Eisenstein

Andrew p. 42-75: “Eisenstein”

Andrew does a great job making sense of Eisenstein’s broad array of ideas. His idea of the film as both a machine and an organism is a solid one and one that considers both the filmmaker’s side and the consumer’s side. However, there are some holes in this idea. Eisenstein theorizes that the audience creates associations out of the montage of the filmmaker. If this is true, then the filmmaker is not in complete control of what the audience is coming out of the film with. Eisenstein also wants the film to give the audience some sort of them or idea. This seems to be an incongruity in his theory.

DISCUSSION: How can the filmmaker assure that the audience will make the necessary associations and relations of the film to come away from the film with the intended theme?

The filmmaker must control the associations that the audience will make using montage. Relating the scenes and sequences in a way to project the intended theme seems like a form of rhetoric, doesn’t it?

The filmmaker presents a collision of elements and the spectator naturally re-creates the story by resolving the conflict. There is tension in everything about the film according to Eisenstein.

The film uses individual attractions to create collisions and relationships that have a meaning. This meaning contains the theme and idea of film. Therefore, at its core, film must have an idea. This idea is created by the filmmaker. But again, if the story is created by the spectator resolving tensions naturally, then how much is the final idea dependent upon the filmmaker and how much is it dependent on the spectator?

FTC p. 7-12: “On Editing”

This article goes through methods of editing employed by Pudovkin and other Soviet montage theorists. It is fairly straightforward in the way it goes through editing a scene, then a sequence, then a scenario. It builds on the previous reading and generally provides an outline for the style and the types of editing in this theory. The relationships of editing is interesting but still something that is common in our times, though not always done well. Because it is fairly straightforward and short, there aren’t a lot of questions, but one interesting thing to think about for discussion is: is there anything that can’t be related through the editing techniques described? Or is it open season for a filmmaker to do what he wants? And does the editing take into account the spectator being able to connect the ideas and comprehend the filmmaker’s intention?

FTC p. 13-39: “From Film Form”

Wow. How dense and all over the place! Eisenstein hurts my head, I’ll be honest. But I’ll make an effort to make sense of it, even though his tangential and partially relevant knowledge of other fields drives me nuts.

I do enjoy the analogy of haiku. Each individual line is a shot. Then the whole relates the attractions. His enthusiasm for the material is great, especially when he considers the techniques and institutions of cinema like the screen, camera angle, placement, and especially editing. He uses these techniques to create conflict between things. Fully taking advantage of the medium is huge for Eisenstein as long as conflict is created. He loves collision and tension.

The discussion of social mission is intriguing to me however. He claims there is a social mission in art because of conflict. He says it is important to “reveal the contradictions of being, to forge the correct intellectual concept, to form the right view by sitting up contradictions in the observer’s mind and through the dynamic clash of opposing passions.” The glaring statement here is that art has a right view? And a correct intellectual concept? I cannot separate this from the Bolshevik times Eisenstein lived in and think:

Discussion: How large of an effect did the proletariat and other contemporary ideas of the revolution have on Eisenstein’s ideas? In his writing and filmmaking, how much of it is rhetoric?

I also enjoy hearing about his psychological analogy of conflict. Things are created internally in the mind and then expressed in the spatial realm. A film is built with elements and then exploded by the collision of conflicts in the film.

Stam p. 37-54: “The Soviet Montage Theorists”

This reading baffled me. It was super disjointed, and drew on many artistic elements outside the realm of film to exemplify filmic usages and concepts. However, I constantly thought just how translatable these examples are when speaking in hieroglyphs and of the kabuki theater and poetry. I understand that to Eisenstein and the other Soviet theorists, that the film is created out of individual attractions formed in montage that creates sequences.

By constructing something out of these attractions, they believe you can provoke ideas, thoughts, and questions. The ideas clash to create in the mind of the spectator some sort of product. It meshes idea and emotion and puts in the spectator a total idea or theme. From here it is easy to consider Eisenstein as a genius of rhetoric and advertising, because a whole is created with a specific idea. Especially when you consider that the spectator is creating the idea so the filmmaker must be careful with the collisions he creates and how they will be resolved. However, Eisenstein sees every attraction as an individual piece. The fragments are important on their own.

DISCUSSION: How does the Russian formalist school of thought draw on and relate to other forms of art such as literature and theatre? Are these comparisons effective and accurate? To what extent?