Soviet Montage Theory: Eisenstein, Kuleshov & Constructivism

[00:00:00]hi folks and welcome to our video lesson on  soviet montage theory this is going to be   uh an overview of some of the basic context some  of the basic concepts and some ways to think about   soviet montage theory with respect to  the other theories we looked at in class   first a couple pointers um most of you  probably know this but i just want to   make sure we're on the same page when i say  montage that comes from the french word montage   and the verb montere which means to assemble this  doesn't refer to montage sequences as we mean them   in film studies especially as influenced by  classical continuity where a montage sequence is a   kind of sequence that is compresses space and time  and often summarizes an idea or a certain kind of   action and it's multiple iterations over time  like a training montage so that out of the way   i want to break down this lesson into three basic  components the first is constructivism and what   that means the second is thinking about cinema  as language the third is thinking about editing   and meaning so let's look at constructivism  first a bit of background to get us to   russian or soviet constructivism a modernist  art movement in the 19 teens and 20s   director sergey eisenstein was a pioneer  of film theory particularly the theory of   montage but to really understand eisenstein's  impact on cinema we first need to understand   the history of editing up until 1925 and the state  of soviet filmmaking after the revolution in 1917.   by 1925 filmmakers had already developed the  basic film editing techniques required to tell   a cohesive story the major idea of both american  and european filmmaking was continuity editing   where a filmmaker tries to make the film match  reality in a natural way creating an immersive   experience for the viewer in a way that disguises  the actual process of filmmaking filmmakers were   using techniques like cutting on action where  the director makes a cut to correspond with an   action on the screen matching eye level cutting  from someone's eyes to what they're looking at   and cross-cutting cutting back and forth between  two pieces of action happening at the same time   these techniques help to build a realistic  environment with easy to understand action   over in russia communist revolutionary vladimir  lenin was a big believer in the power of film   he said for us of all the arts cinema is the most  important and after the russian revolution in 1917   one of the primary goals of the new government  was to consolidate power and to spread information   to do this russia nationalized the production of  films and created what would become known as the   moscow film school after the revolution film stock  was in short supply so instead of feature films   soviet filmmakers focused on making short films  for the purpose of propaganda and agitation called   agitprop rather than producing feature films the  students of the moscow film school focused on   developing the theory of film they took imported  films like intolerance and birth of a nation   to study making hundreds of re-edits moving the  order of frames shots and scenes into hundreds of   possible combinations studying how the new orders  changed the film's meaning and emotional impact okay so i kind of want to pick up where  this video essayist left off the moscow   film school confronted this problem uh there were  no there was no raw film stock in the soviet union   or at least a very short supply and so there  was this ambition um by the soviet filmmakers   and and soviet film thinkers to look closely  at the way film is constructed um before they   were to make their own films this is incredibly  uh interesting if you think about your own role   as film students both thinking about people who  think of yourselves as filmmakers but also people   who look at films in order to break them down  and to dissect them and how the two things are   um mutually inclusive in your education but i want  to think about how this is related to a broader   artistic movement happening in the soviet union  and with respect to this idea of constructivism   so look at kuleshov and how he thinks about this  he says it became apparent to us that american   films were best in terms of their influence  on the viewer we began to analyze not only the   separate shots of a film but studied its entire  construction now this idea of construction and   constructivism is very very important so i just  want to kind of summarize what constructivism   is it's an art movement that you can see in design  that is kind of two-dimensional illustration   in architecture and in painting and  in theater and of course in film   the way wikipedia defines constructivism is as a  movement that rejected decorative stylization in   favor of the industrial assemblage of materials  again this idea of industrial assemblage another   way of building on this definition is to say that  in place of painterly concerns with composition   contracts constructivists were interested  in construction rather than emerging from an   expressive impulse or an academic tradition art  was to be built so i hope you can begin to see   the way in which the major concerns of the soviet  montage theorist that is what kuleshov thought   and what uh eisenstein thought does revolve around  this idea of looking at film with an emphasis on   its pieces on its units and how those units are  rearranged juxtaposed to create something new   and there's many ways you can think of this  metaphorically with respect to a world after the   revolution how do we take a system break it down  and then reassemble its pieces into something new   this is incredibly important for the bolshevik  revolution so here's a