In the horror genre, Halloween, Psycho, and Jaws are also probably the most recognizable. When one thinks of action film scores, themes to Indian Jones, Mission: Impossible, and Batman probably come to mind. If you've been to film school or are just a cinephile, I can almost guarantee you've heard of Battleship Potemkin. It's a 1925 Soviet silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein that presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against its officers. Sergei Eisenstein montage in Battleship Potemkin The second period in his montage exploration focuses much more on the 'individual.' Here, he focused much more on how montage could tell a personal story. It is encompassed in his films Strike and Battleship Potemkin. The first is classified as 'mass dramas.' These focus on formalizing the Marxist political struggle of the proletariat. He adapted montage to the cinema and expanded his theories throughout his career.Įisenstein's work is divided into two periods. While he didn't invent montage, Eisenstein codified its use in Soviet and international filmmaking and theory.

He wrote a note of accord in 'A Dialectic Approach to Film Form.' In it, he said that montage is 'the nerve of cinema,' and that 'to determine the nature of montage is to solve the specific problem of cinema.' What kind of a tool was it, and how did it build on Kuleshov's ideals?Įnter Sergei Eisenstein. Soviet filmmakers disagreed about how exactly to view montage. He's known as the father of montage theory.Īs we mentioned earlier, everyone in the early 1900s was trying to define what filmmaking could be. He was one of the first people to use montage and is known widely for his seminal silent film, Battleship Potemkin (1925). Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a Soviet director and film theorist who was a pioneer in creating the cinematic language we use today. This version of the montage theory is the principal contribution of Soviet film theorists to global cinema and brought about formalism into filmmaking.Īt the forefront of this movement was Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein. While many filmmakers just shot wide shots of the action, Soviet montage theory cut together shorter shots to build a story. It holds that editing and the juxtaposition of images is the lifeblood of filmmaking. Soviet montage theory is an approach to creating movies that rely heavily upon editing techniques. They can tell a story that would not be understandable from just one of the images, and would only be able to be deciphered when put together with multiple shots that form a whole. What does the montage theory of editing propagate? People wanted to build on that idea.Īs more and more people experimented with the Kuleshov effect, we delved into montage theory. It is a cognitive event in which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation.īut that was just the beginning. Lev Kuleshov pioneered an idea that would be known as the Kuleshov Effect. When filmmakers were first pioneering how to create movies and elicit emotions from the audience, they experimented with lots of different editing styles. Who Is Sergei Eisenstein and What Was Soviet Montage Theory?

So without further ado, let's cut together some answers and explanations. We'll get the definition of Soviet montage theory, montages, we'll learn about Sergei Eisenstein, and we'll see how we can continue the work they started and keep experimenting in the future. Today, we want to look at one of those early movements that changed all of cinema as we know it. Out of this experimentation and search for meaning, cinematic language was created. So much of what we know today was pioneered by people experimenting and doing what they can to create cinema. In the early days of cinema, everything had to be invented.

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