Eisenstein and Montage: Battleship Potemkin

In the form of this essay, I wish to undertake a study of the artistic language of both Soviet film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein and American hip hop group Public Enemy, as well as conducting a comparative of the two in order to uncover both similarities and divergences. I also wish to situate historically the works I have chosen and as such formulate a view of the works that takes into account both the formal qualities present within the works and the historical circumstances which are in no way incidental to their creation and existence. I will situate the main thrust of my argument within the examination of the relationship between technology and the work within each, and how they both use technological and historical means to mount a critique of social institutions and systems of power. I want to look at the ways both artists employ juxtaposition and collage techniques in their respective mediums in order to reveal contradictory and contrasting currents and tensions within the work, and how the two techniques differ in their approaches and historical precedents. We can first begin by examining Eisenstein's 1925 silent film " The Battleship Potemkin " , a dramatization of the historical events of the 1905 mutiny of the crew of the real life Battleship Potemkin against their commanding officers, commissioned to celebrate the 20 th anniversary of the 1905 Russian Revolution. The film is thus a recreation with a great deal of artistic license exercised with regards to the actual events. However, my focus will not be primarily on the raw subject matter of the film, but instead on the formal techniques utilised by Eisenstein to execute his directorial vision. The key scene I will be examining is the " Odessa steps " sequence, a scene which has become iconic in cinema and acknowledged as a key example of Eisenstein's " montage " technique. Eisenstein demonstrates the theoretical underpinnings of montage in his 1949 essay " A Dialectic Approach to Film Form " , in which he explains this technique by way of Marxist dialectics. At the start of the essay, Eisenstein lays out the foundational logic of this approach by proposing two key concepts for a " dialectical " approach: " Being – as a constant evolution from the interaction of two contradictory opposites. Synthesis – arising from the opposition between thesis and antithesis. " He seeks to translate this framework from its origins in philosophy into a useable theory to enable the creation of art in the services of critique. As such, Eisenstein's aesthetic theory of montage seeks to use juxtaposed imagery to highlight a homologous relationship between the visual tension and the underlying conflicts on the material and historical plane that they represent, drawing our attention not to the images in themselves, but instead the relationship of interplay between them. In the " Odessa steps " sequence, in which Cossacks advance up a staircase and take fire at a group of unarmed citizens, we are greeted by images on the one hand of the encroaching Cossacks, marching militantly up the staircase, and on the other of the disarrayed and bloody scene of the violence enacted against the citizens. The shots are intercut to give a rhythmic flow to the scene, and create a dynamic contrast between the imagery. The march of the soldiers is presented with mechanical, cold precision, a rhythmic, forward movement towards their target. The shots of the civilians, however, are that of confusion, a scattered mess of human bodies and unrestrained anguish. The strong, unemotional and orderly military forces are contrasted against the deeply humanised image of

A contextual analysis on Eisenstein's Montage Theory by looking his "October: Ten Days" (1928) and "Battleship Potemkin"(1925).

An Introduction and Analysis of Soviet Montage, 2021

Perhaps the most essential characteristic of the motion picture is montage, which comes from the French word monter which means, “to assemble.” Encyclopedia Britannica defines Montage, in motion pictures, as the editing technique of assembling separate pieces of thematically related film and putting them together into a sequence. With montage, portions of motion pictures can be carefully built up piece by piece by the director, film editor, and visual and sound technicians, who cut and fit each part with the others.

1984

The purpose and problem of this thesis is to formulate a theory on screenplay aesthetics with Eisenstein's montage as the mother theory providing the aesthetic nourishment for the proposed concept of imaging. The theory of screenplay imaging proposes that the screenplay is a montage of sub-narratives occurring in the sensual, emotional, and intellectual dimensions and expressing the grand narrative theme. It further suggests that the interaction between the screenplay and the reader-interpreter should yield a prolificity of interpretation with a unified meaning. The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter I, Introduction, lays the background for subsequent arguments. Chapter II, The Principles of Montage, discusses Eisenstein's theory. Chapter III, The Theory of Imaging, explains imaging and develops Gonzalez's Model of Imaging. Chapter IV, The Principles of Sensual, Emotional, and Intellectual Imaging, explains the three dimensions with examples. Chapter V, Conclusion...

Eisenstin's Montage Theory, Oktober, Batteship Potemkin, Contextual Analysis, The Soviet Ideology

In Rethinking Prokofiev. Edited by Rita McAllister and Christina Guillaumier. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020

The Wagner Journal, 2018

Film as Philosophy, 2017

This chapter explores philosophical aspects in Eisenstein's theorising. Part of the collection "Film as Philosophy"; Book Editor(s): Bernd Herzogenrath Published by: University of Minnesota Press. (2017)

2020

-Montage and Image as Paradigm -Thought as montage and image has become a revealing method in the practical and theoretical study processes of artists and researchers of the 20th and 21st centuries. This article aims to articulate three ways of thinking through montage in the works of Bertolt Brecht, Sergei Eisenstein e Georges Didi-Huberman. The philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman re-inaugurates the debate and exercise of thinking the anthropology of image and montage as a metalanguage and a form of knowledge.