Soviet Montage: Crash Course Film History #8

Summary

The video explores the impact of the Russian Revolution on cinema, highlighting the rise of Soviet Montage, a revolutionary film movement that emphasized the power of editing. Key figures like Lev Kuleshov and Sergei Eisenstein unlocked the potential of montage to create meaning, shape public opinion, and call to action. The Kuleshov Effect demonstrated how viewers derive meaning from the juxtaposition of images. The film school VGIK nurtured talents who viewed film cuts as a political statement. Soviet Montage influenced filmmaking techniques, including intellectual, tonal, metric, rhythmic, and overtonal montages, which continue to shape cinema today.

Takeaways

• 🎥 The Russian Revolution marked the beginning of significant use of cinema for political purposes, with the Bolsheviks recognizing film's potential for social and political influence.
• 🏛️ The Bolshevik government centralized the Russian film industry by forming Narkompros, a state-owned film company, to control film production.
• 🚫 Due to a lack of raw film stock, Russian filmmakers began studying and dissecting films to understand editing techniques and the impact of shot composition.
• 🏫 The world's first film school, VGIK, was founded in 1919 by the Soviet government to encourage film experimentation and education.
• 🎞️ Lev Kuleshov's experiments led to the discovery of the Kuleshov Effect, which demonstrated that the meaning of a shot changes based on the shots surrounding it.
• 🔧 Kuleshov also developed the concept of Creative Geography, which involves cutting together footage from different locations to create a continuous space.
• 🇷🇺 Soviet Montage theory, developed by Kuleshov and his students, emphasized that films derive their power and meaning from the editing of shots.
• 🎬 Sergei Eisenstein's 'Battleship Potemkin' is a seminal work in Soviet Montage, using intellectual montage to create powerful propaganda and influence audiences.
• 📹 Dziga Vertov, a documentarian, believed in the power of documentaries to capture 'reality' and used montage to create meaning, as seen in 'The Man with the Movie Camera'.
• 📉 The rise of Socialist Realism and the influx of Western films led to a decline in the Soviet Montage movement, as the state shifted its focus to more accessible and emotionally resonant narratives.

Q & A

What significant role did cinema play during the Russian Revolution?

Cinema played a crucial role during the Russian Revolution as a powerful tool for social and political influence, capable of changing minds and inflaming hearts.

How did the Bolshevik government approach the control of the film industry?

The Bolshevik government centralized the Russian film industry by taking over studios and forming a state-owned company called Narkompros, also known as The People’s Commissariat for Education.

What was the significance of the founding of VGIK in 1919?

VGIK, or the State Institute of Cinematography, was the world's first film school and played a significant role in encouraging experimentation with film editing and the development of Soviet Montage theory.

Who was Lev Kuleshov and what was his most famous discovery?

Lev Kuleshov was a well-known and influential filmmaker and teacher at VGIK. His most famous discovery was the Kuleshov Effect, which demonstrated that viewers draw more meaning from two shots cut together than from either shot on its own.

What is the Kuleshov Effect and how does it relate to film editing?

The Kuleshov Effect is a film editing phenomenon where the meaning of a shot is influenced by the shots that precede and follow it. It illustrates the power of juxtaposition in cinema to create new meanings.

What is Soviet Montage and how does it differ from traditional narrative filmmaking?

Soviet Montage is a film theory and editing technique that emphasizes the power of editing to create meaning through the juxtaposition of shots. It differs from traditional narrative filmmaking by making the cuts visible and often prioritizing the political or ideological message over a linear story.

What are the different types of montage techniques discussed in the script?

The script discusses several types of montage techniques including Intellectual Montage, Tonal Montage, Metric Montage, Rhythmic Montage, and Overtonal Montage, each serving different purposes in creating meaning and emotional impact.

How did Sergei Eisenstein utilize Soviet Montage in his film 'Battleship Potemkin'?

Sergei Eisenstein used Soviet Montage in 'Battleship Potemkin' to dramatize the miserable conditions of sailors and to create a powerful piece of propaganda through the use of intellectual montage and the juxtaposition of images to evoke strong emotions.

What was Dziga Vertov's approach to filmmaking and how did it contrast with Eisenstein's?

Dziga Vertov was a proponent of documentary filmmaking and believed that only documentaries could be true and honest. He used montage to create pure meaning from reality, in contrast to Eisenstein's use of montage for dramatic and propagandistic purposes in fiction films.

How did the rise of Socialist Realism in cinema lead to the decline of the Soviet Montage movement?

The rise of Socialist Realism, which promoted realistic stories that supported communist values, led to a shift away from the abstract and experimental techniques of Soviet Montage. Filmmakers were encouraged to create more accessible and emotionally engaging narratives, thus ending the Soviet Montage movement.

What is the legacy of Soviet Montage in contemporary cinema?

The techniques developed by Soviet Montage filmmakers continue to influence contemporary cinema, particularly in the use of editing for psychological effect, as seen in various genres such as action films, music videos, and movie trailers.

