Surrealism and Montage (Soviet)

Key elements of surrealism:
- unconscious mind
Freud
- dreams
- human emotion and desires
- inner worlds of sexulaity

How is sexuality a key part of surrealism?

Surrealism adopts the view that women are made to represent higher values and of objects of desire.

What is a montage (soviet)?

The term 'montage' is loosely used to mean any sequence which combines images in a way that doesn't depict continuous action. 'Soviet montage' was born out of both ideology and necessity. Montage = editing.
Montage: combining shots that are depictive -- single in meaning, neutral in content -- into intellectual contexts and series. - Eisensteins


What is the purpose of a montage?

Montages can be edited to a song also they use montages from several different episodes, or from different periods of a character's life, as a kind of shorthand. 'Rhythmic montage' - where shot durations become flexible and take account of movement within the frame. 'Tonal' montage - where the emotional content of the images are also taken into account. 'Overtone montage' - combines all of these kinds of montage techniques. 'Metric montage' - in which the duration of each shot was worked out according to strict mathematical ratios. 'Vertical montage' - refers to how different aspects of the content of images work in combination with the soundtrack.


What role does sequencing and juxtaposition play in montage?

Sequence of alternating shots create tension that produces emotional response in the audience. A filmmaker creates a rhythm in film through juxtaposition. Like Eisenstein he employed 'intellectual montage': in one sequence he compares commuters on an escalator to sausages being extruded from a machine.


What is intellectual montage?

Cutting according to the shots' relationship to an intellectual concept.


Exploring Surrealism with Peter Capaldi
- begain in 1924, Paris
- 'unconscious mind' - codes
- bring objects not really associated with each other together
- Freud


Eisensteins Methods of Montage
Explaned Russian Montage
- Metric montage is cutting according to exact measurement
- Rhythmic montage is cutting according to content of shots
- Tonal montage is cutting according to emotional "tone" of the shots.
- Overtone montage is cutting according to the main tone and the overtone of the shots.
- Intellectual is cutting according to intellectual concepts and ideas.


Montage Notes
- Sergei Eisenstein, famous for this theories of montage.
- Eisenstein takes this principle of alternating shots even further, bringing it to a sort of orgasmic conclusion.
- Djiga Vertov applied these principles to his films
- He had to stop his work due to the prevailing demands of the "social realism"
Tom Barrance Notes
The Rules of Continuity
- 180 degree rule, which states that the camera has to stay on one side of the main 'axis of action'
- looking space
- eye-line match
- 'editing on the action' so that action seems smooth and continuous
Montage
- Eisenstein was the great theorist of montage in books such as 'Film Form'
- He developed a hierarchy of montage that increases in sophistication.
- Vertov used montage to and depict reality in a transparent way, as an alternative to the illusion of reality created by the continuity system.

The History of Cutting - The Soviet Theory of Montage
 Lev Kuleshov Workshop
Kuleshov Effect
- facial expression (3 shots)
- progession of the characters emotion
The meaning of film was not only in spatial composition but in the arrangement of shots
Creative Geography
D.W. Griffith - developed continuity through practice, film as enhanced threater within real space and time.
Sergei Eisenstein - developed montage through theory, breaking confines of space and time to make film a unique language.
Thesis + Anti-thesis = Synthesis