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ASSOCIATIONS OF IDEAS
Associations of ideas induced by montage can evoke not only emotions and create an atmosphere — they can also produce in us definite thoughts, logical deductions and conclusions.
In Pudovkin's The End of St Petersburg we see cross-cut shots of battlefields and of the stock exchange. Stock exchange, battlefield, stock exchange, battlefield, stock exchange, battlefield. On the stock exchange a blackboard shows how the quotations are rising. On the battlefield the soldiers are falling. Stocks rising, Soldiers falling. Stocks rising. Soldiers falling. It is impossible for the spectator not to see a causal connection between the two and this is of course what the director wants. The spectator who sees a connection between the two sequences, will also know the meaning of this connection : his visual impression will turn into political understanding.
INTELLECTUAL MONTAGE
But such shots, shown in parallel, are still the real images of actual reality and are real scenes pertinent to the story of the film. Only the placing of them thus side by side puts into them an ulterior meaning, a political significance. Only this gives them their artistic justification and their sensual realism.
Directors sometimes attempt, however, to use the sequences of a film for the communication of thoughts, as a sort of hieroglyphic picture-writing, in which the pictures mean something but have no content of their own. They are like the pictures in a rebus; they mean something and the spectator must guess what it is, but in themselves, as pictures, they present no interest.
When in Eisenstein's October a statue falls from its pedestal, this is intended to signify that the power of the Tsar has been overthrown. If the pieces were to unite again, this would mean the restoration of that power. These are picture puzzles, not artistic effects. Eisenstein, who was perhaps the greatest master of sensuous picture effects that transcended the sphere of reason, unfortunately often fell a victim to the mistaken