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| Sergei Eisenstein editing his film. |
For this month in Hong Kong ,
a classic Russian silent film has been released in the cinema. Curiously, the
name of the film was called ‘October’, and was directed by Sergei M.
Eisenstein.
Well, it is not just a funny coincidence. ‘October’ referred
to the October Revolution that took place in 1917, and the film was a
dramatization which was approved by the Soviet government. Eisenstein was
famous in the history of cinema, because he was one of the pioneers of the
Soviet montage. The definition of montage, is ‘a technique in film editing in
which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space,
time and information’. With films like ‘Strike’, ‘Battleship Potemkin’, and
‘October’, Eisenstein demonstrated in full power and potential of the montage
style.
The influence of Eisenstein in modern cinema can be seen
from the inspirations he has provided for some of the greatest directors in
cinema, including Kurosawa, Welles, Kubrick, Peckinpah, Penn and many
more. Numerous films have paid homage to the memorable Odessa sequence from Battleship Potemkin.
Yet, Eisenstein was also controversial because of his apparent political
motives and the over formalist approaches to cinema. For the first criticism,
his films have been labelled by detractors as Marxist propaganda. While I do
not feel that he had the intention of making propaganda for self-interest or
other motives, the detractors’ criticisms are understandable because cultural
artifices and production are easily subject to distortions or misreading,
especially by those who are deliberate or have underlying motivations to do
that. The second criticism is more fascinating, because it is more an artistic
criticism rather than a pragmatic or social one. Eisenstein’s style was very
formalized and he made his films through carefully planning and staging of his
images. Therefore his style has been criticized as artificial or even
monotonous by those who preferred a more spontaneous style. Yet for cinematic
montage, if executed neatly, has an intense visual and sensual impact and can
leave very long lasting impression on the audience. Eisenstein’s mastery of the
montage technique made these films to be some of the most iconic films from the
silent era. Thus, it is not necessarily an issue to have a formalist style, it
is merely a preference.
It is important to note that Eisenstein was not the one who
invented the style of montage editing, nor the only one who has employed this
particular style of editing. At the earlier days of cinema, filmmakers around the
world have already provided innovations in many styles of editing in films. The
French philosopher Deleuze, with his epic investigation in the art of cinema,
has identified at least 4 different types of montage editing around the world
in the early 20th century – American, French Impressionist, German
Expressionist, and of course the Soviet montage. Deleuze has gone as far to point out that
even the Soviet montage was not a coherent style, as Eisenstein’s view on
montage was quite different from that of Pudovkin and Vertov, though all these
filmmakers were first influenced by Kuleshov. The focus is my discussion here
will concentrate on Eisenstein’s style.
Deleuze compared in particular the style of America
montage, represented by the films from D. W. Griffith, and that of the Soviet
montage, represented by Eisenstein’s films. For the American montage, Deleuze describe the style, in particular Griffith 's style, as
organic. The result of all the separate shots, when combined together,
represented a totality, reminiscent of an organic unity. Even if Griffith often
portrayed the two sides in a given issues, good and evil, rich and poor,
powerful and powerless, his motivation was merely to present the whole
picture of the issue, to employ an innovative approach to bring all the
components to a totality, and construct the filmic reality. Einstein, by
contrast, was approaching montage through what Deleuze coined as dialectic.
While I do not feel that we should always approach film art through a political
point of view, one should not undermine the fact that one of Eisenstein's
artistic motivations was a Marxist one, so even though Eisenstein wanted to
explore cinema in an artistic and innovative manner, he definitely intended his
films to serve a political or idealistic purpose. While Eisenstein praised Griffith for the innovation in the montage style in films
like The Birth of Nation, he criticized Griffith
for having a bourgeois attitude in these films, therefore he saw a difference
between the two styles of montage.
While Eisenstein’s montage style could also be seen as
organic, the style was also generative, and that was the reason why Deleuze
celebrated this style of montage style, because his own philosophical outlook
was also an active and generative one. For Eisenstein, the spirit behind Soviet
montage was its dialectical nature. Dialectic is about the confrontation – or
collision as Eisenstein would have put it – of two oppressing forces. Eisenstein
has written succinctly in his articles regarding film theories, ‘montage is
conflict’. The rapid juxtaposition of images will effectively generative an
impulse and conflicting impression on the audience, and thus they have to
actively engage with the filmic images and generate meaning from these, leading
to ‘a revolutionary explosion’ as stated by Eisenstein. In some cases, the
montage can be creative and also bear a symbolic significance, as in ‘October’,
the juxtaposition of various religious figures with the revolutionary leaders
and politician serves as a nice example. Eisenstein did this because he wanted
to set up these intellectual montages, so that the audience could engage with
the apparently unrelated images intellectually, and discover universal traits
among these disconnected images.
Eisenstein’s montage theory, like the other Soviet
theorists, was also based on a sound philosophical foundation. The collision of
two forces to generate a new state is reminiscent of the
‘thesis-antithesis-synthesis’ triad, from the Hegelian philosophy of the 19th
century. One should not be surprised, because Marx’s theory was inspired by
Hegel’s theory, only turning from an idealist to a materialist point of view.
Not only Eisenstein wanted to explore the potential with film form, he made his
films because he wanted his target audience to be aware of the unfairness that
took place in the real world, and hopefully figured out a way for change.
No matter how his films might be distorted or misread as propaganda
or political tools, Eisenstein’s artistic contributions to cinema was beyond
any doubt.
by Ed Law
28/10/2017
Film Analysis
