The international photographer (Jan-Dec 1934)

November, 1934 The INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPH K K 7 lire, (Reprinted from The Motion Picture Monthly, of Bombay, India, leading motion picture periodical of the Orient. It is by far the most learned article on Montage offered east or west, and we are not sorry to go to Mother India for it. If this editor may be permitted a guess in one word as to the real meaning of Montage, he would say that it is the spirit of a picture plus its rhythm. — Editor's Note.) spenko, one of the professors at Moscow University, has divided Montage into 15 parts. ( 1 ) Change of Place, as in "The Soil is Thirsty," where the scene changes from Amen Derbey's garden to the dry land. (2) Change of camera angle as in the shooting sequence of "Storm Over Asia," wherein Pudovkin shot the action from various angles not for the purpose of pictorial effect but to make sure that the bullet won't miss. (3) Change of the position of Camera as in most pictures, where a change brings out something hidden that affects the story at the spot, e.g., "Mysterious Lady" and "Diary of a Lost Girl" and "Ghost That Never Returns." (4) Stressing of details as in "End of St. Petersburg," where a close-up of a boot gives the whole idea in one shot. (5) Analytical Montage as in "Men and Jobs," when the crane is cut in constantly with the new mechanics and the close-ups of the machine's handles. (6) Past time as in various films when a cut back to some past event signifies a change in action, e.g., "China Express," where the guns and artillery are superimposed on the capitalist's hands. (7) Future Time, the prophetic vision of Eisenstein on the Mexico of tomorrow, "Que Viva Mexico." (8) Parallel events as in "Heir to Gengiz Khan," the preparation of Lamas and the preparation of the white traders. (9) Contrast as in "Cavalcade," the noisy servants and the dignified family. (10) Concentration. As in many films starting from a long shot and concentrating on a close up of something. (11) Association. As in "Jennie Gerhard" or "Storm Over Asia," wherein the sequences are matched in the form and action is similar but opposite in effect in the latter. (12) Enlargement, e.g., "Blue Angel," starting with a close-up and revealing the whole shot afterwards. (13) Monodramatic Montage, same action carried through repeatedly, as in "Cavalcade." the repetition of New Year's eve. (14) Refrain or Leit motif, stressing of certain details at intervals as the bottle in "Dawn on the Horizon." (15) Montage. General term applied to the cutting of shots and sequences according to the mood and rhythm. Besides these, there are other types of "Montage," such as used by Pudovkin in "Mother" and "St. Petersburg," known as symbolic intercuts, which have nothing to do with the action of the story, but which are mounted psychologically to convey an impressionistic effect, e.g., famous explosion scene in "St. Petersburg" and the joy of the prisoner in "Mother," or the gradual change of mood through static shots, as in the films of Douzhenko, "Arsenal," "Ivan." Herr Arnheim does not agree with Pudovkin's symbolic intercuts on the ground that the ideal symbolic connection of smile, brook, sunbeams and the laughing child cannot be given an optical coherence because the unity of the scene is interrupted by something totally different. But Herr Arnheim forgets that when the audience sees the brooks, and the laughing child, the audience does not feel that he is seeing the brook and the "laughing child." The audience only sees the "joy," in other words, the essence of the shots, which is the "happiness" felt by the prisoner. Likewise, in "St. Petersburg," the shot of a magnesium were cut into the shot of a river conveyed on the senses, not the water in the river, but the light and shade contrast, which in turn reacted psychologically for the explosion. Such a scene as described above has to be mounted very perfectly. The director has to know how many frames to a shot should be put. There a frame less or more will unbalance the effect and the impression desired will be lost. In the massacre sequence in "Potemkin," Eisenstein had to show the death of a young mother in the confusion and tumult of the shooting. Eisenstein took a medium shot of the mother standing against her perambulator trying to shield her baby from the down coming Cossacks. But they shoot her in the stomach. The close-ups of her hands clutching at the abdomen, of her face rolling in agony, of her tottering form, of her sudden fall, and death, and finally as a consequence of her fall the accidental releasing of the brakes on the perambulator, which starts bouncing down the steps, are separated in the Montage— continuity of this sequence by long shots of the Cossacks and by the close-ups of groups and faces in the fleeing masses. The girl is the structural point of the analysis. The intercut images of the masses are the functional point of the entire image analysis. The girl's death movement is not mounted as a constant, unvaried unit, but each cut-back to the girl's sinking body shows another section of the body. This is also an example of the diversion of movement according to time-cutting in which each cut-back to the girl reveals her nearer to the death, nearer to her sinking completely on the stone steps. The last cut, following flash long shots of the Cossacks, shows her just as she has fallen to the ground. But this is not all. Eisenstein crosscuts the downward movement of the perambulator with the downward march of the Cossacks, giving the sequence a rhythmic flow. We see from the above example that in Montage not only the image alone, but the combination of them all, governs the Montage of the sequence. The image-idea underlies the image structure and governs it. It is as much the mathematical resultant of overtonal cumulations arising out of the conflict between the single images themselves (which collectively form the image idea) as it is the product of these images in a purely Montage sense. In the highest type of films, the majority of images operate simultaneously in both a descriptive and a symbolical capacity, e.g., Pudovkin's symbolic intercuts and Eisenstein's famous "Que Viva Mexico," where in the triumph of the revolution is intercut with the birth of a child. This is the richest, fullest and the most intellectual method of expression now at the disposal of the director. This article may be meaningless to our Indian Directors, who think of cinema in terms of Songs and Dances. But if the methods enunciated here are used by even one director, I would think myself amply repaid for this short article. Please mention The International Photographer when corresponding with advertisers.