BEYOND THE SHOT [THE CINEMATOGRAPHIC PRINCIPLE & THE IDEOGRAM]

Sergei Eisenstein From Film Form

Cinema is: so many firms so much working capital such & such a ‘star’ so many dramas First and foremost, montage

Japanese cinema is well provided with firms, actors & plots Ts’ang Chieh in 2650 BC, the first ‘contingent’ of

hieroglyphs Copulation- the combination of 2 hieroglyphs regarded as

their product Combination corresponds to a concept This is montage!

Do in cinema, juxtaposing representational shots The starting-point for ‘intellectual cinema’ Japan possesses the most laconic forms of poetry,

the hai-kai & the tanka Figurative effect The hai-kai is a concentrated Impressionist sketch We see these as montage phrases, montage lists Finished representation of another order, the

psychological In emotional terms Born from a cross between the figurative mode &

the denotative purpose

Sharaku was the creator of the finest prints of the 18th century

Same Daumier whom Balzac (the Bonaparte of literature) in turn caled the ‘Michelangelo of caricature’

We reassemble the disintegrated phenomena into a single whole but from our own perspective

This dual divergence in yet a fourth sphere – theatre The theatre is in its cradle – present in parallel

form, in a curious dualism The denotation of the action is carried out by the so-

called Joruri, a silent puppet on the satge

This antiquated practice passes into the early Kabuki theatre, preserved to this day, as a partial method, in the classical repertoire

The shot, a tiny rectangle with some fragment of an event organized within it

Glued together, these shots form montage The shot is an element of montage Montage is the assembling of these elements The shot is a montage cell

Conflict between 2 neighbouring fragments: Conflict, Collision

A graduate of the Kuleshov school defends the concepts of montage as a series of fragments in a chain, ‘Bricks’ – expound an idea serially

Opposed him with the view of montage as a collision, the view that the collision of 2 factors gives rise to an idea

Montage is conflict, lies at the basis of every art Conflict within the shot, can take many forms Close-ups & long shots The reduction of all the properties

THE DRAMATURGY OF FILM FORM [THE DIALECTICAL APPROACH TO FILM FORM

Sergei Eisenstein From Film Form

Dialectical materialism - PHILOSOPHY In form – produces ART Synthesis that evolves from the opposition between

thesis & antithesis FOR ART IS ALWAYS CONFLICT

Its social mission Its nature Its methodology

The hypertrophy of purposeful initiative – of the principle of rational logic – leaves art frozen in mathematical technicism

The interaction between the 2 produces and determines the dynamic

The basis of distance determines the intensity of the tension

The spatial form of this dynamic is the expression of the phases in its tension – rhythm

‘Architecture is frozen music’ Together with the conflict of social conditionality

& the conflict of reality, principle of conflict serves as the foundation stone for the methodology of art

Because of its methodology: shot & montage are the basic elements of film

MONTAGE

Lev Kuleshov, adding individual shots to one another like building blocks

Movement within these shots & the resulting length of the pieces regarded as rhythm

Mesendick system VS. Bode school Not next to the one it follows, but on top of it

Ex. The phenomenon of spatial depth as the optical superimposition of two planes in stereoscopy arises

MONTAGE Material ideogram set against material ideogram produces

transcendental result (concept) The degree of incongruity determines the intensity of

impression, determines the tension, become authentic rhythm I. linear: Fernand Léger, Suprematism II. ‘anecdotal’ III. Primitive Italian Futurism lies somewhere between I & II IV. It can be of ideographic kind. Characterisation of a Sharaku (18-century Japan) The resolution of the representation Finally, colour Move from the realm of the spatial-pictorial to the realm of the

temporal-pictorial

VISUAL COUNTERPOINT

The relationship between the three: conflict within a thesis (an abstract idea) Is formulated in the dialectic of the title Is formed spatially in the conflict within the shot Explodes with the growing intensity of the conflict

montage between the shots

Conflict between matter & shot (achieved by spatial distortion using camera angle)

“Meaning from their juxtaposition” Conflict between matter & its spatiality (achieved by

optical distortion using the lens) Conflict between an event & its temporality (achieved

by slowing down & speeding up Conflict between the entire optical complex & a quite

different sphere The conflict between optical & acoustic experience

produces: SOUND FILM which is realizable as AUDIO-VISUAL COUNTERPOINT

VISUAL COUNTERPOINT

FILM SYNTAX

I. Each moving piece of montage in its own right II. Artificially produced representation of movement A. Logical: example 2. Potemkin (1925), Sensation of a shot hitting the eye B. Alogical: example 3. Potemkin Marble lions – one sleeping, one waking, one rising The examples have shown primitive-psychological cases –

using only the optical superimposition of movement

III. The chains of psychological association. Associational montage (1923-4). As a means of sharpening (heightening) a situation emotionally

By analogy this dynamization of the material produces, not in the spatial but in the psychological, i.e. the emotional field

FILM SYNTAX

EMOTIONAL DYNAMISATION

Unleashes a process that, in terms of its form, is identical to a process of logical deduction

The conventional descriptive form of the film becomes a kind of reasoning

Develops the emotions Directing the entire thought process This form that is best suited to express ideologically

critical theses SYNTHESIS OF ART AND SCIENCE Lenin’s statement ‘of all the arts… cinema is the most

important.’