couple pieces of   constructivist art this uh this illustration  titled oppressed peoples of the world of the   whole world you can see the way in which the  illustration is clearly made up of discrete pieces   it almost has a collage effect right the design  elements remind us of those clean geometric lines   and shapes of of modernism and of cubism but it's  important to note the discreteness of each element   you can see that discreetness of each element  in the most famous constructivist work which is   a um a design for a building that was never  actually built this is totland's tower conceived   of in 1919 what's important is that you can  say see all of the pieces of the tower it   is in some sense transparent to the eye it's not  concealing its construction it is wearing its own   construction on its sleeve it's an aesthetic of  assemblage so think about this quote from kuleshov   in that context he says we became convinced that  the fundamental source of the film's impact on   the viewer a source present only in cinema was  not simply to show the content of certain shots   but the organization of those shots among  themselves so i want you to think about this idea   when you read kulashov's writing so one of  kuleshov's main ideas is often called creative   geography and it's a concept that you're very very  familiar with and in fact it's important that when   kuleshov is theorizing editing or the possible  effects of editing he's not inventing anything   he's actually looking at the way things are have  been created for the last say 25 years and he   comes up with theorizations conceptualizations of  what's already been done so the most one of the   most basic ideas is what he calls creative  geography which he talks about in this one   example he says we film them edit the film and the  result is that they are seen walking up the steps   of the white house even though these people were  never actually at uh quote unquote the white house   so you can see that kind of idea in something as  old as an 1899 early cinematic film kiss in the   tunnel so kuleshov is interested in this cognitive  faculty that happens when we see the viewpoint of   a train moving forward we cut to an interior space  clearly is not an actual train but our mind puts   these two things together as say being contiguous  right we we intuit the idea that oh we saw the   front view of a train and the subsequent shot is  the interior of that train and we see this all   the time throughout the history of film but it's  really the avant-gardis who take this principle   and and show the seams so an avant-garde  film like uh le chien on the loo from 1929   is going to use this principle but it's going  to make you see the principle in action so when   the woman shuts the door um we get a close-up and  then of course the reverse shot is a new location   and um she is suddenly on the beach it's giving  the illusion of contiguity though there is no   contiguity or another avant-gardis from the film  that was assigned as a kind of short film to think   with eisenstein a movie by bruce connor right even  more importantly bruce connor like the soviets   um in the early part of the moscow film school is  working with found footage none of this footage is   something that he shot but he creates new meanings  when the sailor looks through the periscope he is   seeing not the contents of the ocean but a kind  of pin-up model um someone from an erotic film   and then he reacts and then we get this idea and  actually the film will kind of play with this   um as kind of inspiring the motivation of  the next subsequent shots as being kind of   erotically charged looking again at kuleshov's  writing he'll say about this technique he says   you can splice the face of alexandra with  the body of nata and again this will not be   through trick photography but montage that  is by the organization and the material   rather than by a technical gimmick and  i think kuleshov is revealing something   important about his values here it seems  important for kuleshov that this technique   is not a gimmick and it's not say manipulating the  footage it seems it seems important that kuleshov   is not doing something like slow motion or fast  motion or reverse motion things that actually   change the nature of the footage he's respecting  the footage but creating new meanings by changing   the relationship between bits of footage that is  the organization of the material and he kind of   furthers this idea with when he says with  montage it becomes possible both to break down   and to reconstruct and ultimately to remake  the material this is a deeply constructivist   idea and you can almost see the ideology of  a revolution wrapped up in this to break down   the stuff of the world and to reconstruct  the stuff of the world in order to remake   the the material or remake a new kind of system  so now let's look at cinema as language the   little prologue to kuleshov's excerpt that i  assigned talks about him this way kuleshov was   the first filmmaker who began to talk about an  alphabet an organization of inarticulate material   and who worked with syllables not words it  would be very useful for us to think about the   constant invocation of language as a metaphor  to think with when theorizing the possibilities   of film and one way to think about this invocation  of language is to suggest that we're moving beyond   thinking about the organization of space  and time that we got with say dw griffith   and the emergence of continuity editing  and we're starting to think about shots as   chains in a signifying link that can produce new  kinds of meaning kuleshov was interested in the   organization of space and time as of course with  someone like munsterberg but kuleshov's other work   is going to