The Battleship Potemkin and Movie Clip Question (1925)

The Battleship Potemkin (1925)

The Battleship Potemkin is a film that was directed by Sergei Eisentein. It is a dramatic version showing the rebellion of the Russian battleship Potemkin against their officers during the Tsarist régime. The drive to write this film was not only to show the revolution of the two but also to test the author’s montage theory. Although the other filmmakers were attempting to see how film editing affected the viewers, he also wanted to edit the film, in a way that will evoke most emotional response. The two independent shots, which could evoke emotions, were the sympathy for the rebellious sailors and the hatred of the Overlords (Bordwell, 1993).

Eisenstein mastery techniques of editing that were metric, rhythmic, tonal and over tonal were termed as the Method of Montage. To him, editing was more audience-oriented than just passive conveyance of length and motionless information. Through that, the viewers could get the symbolic realization of intellectual montage and be driven into a frenzy mood. This idea of editing offers discontinuity in the qualities of graphics. It also violates the 180-degree rule and relation of spatial matches, which are impossible (Bordwell, 1993).

In The Battleship Potemkin, Eisentein’s solution was to do away with narrative structure of filming. Although there is conflict between the choices of the editing style, both the continuity and discontinuity play part in the whole editing. The continuity editing smoothens the discontinuity brought by editing and creates a logical coherence between the two independent shots. On the other hand, discontinuity editing plugs the audience to many paces within the editing time. This form of editing changes the size of shot, size and even the direction (Bordwell, 1993).

The Movie Clip Question: Strike (1925)

In Russia, the workers are restless as they plan the strike. The cruel overlords bring spies to monitor these workers. False accusation of the worker causes him to hang himself. At first, the workers are excited as they pass their grievances as a group but stress mounts up when the police turns down their appeal and strikes continue. There is the cruelty brought up by the overlords towards the workers. That tension between the workers and the officers bring two independent shots evoking different emotion to the audience.

Montage theory is an approach to understand and create cinemas relating to editing more than filming. Although many filmmakers did not view montage method as good, Seigei Eisenstein noted that it was like the centre of cinema and to determine how montage was, first one had to deal with the problem of the cinema. He views montage as an idea that comes from conflict of two independent shots i.e. innocence shot and a violent one. Eisenstein in his seminal essay, A Dialectic Approach to Film Form, wanted to show the conflict that arose between the rebellious workers and the overlords. This is what he called intellectual montage. In this, he distinguished different types of dialectical conflict (Eisenstein, 1949).

Eisenstein describes the montage varieties as building upon one another in that the top parts also include the approaches of the simpler varieties. According to him, the lower types of montage lack complexity as it pertains to meaning. As the montage moves to complexity, it communicates the meaning clearly. According to Eisenstein, montage in particular intellectual montage is another choice of continuity editing. To him montage is portrayed as conflict. Continuity editing is an editing style mostly used in narrative cinemas. This form of editing smoothens over the discontinuity of the editing. It also ensures that there is togetherness between the two independent shots (Eisenstein, 1949).

Most films emphasize on transition between time and space to achieve the coherence. For continuity, the montage technique does symbolic association of the shots. On the other hand, discontinuous editing is violation of rules of editing according to the continuous editing. It violets by changing size of images, changing tone between the shots. It may also change direction before even the viewer gets to know what is happening. Continuity editing brings a smooth edit from one shot to another. It changes to follow the character’s movement and helps the viewers in being attentive to actions while in discontinuity editing, the audience is plugged into many places (Bordwell, 1993).

References

Bordwell, D. (1993). The Cinema of Eisenstein. Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press.

Eisenstein, S. (1949).Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace.