Soviet Montage

This Russian film movement began in 1924/25 and lasted till the early 1930’s. Only a small amount of movies were made, about 30, but they were extremely influential. Eisenstein’s strike (1925) was the most successful movie made by Sergei Eisenstein, the most recognised director of the Soviet Montage.

Soviet History and Film Production

In 1917 Russia suffered two extremely big revolutions, in February, eliminating the Tsar’s government, and in October, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was created. Narkompros, the Minister of culture, controlled the film industry.

Narkompros created, in 1919, the State School of Film. A year later, Lev Kuleshov joined the school and began to explore the importance of editing in a film, developing the main idea of the Montage theory and style. He believed that the viewer’s response to the movie was based in the editing, and not on an individual shot. He saw film as the most important art, and as an effective medium for propaganda and education.

Montage

One main characteristic of Soviet Montage films is the downplaying of individual characters in the center of attention. Single characters are shown as members of different social classes and are representing a general type or class. In Eisenstein's Strike there is only one character named individually in the entire film. Another characteristic is that Soviet Montage filmmakers often chose strikes and other clashes in the history of revolutions e.g. Eisenstein's Potemkin, October and Strike.

The central aspect of Soviet Montage style was the area of editing. Cuts should stimulate the spectator. In opposition to continuity editing Montage cutting often created either overlapping or elliptical temporal relations. Overlapping editing means, that the second shot repeats part or all of the action from the previous shot. Through repetitions of this method the time an action takes on the screen expands. Elliptical cutting creates the opposite effect. A part of an action is left out, so the event takes less time than it would in reality. Elliptical editing was often used in the form of the jump cut. In Strike, Eisenstein cuts from a police officer to a butcher who kills an animal in the form of a jump cut.

The butcher is not part of the story but should make the viewer think about the connection and come to a conclusion such as: the workers were slaughtered like animals. The butcher is here a nondiegetic element. Anything that is part of the film story world is diegetic. A nondiegetic element exists outside the story world. There is no connection between the slaughter of the animal. The use of such nondiegetic shots was central to Eisenstein's theory on "intellectual montage". Intellectual montage creates its effects through conflict such as the juxtaposing of shots that have no direct connection. Soviet Montage filmmakers often shot on location. Strike, in fact, was shot in a real factory. The machine and the factory became symbols of the new society in this time.

Source: http://cinetext.philo.at/reports/sv.html

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Battleship Potemkin

Kuleshov Experiment

Influence of Soviet Montage on Modern Cinema:

A movie that follows the characteristics of a soviet montage film is Psycho (Hitchcock 1960)

Hitchcock uses a lot of non continuos editing, and makes a sequence that as one shot that is not related to the previous shot, he also includes shots that portray what the character is looking. 

Our own version of Soviet Montage

Shot 1: the teacher is starting the lesson.

Shot 2: the responsible student is paying attention to the class.

Shot 3: some students are still walking around the school.

Shot 4: The teacher is sill teaching to the one student who wants to listen.

Shot 5: The student does not really understand the lesson.

Close reading of 'The Birds' (Hitchcock 1963)

1. Note the details of each attack: who is attacked, and why. When is the first attack? What happens? When do the audience first know an attack is coming? How is the moment foreshadowed? 

During the first attack Melanie is in the boat, very near the shore after taking the lovebirds to Mitch’s house, when a seagull appears and attacks her. On the majority of the attacks, there is a very peaceful mood, but a sudden ‘chatering’ of birds breaks the tension being generated, and then the birds attack.

3. Write a one sentence description of the protagonists:

Mitch: a man who is trying to maintain balance between the two worlds in which he lives, his job in San Francisco, and his family in Bodega Bay.

Melanie: Young, wealthy, socialite form San Francisco who uses Mitch as a distraction and a way to have fun, until the birds begin to attack.

Lydia: An over-protective mother who is willing to do everything for her children, because she is afraid to be abandoned again, after her husband died, a couple of days ago.

Annie: Mitch’s ex-girlfriend, who never had a very good relationship with Lydia, but is still very fond of Mitch

4. How does Hitchcock build tension through editing in the school yard scene? 

The brilliant editing in Hitchcock’s movie is constantly changing shots and angles, giving different perspectives, therefore creating tension. In the school yard scene, the audience sees the kids faces, their feet running away from the birds, and their backs, as they run away.

7. Can you work out what triggers the attacks?

Melanie is present in all the attacks, so it is possible to say that her presence triggers the attacks.

What we learned form 'State and Main'

Sketch a spider diagram depicting the influences different people have on the final film.

