Among the technicalist traditions of early Western cinema, Méliès was the first to invent “stop and shoot”, which allowed more possibilities for the development of cinematography; Kurishof revealed that the meaning of cinema is not created by mere shots, but through “juxtaposition”. Pudovkin told us that films are not made by shooting, but by editing, and the theory of montage was gradually born; and Eisenstein, through his “Bronenosets Potemkin”, wanted to tell the world what kind of theory about films?
The film depicts a mutiny that took place on the Battleship Potemkin in 1905. The ship was the pride of the Imperial Russian Navy, but for months the food was so bad that the meat was full of maggots, yet the sailors continued to eat it. The warship sailed to the Odessa Steps to receive food supplies from the people, but the infantry arrived to suppress it, and the massacre on the Odessa Steps occurred. Because the technical theory of this film is stronger than the narrative of the plot, this film still has a strong theoretical guidance. In terms of film language, Bronenosets Potemkin has a unique inventiveness, and the montage grouping of the film fully demonstrates the great artistic function of film shot grouping. Montage is undoubtedly one of the most important linguistic means of film art, which deals with the combination relationship between shot and shot, picture and picture, picture and sound, sound and sound, etc. Through various groupings, it creates echoes, suspense, contrast, suggestion, association and other artistic effects, and produces unique film time and film space, which is the basic structural means and narrative method of film art.
The most important segment of the film is in the Odessa Ladder segment. Although the entire segment is only 7 minutes long, the number of shots is as many as 155, with an average of 22 shots per minute, and the frequency of switching between shots is so fast that, together with the change of scenery and camera position, it expands infinite time in a short period of time, which can be roughly divided into four paragraphs.
(1) running away: suddenly, the cheerful and peaceful form of the music along with a sharp reversal, the tsarist army began to massacre the masses, the masses began to flee in all directions; (2) mother and son: a mother carrying her dying son up the Odessa steps, and the tsarist army holding steel guns down the steps to form a strong contrast and conflict, upward and downward movement of the contrast grouping, so that the two sets of shots to produce new meaning The contrast of the upward and downward movements of the two sets of shots gives a new meaning to the scene, reflecting the innocent masses struggling to live and die, and the brutal Tsarist despotism oppressing the masses with impunity.
(3) baby carriage: a baby carriage in the riot along the steps of the slide, the moment of the slide process is infinitely elongated, a bit always can not slide the tragic color of the camera, and in the process, the baby’s cries, the wheels of the slide, the surrounding onlookers’ horrified expressions, the rapid alternation of these close-up shots, unusually gripping the heart, new life and the turbulence of the times intertwined, can always be sublimated to more emotional (4) the awakening and roar of the lion: this is a classic clip in the history of cinema, the fleet in the distance is firing a counterattack, when the camera cut three shots of stone lions, which became a historical moment in the history of cinema, the stone lions are static, but three different forms of stone lions connected together, giving birth to a very important term in the history of cinema –Metaphorical montage, which makes the sleeping, awakening and roaring stone lions become the embodiment of resistance, implicitly and vividly expressing the accusation and satire against the inhumane Tsarist government, and the stone lions are also the symbol of the people’s revolutionary resistance.
This fragment echoes Eisenstein’s saying that when two shots are grouped together, what is expressed is not the sum of two images, but the product of them. The Odessa Steps sequence also illustrates that the analogy between the shot and the scene in pairs can implicitly and figuratively express a certain moral of the creator or a certain emotional color of the event. This shows that the theory of post-editing techniques of montage has been enriched and developed, which is undoubtedly one of the very important studies for the maturation of cinema.
Montage is a film art technique that selects and chooses the material through the cutting and grouping of the shots, in order to distinguish the main and secondary contents of the performance and to achieve a high degree of general concentration.
Narrative montage was first created by the American film masters Griffith and others, is the most commonly used in film and television a narrative method, its characteristics are to explain the plot, show the events as the main theme, according to the development of the plot of the time flow, cause and effect to cut the combination of shots, scenes and paragraphs, so as to guide the audience to understand the plot. This kind of montage grouping is clear, logical and easy to understand.
Rational montage, as defined by Jean Mitri, is a montage that expresses the meaning through the relationship between images, rather than through a coherent narrative that simply follows one bad ring after another. The difference between rational montage and coherent narrative is that even though its images belong to facts actually experienced, the facts put together according to this montage are always subjective visual images.
Expressive montage, expressive montage is based on shot pairing, through connected shots in form or content contrast and impact with each other, so as to produce a rich meaning that a single shot itself does not have, in order to express a certain mood or idea. Its purpose is to stimulate the audience’s association and enlighten the audience’s thinking.
Montage can highlight parts and details of life that have both narrative information and visual meaning, and also attract the audience’s attention, creating a sensory experience of “a thousand Hamlets in a thousand eyes”, creating a unique rhythm, fusing various visual and auditory elements of film and television into a moving, continuous The combination of sound and image of various relationships on the screen also makes film an art of omission and streamlining, and the basic spirit of montage shot assembly itself lies here.
Therefore, Eisenstein’s legacy to filmmakers is that the transition of shots should not be smooth, but rather abrupt, shocking, or even violent, and does not have to be bound to the scene and time and space, as long as it is not detached from the theme. Bronenosets Potemkin” is just a pioneer of montage theory, Eisenstein is a bold and thoughtful film “industrialist”.