame, and the static gesture dividing the frame graphically.*
This is a principle subsequently used by Pudovkin in The End of St. Petersburg, in his powerful sequence intercutting shots of stock exchange and battlefield. His previous film, Mother, had a similar sequence: the ice-break on the river, paralleled with the workers’ demonstration.
Such a means may decay pathologically if the essential viewpoint-emotional dynamization of the subject—is lost. As soon as the film-maker loses sight of this essence the means ossifies into lifeless literary symbolism and stylistic mannerism. Two examples of such hollow use of this means occur to me:
Example 2 (in October): the sugary chants of compromise by the Mensheviki at the Second Congress of Soviets—during the storming of the Winter Palace—are intercut with hands playing harps. This was a purely literary parallelism that by no means dynamized the subject matter. Similarly in Otzep’s Living Corpse, church spires (in imitation of those in October) and lyrical landscapes are intercut with the courtroom speeches of the prosecutor and defense lawyer. This error was the same as in the “harp” sequence.
On the other hand, a majority of purely dynamic effects can produce positive results:
Example 3 (in October): the dramatic moment of the union of the Motorcycle Battalion with the Congress of Soviets was dynamized by shots of abstractly spinning bicycle wheels, in association with the entrance of the new delegates. In this way the large-scale emotional content of the event was transformed into actual dynamics.
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