All of the items have an important role in a film.

Moving from common sense to film language

‘Strangers’ Review

‘Strangers’, the short film written and directed by Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv, is used to communicate the story of two men, the main theme of the film, discrimination, and how, this two men, confronted by their religious differences, turn to be allies in order to escape from a difficult situation.

The filmmakers choose a subway, moving from station to station, as their setting to create a sense of confinement, how the characters are presented with a situation in a limited space and they cannot leave from that restricted space.


The opening scene initiates with a medium shot of an empty subway station, by what the audience is able to listen, the train is approaching, and then passes by. The next take portrays a man, in another station, about to get in a train. As he takes a sit, he glances another man, sitting opposite to him. The second man begins to read a newspaper. An extreme close up to it shows that it is written in Arabic, which means that the man is a Muslim. The directors choose to create a contrast as they do another close up to the David’s star the first man has in his necklace. Incredible tension is built through the use of close ups of the faces of both men, as the first one shows his Jewish necklace.

After another stop a group of robust men, all with the same hair cut, approach the two guys and take sits around them. Great tension is created as one of them paints a swastika cross on the Arabic newspaper.

Tension increases even more as the directors do a close up of each men involved in the situation at a time, repeating the two men in the beginning of the film. To make things worse, as they stop in another station the Jew’s cell phone begins to play a very iconic Jew song; bursting the silence of the train. Both men look at each other, and, as the directors include two close ups of two members of the gang, the audience realizes the two characters will have to work together in order to escape the situation they are living. The doors close, providing once again a sense of imprisonment; the two main characters begin to run, and manage to get out of the train on the next station, leaving the gang inside the train, captive. 

‘Strangers’ is edited so that it can be easily divided into three main parts. The first one, when the two main characters are sat on the train and they cross views, judging each other. The second part, when the gang arrives and starts to intimidate them. And the third part, when they get to escape from the gang, and return each other’s bags. 


Sound in this short film has a very important role. Even though none of the characters say anything, the sound of the doors opening and closing has a very critical effect, as it creates a sensation of incarceration. On the other hand, the silence on the train as it moves from station to station, builds up tension.

The final scene, where they return each other’s bags, and make eye contact, highlights the main theme of the film, how two men who have many differences, can still work together and help each other.


This short film is extremely interesting, given that the directors have a great capacity, that enables them to transmit a story, and a lot of different feelings to an audience without a single word pronounced during the entire film.

In my personal opinion, I would rate ‘Strangers’ with ****.

Notes: Sentences/words in orange are those that I did not change.

Psychosis

In today's lesson we worked on the basics of camera shots.

TASK: work in group of 3 and take the following shots.

Bonus: Hitchcock Level: Create a narrative through the shots.

Establishing shot

Two shot

Over the shoulder, close up 

Low angle, long shot

Extreme close up

High angle, low shot

Low angle

Close up

Medium angle, medium shot

Medium angle, medium shot

Cast

Gabriela Figueiras

Belén López

Photographs

María Figueiras

Acknowledgments

Karina Perone

Cooks

“On S’Embrasse?” Review

This outstanding short film directed by Pierre Olivier

 concisely presents two characters to the audience who live a brief encounter created by fate, portraying in a well-achieved way their reactions.

The film begins with a woman (Alice Carel) entering a coffee shop and reading a paper. The following shot shows a solitaire man (Jean-Luc Abel) 

in an empty table. As the woman approaches the man she asks him if he could help her run lines for a movie she is auditioning for in a short while. As the actress sits down, the director employs consecutive close-ups of both characters as they read.

As the woman starts to recite her lines, there is obvious tension between the characters, but as they continue reading, the tension slowly fades. Olivier is able to depict these as he continues to employ wonderful close-ups of both characters, which get closer in every take. As the two characters read the story two consecutive times, the man suggests the woman to recite her lines in a different way, smiling, as well as the final question, on s’embrasse? (shall we kiss?) As she does so, the audience realises, at the same time than the actress that the man has been dumped recently, and tears begin to descend form her eyes, arriving to the climax of the story.

Thanking the man for his help, and apologising for any inconvenience, the woman abandons the coffee store and, after a close-up of the man, a second woman emerges from the bathroom and, just like in the script he had read before, announces she is leaving and asks if they should kiss (on s’embrasse).

In conclusion, this extraordinary  short film gives a final turn and surprises the audience with the final question, making the audience aware that the story narrated in the first woman’s script is the real situation of the man in the coffee store. However, Olivier decides that the character does not answer the final question, finalising the film with an open ending.

I believe this is a great short film and rate it with ****