Film Form

by Sergei Eisenstein

  None the less enormous was the rôle of Griffith also in the evolution of the system of Soviet montage: a rôle as enormous as the rôle of Dickens in forming the methods of Griffith. Dickens in this respect played an enormous rôle in heightening the tradition and cultural heritage of preceding epochs; just as on an even higher level we can see the enormous rôle of those social premises, which inevitably in those pivotal moments of history ever anew push elements of the montage method into the center of attention for creative work.

  The rôle of Griffith is enormous, but our cinema is neither a poor relative nor an insolvent debtor of his. It was natural that the spirit and content of our country itself, in themes and subjects, would stride far ahead of Griffith’s ideals as well as their reflection in artistic images.

  In social attitudes Griffith was always a liberal, never departing far from the slightly sentimental humanism of the good old gentlemen and sweet old ladies of Victorian England, just as Dickens loved to picture them. His tender-hearted film morals go no higher than a level of Christian accusation of human injustice and nowhere in his films is there sounded a protest against social injustice.

  In his best films he is a preacher of pacifism and compromise with fate (Isn’t Life Wonderful?) or of love of mankind “in general” (Broken Blossoms). Here in his reproaches and condemnations Griffith is sometimes able to ascend to magnificent pathos (in, for example, Way Down East).

  In the more thematically dubious of his works—this takes the form of an apology for the Dry Law (in The Struggle) or for the metaphysical philosophy of the eternal origins of Good and Evil (in Intolerance). Metaphysics permeates the film which he based on Marie Corelli’s Sorrows of Satan. Finally, among the most repellent elements in his films (and there are such) we see Griffith as an open apologist for racism, erecting a celluloid monument to the Ku Klux Klan, and joining their attack on Negroes in The Birth of a Nation.*

  Nevertheless, nothing can take from Griffith the wreath of one of the genuine masters of the American cinema.

  But montage thinking is inseparable from the general content of thinking as a whole. The structure that is reflected in the concept of Griffith montage is the structure of bourgeois society. And he actually resembles Dickens’s “side of streaky, well-cured bacon”; in actuality (and this is no joke), he is woven of irreconcilably alternating layers of “white” and “red”—rich and poor. (This is the eternal theme of Dickens’s novels, nor does he move beyond these divisions. His mature work, Little Dorrit, is so divided into two books: “Poverty” and “Riches.”) And this society, perceived only as a contrast between the haves and the have-nots, is reflected in the consciousness of Griffith no deeper than the image of an intricate race between two parallel lines.

  Griffith primarily is the greatest master of the most graphic form in this field—a master of parallel montage. Above all else, Griffith is a great master of montage constructions that have been created in a direct-lined quickening and increase of tempo (chiefly in the direction of the higher forms of parallel montage).

  The school of Griffith before all else is a school of tempo. However, he did not have the strength to compete with the young Soviet school of montage in the field of expression and of relentlessly affective rhythm, the task of which goes far beyond the narrow confines of tempo tasks.

  It was exactly this feature of devastating rhythm as distinguished from effects of tempo that was noted at the appearance of our first Soviet films in America. After recognizing the themes and ideas of our works it was this feature of our cinema that the American press of 1926–27 remarked.

  But true rhythm presupposes above all organic unity.

  Neither a successive mechanical alternation of cross-cuts, nor an interweaving of antagonistic themes, but above all a unity, which in the play of inner contradictions, through a shift of the play in the direction of tracing its organic pulse—that is what lies at the base of rhythm. This is not an outer unity of story, bringing with it also the classical image of the chase-scene, but that inner unity, which can be realized in montage as an entirely different system of construction, in which so-called parallel montage can figure as one of the highest or particularly personal variants.

  And, naturally, the montage concept of Griffith, as a primarily parallel montage, appears to be a copy of his dualistic picture of the world, running in two parallel lines of poor and rich towards some hypothetical “reconcilation” where . . . the parallel lines would cross, that is, in that infinity, just as inaccessible as that “reconciliation.”

  Thus it was to be expected that our concept of montage had to be born from an entirely different “image” of an understanding of phenomena, which was opened to us by a worldview both monistic and dialectic.

  For us the microcosm of montage had to be understood as a unity, which in the inner stress of contradictions is halved, in order to be re-assembled in a new unity on a new plane, qualitatively higher, its imagery newly perceived.

  I attempted to give theoretical expression to this general tendency of our understanding of montage, and advanced this in 1929, thinking least of all at that time to what degree our method of montage both generically and in principle was in opposition to the montage of Griffith.

  This was stated in the form of a definition of the stages of relationship between the shot and montage. Of the thematic unity of content in a film, of the “shot,” of the “frame,” I wrote:

  The shot is by no means an element of montage.

  The shot is a montage cell.

  Just as cells in their division form a phenomenon of another order, the organism or embryo, so, on the other side of the dialectical leap from the shot, there is montage.

