Introduction
In the presented essay I will compare the style of work of selected artists in the montage of the film. I will try to point out some general regularities and features of Soviet cinema. At the same time I will try to capture especially what is common in their systems and similar or conversely what differ. For my analysis, I will draw on the feature films of the Soviet avantgarde, namely these are the movies - The Battleship Potemkin (S. Eisenstein, 1925), Mother (V. Pudovkin, 1926) and The Man with a movie camera (D. Vertov, 1929).
The School of montage
Most of the films that they were created in the Soviet Union, outside the school of montage, use topics of sitcoms and to a various literary adaptations. Conversely directors from school of montage decided on a topic related to the uprising, or other historically revolutionary movement. This was mainly the one that these topics offered filmmakers show any conflict, or also because they tried to point out the Communist ideology. Especially Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin used this style, in the films that remind the twentieth anniversary of the failed revolution of 1905.
Montage is from the beginning of the twenties characterized as a process of synthesis, building something new and in terms of the physical planes also something quite simple. Most montage’s films were created as a dialectical process, where initially from a two meanings of consecutive shots form a third meaning.
Movies of Soviet school are also movies of mass heroes. Characters act and react, but they are not expressions of individuals, but rather of a certain social class. One person can represent the whole class. Eisenstein, for example, in the film The Battleship Potemkin completely elimin...
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...d not, however, only significant events, he stops at the store, or while remains on a field. Vertov was not hiding behind anything that might lead to the idea that all displayed events are not depend on many filmmaking techniques, on the contrary, it explicitly he makes clear. The film ends with the final image of the city that sleeps again, the image transferred to canvas and ends projection.
Works Cited
David Bordwell. The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film. – Cinema Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1972, 9-17.
Richard Taylor. Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. – London, 1979, 81-91.
Vsevolod Pudovkin. From Film Technique. On Editing, 121 – 126.
PŁAŻEWSKI, Jerzy; TABERY, Karel. Dějiny filmu : 1895-2005. Vyd. 1. Praha : Academia, 2009. s.79.
SADOUL, Georges. Dějiny světového filmu : od Lumiera až do současné doby. Vyd. 2. Praha : Orbis, 1963. s.156.
When thinking of “a rapid succession of images or scenes,” my first thought was that this was an awkward use of film. As the book, Film Theory and Criticism says, “Simply stringing separate photographic shots together will not produce intelligible works of visual art.” Yet the use of montage in The Night of the Hunter was very subtle so that at points I wasn’t aware that I was watching a montage. It also enhanced the film’s thematic qualities greatly and by doing so convinced me of the values of a montage when used well.
consider to be more modern film techniques. Montage plays a key role in this film, as
The Bolshevik Revolution was a defining turning point in Russian history. This overall revolution consisted of two individual revolutions in 1917 which resulted in the overthrow of the Tsarist government and the formation of a socialist society led by Vladimir Lenin’s radical Bolsheviks. For a moment with such enormous weight like the Bolshevik Revolution, there will be various interpretations on the true results of that moment and the meaning and value of these results. The film Man with a Movie Camera deals with the results of the Bolshevik Revolution and the early Soviet Society it birthed as it utilizes footage of one day in this early Soviet Union, thus making it worthy of examination. In the film Man With a Movie Camera, Vertov impressively
Phillips, W. (2002). Thinking about film . In Film an introduction (pp. 403-438). Boston : Bedford/St.Martin's .
The Alfred Hitchcock film; Vertigo is a narrative film that is a perfect example of a Hollywood Classical Film. I will be examining the following characteristics of the film Vertigo: 1)individual characters who act as casual agents, the main characters in Vertigo, 2)desire to reach to goals, 3)conflicts, 4)appointments, 5)deadlines, 6)James Stewart’s focus shifts and 7)Kim Novak’s characters drives the action in the film. Most of the film is viewed in the 3rd person, except for the reaction shots (point of view shot) which are seen through the eyes of the main character.(1st person) The film has a strong closure and uses continuity editing(180 degree rule). The stylistic (technical) film form of Vertigo makes the film much more enjoyable. The stylistic film form includes camera movements, editing, sound, mise-en-scene and props.
Bordwell, David. “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice.” Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Oxford University Press, 2009: 649-657.
