CASE STUDIES

FILM MONTAGE

Film montage:

Sergei Eisenstein (a pioneering film director), "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form", 1929; “Film Form: Essays in Film Theory” by Sergei Eisenstein, ed. and translated by Jay Leyda, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc © 1949, New York.
Eisenstein's view is that "montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots", wherein "each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other"; - an illustration of the idea of thesis and antithesis. His collisions of shots were based on conflicts of scale, volume, rhythm, motion, speed, as well as direction of movement within the frame. Eisenstein argues that montage, especially intellectual montage, is an alternative system to the conventional composition. "Montage is conflict", where new ideas emerge from the collision of the montage parts (synthesis) and where the new emerging ideas are not innate in any of the parts but constitute an independent meta plane. A new concept explodes into being. Being—as a constant evolution from the interaction of two contradictory opposites. In the realm of art this dialectic principle of dynamics is embodied in CONFLICT as the fundamental principle for the existence of every artwork and every art-form.

Other pioneering montage film makers are Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov, and Vsevolod Pudovkin.