  Montage is the expansion of intra-shot conflict (or, contradiction) at first in the conflict of two shots standing side by side:

  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.

  Then—the threading of the conflict through a whole system of planes, by means of which “. . . we newly collect the disintegrated event into one whole, but in our aspect. According to the treatment of our relation to the event.”*

  Thus is broken up a montage unit—the cage—into a multiple chain, which is anew gathered into a new unity—in the montage phrase, embodying the concept of an image of the phenomenon.

  It is interesting to watch such a process moving also through the history of language in relation to the word (the “shot”) and the sentence (the “montage phrase”), and to see just such a primitive stage of “word-sentences” later “foliating” into the sentence, made up of separately independent words.

  V. A. Bogoroditzky writes that . . . in the very beginning mankind expressed his ideas in single words, which were also primitive forms of the sentence.”20 The question is presented in more detail by Academician Ivan Meshchaninov:

  Word and sentence appear as the product of history and are far from being identified with the whole lengthy epoch of gutturals. They are antedated by an unfoliated state, till this day undetected within the materials of incorporated languages.*

  Broken up into their component parts, word-sentences show a unity between the original words and their combination into the syntactic complex of the sentence. This gains a diversity of possibilities in expressive word-combinations. . . .

  The embryos of syntax, previously laid down, were in a latent form of incorporated word-sentences, then, later during its decomposition, projected outward. The sentence appeared to have been broken down to its chief elements, that is, the sentence is created as such with its laws of syntax. . . .21

  We have previously stated the particularity of our attitude towards montage. However, the distinction between the American and our montage concepts gains maximum sharpness and clarity if we glance at such a difference in principle of the understanding of another innovation, introduced by Griffith into cinematography a
nd, in the same way, receiving at our hands an entirely different understanding.

  We refer to the close-up, or as we speak of it, the “large scale.”

  This distinction in principle begins with an essence that exists in the term itself.

  We say: an object or face is photographed in “large scale,” i.e., large.

  The American says: near, or “close-up.”*

  We are speaking of the qualitative side of the phenomenon, linked with its meaning (just as we speak of a large talent, that is, of one which stands out, by its significance, from the general line, or of large print [bold-face] to emphasize that which is particularly essential or significant).

  Among Americans the term is attached to viewpoint.

  Among us—to the value of what is seen.

  We shall see below what a profound distinction in principle is here, after we have understood the system which, both in method and in application, uses the “large scale” in our cinema in a way distinguished from the use of the “close-up” by the American cinema.

  In this comparison immediately the first thing to appear clearly relating to the principal function of the close-up in our cinema is—not only and not so much to show or to present, as to signify, to give meaning, to designate.

  In our own uay we very quickly realized the very nature of the “close-up” after this had been hardly noticed in its sole capacity as a means of showing, in American cinema practice.

  The first factor that attracted us in the method of the close-up was the discovery of its particularly astonishing feature: to create a new quality of the whole from a juxtaposition of the separate parts.

  Where the isolated close-up in the tradition of the Dickens kettle was often a determining or “ key” detail in the work of Griffith, where the alternation of close-ups of faces was an anticipation of the future synchronized dialogue (it may be apropos here to mention that Griffith, in his sound film, did not freshen a single method then in use)—there we advanced the idea of a principally new qualitative fusion, flowing out of the process of juxtaposition.

  For example, in almost my first spoken and written declarations of the ’twenties, I designated the cinema as above all else an “art of juxtaposition.”

  If Gilbert Seldes is to be believed, Griffith himself came to the point of seeing “that by dovetailing the ride of the rescuers and the terror of the besieged in a scene, he was multiplying the emotional effect enormously; the whole was infinitely greater than the sum of its parts,”22 but this was also insufficient for us.

  For us this quantitative accumulation even in such “multiplying” situations was not enough: we sought for and found in juxtapositions more than that—a qualitative leap.

  The leap proved beyond the limits of the possibilities of the stage—a leap beyond the limits of situation: a leap into the field of montage image, montage understanding, montage as a means before all else of revealing the ideological conception.

  By the way, in another of Seldes’s books there appears his lengthy condemnation of the American films of the ’twenties, losing their spontaneity in pretensions towards “artiness” and “theatricality.”

  It is written in the form of “An Open Letter to the Movie Magnates.” It begins with the juicy salutation: “Ignorant and Unhappy People,” and contains in its conclusion such remarkable lines as these:

  . . . and then the new film will arrive without your assistance. For when you and your capitalizations and your publicity go down together, the field will be left free for others. . . . Presently it will be within the reach of artists. With players instead of actors and actresses, with fresh ideas (among which the idea of making a lot of money may be absent) these artists will give back to the screen the thing you have debauched—imagination. They will create with the camera, and not record . . . it is possible and desirable to create great epics of American industry and let the machine operate as a character in the play—just as the land of the West itself, as the corn must play its part. The grandiose conceptions of Frank Norris are not beyond the reach of the camera. There are painters willing to work in the medium of the camera and architects and photographers. And novelists, too, I fancy, would find much of interest in the scenario as a new way of expression. There is no end to what we can accomplish.

