Task 5: Understanding Montage Theory

The term Monatage has a slighly different meaning when referred to in the following three contexts:

- Hollywood Cinema
- French Film
- Early Soviet film making

Hollywood Cinema

In Hollywood cinema film makers use Montage to compress time. It is usually used to show something that takes time compressed into a few minutes. A good example of this is the training Montage in Rocky IV. 

https://youtu.be/Q-8hOKNbtxg

This is a good example of a Hollywood Montage because it shows what most likely took weeks of training and hard work compressed into just 7 minutes. It makes the film more realistic by showing that the training sequence took a very long time and showing the hard work that was put into place.

French Film

In French film; the term "Montage" has its literal french meaning - Assembly. Therefore, in French film the term simply identifies the process of editing.

Soviet Cinema

In early soviet film making (1920's), "Montage" had a different meaning. Film makers started Juxtaposing shots to create a new meaning that did not exist in either shot alone. 

One key film maker was 'Lev Kuleshev' and in 1920 he done an experiment. He took an old film clip of a head shot of a noted Russian actor and inter-cut the shot with different images. By doing this he created a new meaning that did not exist in either shot before.  His experiment is shown below. 

The same headshot is being juxtaposed with different images, although the same headshot is used' when with other images it creates a whole new meaning. 

One example of a Soviet Monatge is the scene from Modern Times shown below. 

https://youtu.be/ksoq50iYzc8

By putting the footage of the people coming out of the subway after the footage of the sheep walking, it portrays that the people are sheep and all following one another. This is a good use of a soviet montage.

Another example of a Soviet montage is the final scene from 'Strike' by 'Sergei Eisenstein.'

https://youtu.be/NhfFYXvRvqI

The final scene shows footage of the workers on strike cross-cut with the slaughter of a cattle. By putting these two scenes together it suggests that the Russian troops were mistreating the striking workers. As the cattle is beign slaughtered, the Russian troops were chasing the Strikers with guns, then at the point the cattle dies, it shows the workers laying lifeless on the floor.