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
In the film V for Vendetta the director James Mcteigue uses a range of different film techniques in order to gain the audience's attention and to make the movie more interesting. The four film techniques I’m going to focus on in this essay are editing, music, camera angles and the lighting. I am going to do this by analysing the ‘Domino Montage’ scene.
The 18th century has marked the commencement of the innovation of cinematography. The invention of cinema owes its existence to a few investors and scientists who are broadly known for laying down its foundation. Among those pioneers are the Lumiere brothers who were some of the earliest contributors to cinema, inventing the first real film camera called the "cinematographe", which effectively functioned as a camera, projector and printer all in one (Barnauw, 1993:6). Thus giving rise to the art of film making. Initially, in the early years of cinema since there was no developed structure [or language] to tell cinematic stories, the early Lumiere brother?s films such as Workers leaving the Lumiere factory (1895) and The Arrival of a Train at the Station (1895), were composed of a single shot, no camera movement and only one continuous action from beginning to end (Obalil, 2007).
This essay will seek to outline my findings on movie and theatre by looking at still image and moving image. I will discuss the relationship between cinema and film, and also compare some works of artists in order to answer the question which how might photography be contextualized as image on the threshold of still and moving – as an object incorporating the temporal and the narrative, the writing of history, or the presentation of documentation as record.
Gunning, Tom 2000, “The Cinema of Attraction: Early film, its spectator, and the avant-garde.” Film and theory: An anthology, Robert Stam & Toby Miller, Blackwell, pp 229-235.
Eisenstein is a man blessed and cursed with an attention to detail. Soviet Cinema is in essence, montage, but how Eisenstein utilizes it to progress an intellectual conversation is much bespoke of montage and its capabilities. Unlike the manipulative montage of Kuleshov, or the relational editing sequence of Pudovkin, Eisenstein uses editing as a sequence of collisions that produce an associative meaning, despite different material (Eisenstein). However, for montage, all other factors are insignificant. What matters is the cut, and how the cut is related to other cuts. The following examples of the hieroglyphs are used by Eisenstein to illustrate a process of meaning generation which can be implemented in cinema
He also posits that ‘whereas the standard explanations for the flowering of montage have emphasized the role of Kuleshov’, ‘the larger context of Soviet artistic activity of the time’ in which ‘Vertov and Eisenstein were working’ reveals ‘that the principle of montage was a salient strategy of much avant-garde Soviet art’ (Bordwell, 10; 11). It is clear from the above that the montage style was thus employed differently by individual filmmakers who made use of the montage editing techniques to bring out their respective aesthetic visions within their
Art has been always seen as a form to express self emotions and ideas; an artist creates an idea and shapes it by culturally known objects and forms to send encrypted message. Through the times both, ideas and materials used, separates art in to different periods and movements. In late 40’s and late 50’s two art and culture movements emerged, one from another. The first one, Lettrism, was under the aspiration to rewrite all human knowledge. From it another movement, Situationism, appeared. It was an anti-art movement which sought for Cultural Revolution. Both of these movements belong to wide and difficulty defined movement of experiment, a movement whose field is endless. Many different people create experimental films because of the variety of reasons. Some wishes to express their viewpoints which are unconventional. But most of them have an enthusiasm for medium itself. They yearn to explore what prospects the medium has and wishes to open new opportunities to create and to explore, as well as to educate. Experimental filmmaker, differently from mainstream filmmakers, wishes to step out from the orthodox notions. The overall appreciation is not the aim that the experimental filmmakers would seek for. Experimenters usually work on the film alone or with a small group, without the big budget. They intend to challenge the traditional ideas. And with intention to do so Lettrism tries to narrow the distance between the poetry and people’s lives, while Situationism tries to transform world into one that would exist in constant state of newness. Both of these avant-garde movements root from similar sources and have similar foundations. Nonetheless, they have different intentions for the art and culture world and these movements...
Soviet cinematographer Sergei Eisenstein argues that the basis of cinema is dialectical montage. In his article “A Dialectical Approach to Film Form”, Eisenstein explains dialectics as “a constant evolution from the interaction of two contradictory opposites” (45). These opposites synthesize and form a new thesis, which then may also be contradicted. Eisenstein employs dialectical montage in his films due to its ability to invoke change, an important goal in a revolutionary society. His film Battleship Potemkin is designed to display this theory and create a psychological change within his audience, corresponding to his revolutionist ideals.