  . . . For the movie is the imagination of mankind in action. . . .23

  Seldes expected this bright film future to be brought by some unknown persons who were to reduce the cost of films, by some unknown “artists,” and by epics, dedicated to American industry or American com. But his prophetic words justified themselves in an entirely different direction: they proved to be a prediction that in these very years (the book appeared in 1924) on the other side of the globe were being prepared the first Soviet films, which were destined to fulfill all his prophecies.

  For only a new social structure, which has forever freed art from narrowly commercial tasks, can give full realization to the dreams of advanced and penetrating Americans!

  In technique also, montage took on a completely new meaning at this time.

  To the parallelism and alternating close-ups of America we offer the contrast of writing these in fusion; the MONTAGE TROPE.

  In the theory of literature a trope is defined thus: “a figure of speech which consists in the use of a word or phrase in a sense other than that which is proper to it,”24 for example, a sharp wit (normally, a sharp sword).

  Griffith’s cinema does not know this type of montage construction. His close-ups create atmosphere, outline traits of the characters, alternate in dialogues of the leading characters, and close-ups of the chaser and the chased speed up the tempo of the chase. But Griffith at all times remains on a level of representation and objectivity and nowhere does he try through the juxtaposition of shots to shape import and image.

  However, within the practice of Griffith there was such an attempt, an attempt of huge dimensions—Intolerance.

  Terry Ramsaye, a historian of the American film, has definitively called it: “a giant metaphor.” No less definitively has he called it also “a magnificent failure.” For if Intolerance— in its modern story—stands unsurpassed by Griffith himself, a brilliant model of his method of montage, then at the same time, along the line of a desire to get away from the limits of story towards the region of generalization and metaphorical allegory, the picture is overcome completely by failure. In explaining the failure of Intolerance Ramsaye claims:

  Allusion, simile and metaphor can succeed in the printed and spoken word as an aid to the dim pictorial quality of the word expression. The motion picture has no use for them because it itself is the event. It is too specific and final to accept such aids. The only place that these verbal devices have on the screen is in support of the sub-tide or legends. . . .25

  But Terry Ramsaye is not correct in denying to cinematography all possibility in general of imagistic story-telling, in not permitting the assimilation of simile and metaphor to move, in its best instances, beyond the text of the sub-titles!

  The reason for this failure was of quite another nature; particularly, in Griffith’s misunderstanding, that the region of metaphorical and imagist writing appears in the sphere of montage juxtaposition, not of representational montage pieces.

  Out of this came his unsuccessful use of the repeated refrain shot: Lillian Gish rocking a cradle. Griffith had been inspired to translate these lines of Walt Whitman,

  . . . endlessly rocks the cradle, Uniter of Here and Hereafter.*

  not in the structure, nor in the harmonic recurrence of montage expressiveness, but in an isolated picture, with the result that the cradle could not possibly be abstracted into an image of eternally reborn epochs and remained inevitably simply a life-like cradle, calling forth derision, surprise or vexation in the spectator.

  We know of a nearly analogous blunder in our films, as well: the “naked woman” in Dovzhenko’s Earth. Here is another example of a lack of awareness that for imagist and extra-lifelike (or surreal
ist) “manipulation” of film-shots there must be an abstraction of the lifelike representation.

  Such an abstraction of the lifelike may in certain instances be given by the close-up.

  A healthy, handsome woman’s body may, actually, be heightened to an image of a life-affirming beginning, which is what Dovzhenko had to have, to clash with his montage of the funeral in Earth.

  A skillfully lending montage creation with close-ups, taken in the “Rubens manner,” isolated from naturalism and abstracted in the necessary direction, could well have been lifted to such a “sensually palpable” image.

  But the whole structure of Earth was doomed to failure, because in place of such montage material the director cut into the funeral long shots of the interior of the peasant hut, and the naked woman flinging herself about there. And the spectator could not possibly separate out of this concrete, lifelike woman that generalized sensation of blazing fertility, of sensual life-affirmation, which the director wished to convey of all nature, as a pantheistic contrast to the theme of death and the funeral!

  This was prevented by the ovens, pots, towels, benches, tablecloths—all those details of everyday life, from which the woman’s body could easily have been freed by the framing of the shot,— so that: representational naturalism would not interfere with the embodiment of the conveyed metaphorical task.

  But to return to Griffith—

  If he made a blunder because of non-montage thinking in the treatment of a recurring “wave of time” through an unconvincing plastic idea of a rocking cradle, then at the opposite pole—in the gathering together of all four motifs of the film along the same principle of his montage, he made another blunder.