The technique of film editing (1958)

descriptive. The few words preceding the passage we have quoted — and they are not a particularly good example — do not explain what is happening ; they set the key, so to speak, to the kind of thinking the spectator will be expected to do in the next few moments. Jennings' commentaries almost invariably deal with universals while his images deal with particulars. This is perhaps most spectacularly borne out in Words for Battle, where quotations from the English poets are heard while scenes of everyday life in war-time Britain are shown on the screen. It is likely that if the intellectual film essay is to develop in the future, it will have to do so along the lines used by Jennings rather than those envisaged by Eisenstein. The kind of abrupt, shock-packed continuity which Eisenstein's " intellectual montage " inevitably entails is entirely out of tune with the current tradition of film-making. Moreover, there is a marked difference in level between Eisenstein's and Jennings' films. (This is no disparagement of Eisenstein's films which were designed to appeal to a broader, less sophisticated audience, although even to that, parts of October and Old and New proved unacceptable.) The long montage in October ridiculing religious ceremonies or the repetitive passage suggesting Kerensky's vanity, manages to convey only relatively simple ideas. Jennings' films work at an altogether higher level, yet they have a direct, easily assimilated appeal. For the film of ideas which is to be commercially possible, Jennings' synthesis of simplified montage effects and suggestive commentary seems to offer an ideal solution. 163