push into the eisenstein emphasis on  constructing new kinds of meaning which i think   is quite and importantly different so once again  we're moving from continuity editing's emphasis   on space and time to soviet montage's interest  in the construction of new ideas or new meanings   so the kuleshov effect is a good example of a way  of taking kuleshov into the realm of constructing   meaning so let's look at what he says about  this experiment in his own writing he says we   had an argument about whether the particular  psychological state of an actor experiences   is is dependent or not on montage the montage was  so edited that we involuntarily imbued a serious   face with a changed expression characteristic of  that playful moment it became apparent that it was   possible to change the actor's work his movements  his very behavior in either one direction or   another through montage so the first thing i hope  that you pick up on is this idea of expression   which we talked about in our previous weeks  with balash and epstein we have an almost   contradictory opposite theory of expression  that has to do not with what can magically   occur when you translate an ordinary person's  face into the space of a cinematic screen but   that it comes from the juxtaposition of shots this  is incredibly important to kind of think about   the tension between these different film theories  writing in the 1920s but what's equally important   is to think about the emergence of this kind of a  plus b equals c uh emphasis on signification right   so famously the way cooler shop effect is often  understood is you get a juxtaposition of singular   singularly signifying images a face plus soup  equals a new thing that is hunger or a face plus   a dead child equals a new thing that is sadness  meaning is created at a juxtaposition rather than   being contained within an individual shot there's  almost a way in which kuleshov wants to relate   this to the way individual words constructed in  a string of signification in a sentence can yield   new and more complex meanings as a kind of  thought experiment with the kuleshov effect   i might ask you to play with at home  just think about the way in which this   works and the way you've seen the kuleshov  effect in different films so i'll take a few   examples from the films we've watched look at this  face right here ask yourself how does it signify   and then ask yourself if that signification  changes when it's embedded within this context a so the question i might pose to you is is  your analysis of the facial signification   or the emotion being expressed in the image does  it change when you get a verbal kulashov effect   that is the voice over telling you what she's  experiencing does that change the way you read   her facial expression and the third thing i  might ask you to think about is to re-examine   our probably most kuleshavi in film in the sense  of kuleshov effect which was a rival a film that   plays on the ability for context to change the way  in which we read the emotional expressions of a   thinks about it he says in a different essay  that i'm going to talk about a little bit in   this presentation he'll say now why should the  cinema follow the forms of theater and painting   rather than the methodology of language  which allows wholly new concepts or ideas   to arise from the combination of two concrete  denotations of two concrete objects this this   should remind you of this important bit from the  essay that we read the cinematographic principle   he writes for example the picture for water  and the picture of an eye signifies to weep   the picture of an ear nearing the drawing of a  dog means to listen a dog plus a mouth is to bark   a mouth plus a child is to scream and so on and  then he reminds us of the point of this metaphor   that this is montage once again to think about  this as the yielding of a conceptual meaning   from two importantly concrete denotations it's  important to remember that film is a medium   that restricts itself to the representation of  concrete things a camera can only film that which   is concrete eisenstein is excited about this idea  of taking two concrete things juxtaposing them and   creating a new conceptual thing so he'll say this  exact thing later in the essay he says the point   is that the copulation of two hieroglyphs of the  simplest series perhaps we should say combination   is to be regarded not as their sum but as their  product that is as a value of another dimension   another degree each separately corresponds to an  object to a fact but their combination corresponds   to a concept the idea that just as in certain  forms of language you can create conceptual ideas   by yoking together two concrete nouns or things  in the world perhaps eisenstein says cinema can   do the same thing especially given that cinema  has that as its disposal the representation or   the filming of any concrete object or surface in  the world so we might say that eisenstein is blown   away by what language can do now if we remember  from our previous weeks this very much goes   against our thinkers uh epstein and bellage for  whom cyber cinema liberates us from language and   gets us beyond its constraints this is not a quote  from either of them this is just me quoting them   as if they were to kind of summarize their ideas  my question for you as a way of thinking through   this tension is how is it that this this thing  called language can be so differently treated   by two kinds of film theorists that equally  celebrate the uniqueness of film as a medium for   say changing our relationship to reality in other  words how do balosh and epstein conceive language   and how does eisenstein and kulashov conceive  language that's a question for you to think about