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Soviet Montage

Soviet Montage . 1924-1930. Soviet Cinema in the 1920s. Vibrant film culture following the Russian Revolution Lenin: cinema would be the most important of the arts in the effort to reunite his nation power to attract and instruct/indoctrinate Influential developments in film theory:

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Soviet Montage

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  1. Soviet Montage 1924-1930

  2. Soviet Cinema in the 1920s • Vibrant film culture following the Russian Revolution • Lenin: cinema would be the most important of the arts in the effort to reunite his nation • power to attract and instruct/indoctrinate • Influential developments in film theory: • Character and Society • Education/Propaganda • The Kuleshov Effect • Montage Editing

  3. Soviet Film Theory: Character and Society • Downplay individual characters • characters are shown as members of society and of different social classes

  4. Soviet Film Theory: Education/Propaganda • Nationalized film industry, established a national film school • All-Russian State University of Cinematography (VGIK) • under the People's Commissariat for Education (Narkompros) • Political leaders saw film as the key to involving audiences in political and intellectual revolution • Limited to one basic storyline: triumph of the people over bourgeois oppression “Art is not a mirror which reflects the historical struggle, but a weapon of that struggle” --DzigaVertov (contemporary of Eisenstein)

  5. Soviet Film Theory: The KuleshovEffect • Lev Kuleshov teacher at VGIK • Central belief: the viewer’s response in cinema depends less on the individual shot and more on the editing or montage • Famous experiment with shot juxtapositions: • First shot: c/u of actor with neutral expression, then joined this shot to: • c/u of a bowl of soup • c/u of a coffin with a corpse • c/u of a little girl playing

  6. …The Kuleshov Effect • Test audiences praised the actor’s versatility in showing hunger, sorrow, and pride, even though the shot of the actor remained exactly the same each time • Hitchcock • Definition: One of the basic theoretical principles of editing is that the meaning produced by joining two shots together transcends the visual information contained in each individual shot (A+B=C)

  7. Soviet Film Theory: The Montage • Believed in the power of montage to fragment and reassemble footage to manipulate the viewer’s perception and understanding • Audiences could derive an emotional meaning from the juxtaposition of two completely unrelated shots

  8. …The Montage • Meaning created by juxtaposition of shots, not the content of individual images • Sound and visual could be treated independently or used together • shots in film and phrases of music could be timed together to increase the impact of a key shot • rhythm of music can accent the rhythm of editing/the montage (ex)

  9. Sergei Eisenstein • Strike (1924) • Battleship Potemkin (1925) • October (1927) • The General Line (1928) • equal to Griffith as a pioneering genius • financed by the soviet government

  10. Sergei Eisenstein • regarded film editing as a creative and artistic process: • one shot (thesis) collides with another shot of opposing content (antithesis) to produce a new idea (synthesis) • forces the viewer to reach conclusions about the interplay between shots

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