Outlines

00:00

🎥 The Birth of Soviet Montage

The Russian Revolution in 1917 saw the rise of the Bolsheviks, who quickly recognized the power of cinema as a tool for social and political influence. To harness this, they centralized the film industry under the state-owned company Narkompros and established the world's first film school, VGIK, in 1919. Filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, a prominent teacher at VGIK, discovered the Kuleshov Effect, demonstrating how the juxtaposition of shots could create new meanings and influence audiences. This effect and the broader Soviet Montage theory emphasized the power of editing to shape narrative and provoke thought, leading to a distinctive style of filmmaking that aimed to be a political statement in itself.

05:02

🌟 Sergei Eisenstein and the Power of Montage in Film

Sergei Eisenstein, a key figure in Soviet Montage, used the theory to create powerful films that served as propaganda. His film 'Battleship Potemkin' (1925) depicted a real-life mutiny and used montage to amplify the emotional impact, making the audience feel the chaos and violence. Eisenstein's work exemplified how editing could be used not just to tell a story but to provoke specific reactions and align with political ideologies. Meanwhile, Dziga Vertov, another influential filmmaker, focused on documentaries and the 'Cinema-Eye' movement, believing that reality could be captured and meaningfully arranged through montage, although his approach was later critiqued for its own constructed nature.

10:05

📽 The Evolution and Legacy of Soviet Montage

As Stalin's regime took hold, the Soviet Montage movement waned in favor of more accessible, emotionally resonant films that supported communist values through Socialist Realism. Films like 'Youth of Maxim' (1935) showcased this shift, focusing on relatable stories that subtly promoted the state's ideology. Despite the decline of Soviet Montage as a dominant style, its techniques have left a lasting impact on cinema, influencing everything from classic films like 'Psycho' to modern movie trailers and music videos. The movement's legacy is a testament to the enduring power of editing and visual storytelling in film.

Keywords

💡Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution refers to a pair of revolutions in 1917 that led to the overthrow of the Tsar and the rise of the Bolsheviks, who were a political movement advocating for workers' rights and state control of industry. In the video, the revolution is highlighted as a pivotal moment that influenced the development of cinema, particularly in how the new government used film as a tool for social and political influence.

💡Bolsheviks

The Bolsheviks were a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party that eventually seized power during the Russian Revolution. They are significant in the video's narrative as they centralized the film industry and recognized the potential of cinema as a medium for propaganda and social engineering.

💡Narkompros

Narkompros, or The People's Commissariat for Education, was a state-owned company formed by the Bolshevik government to consolidate the Russian film industry. The video explains how this centralization was a strategic move to control the content and message of films being produced.

💡Soviet Montage

Soviet Montage is a film editing theory that emphasizes the power of juxtaposing different shots to create new meanings. The video discusses how Soviet filmmakers used this technique to shape public opinion and convey complex ideas, making it a central theme in the evolution of Soviet cinema.

💡Kuleshov Effect

Named after filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, the Kuleshov Effect demonstrates how the meaning of an image can change based on the shots it is edited with. The video illustrates this concept through Kuleshov's experiments, showing how viewers interpret different emotions based on the context provided by the editing.

💡VGIK

VGIK, or the State Institute of Cinematography, was the world's first film school established by the Soviet government to encourage the study and practice of film techniques. The video highlights VGIK as a place where the theories of Soviet Montage were developed and taught.

💡Creative Geography

Also known as Artificial Landscape, Creative Geography is a film editing technique where scenes shot in different locations are edited together to create a continuous space. The video uses this term to describe how filmmakers can manipulate reality through editing to enhance storytelling.

💡Intellectual Montage

Intellectual Montage is a form of Soviet Montage that involves combining unrelated images to create a new idea in the viewer's mind. The video explains this concept as a way to provoke thought and convey abstract ideas through the juxtaposition of images.

💡Dziga Vertov

Dziga Vertov was a Soviet filmmaker known for his documentaries and his belief in the power of cinema as a tool for capturing reality. The video discusses Vertov's work, particularly 'The Man with the Movie Camera,' as an example of how montage can be used to create meaning from real-life footage.

💡Socialist Realism

Socialist Realism was a state-supported style of art and literature that later influenced cinema in the Soviet Union. The video describes how this movement led to a shift away from the abstract theories of Soviet Montage towards more accessible, emotionally engaging narratives that promoted communist values.

💡Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein was a prominent Soviet filmmaker who used the theories of Soviet Montage in his work. The video mentions Eisenstein's film 'Battleship Potemkin' as a seminal example of how montage techniques can be used to create powerful, emotionally charged scenes and propagate political messages.

Highlights

The Russian Revolution was the first major civil war fought in the age of cinema, with the Bolsheviks recognizing the power of film to influence public opinion.

Filmmakers studied films to understand how shots were edited together to create meaning, leading to the founding of the world’s first film school, VGIK.

Lev Kuleshov discovered the Kuleshov Effect, demonstrating that viewers derive more meaning from two shots cut together than from either shot alone.

Kuleshov also developed Creative Geography, a technique where shots from different locations are edited together to create a continuous space.

Soviet Montage theory posits that films derive their power and meaning from the way shots are edited together, including order, duration, repetition, and rhythm.

Soviet Montage filmmakers believed that the cuts should be visible, calling this style discontinuity editing, which aligns with the idea that the artist is an engineer.

Intellectual Montage juxtaposes unrelated images to create a third idea in the viewer's mind, exemplified by Kuleshov's experiments.

Tonal Montage combines shots with similar tonal or thematic qualities to reinforce the film's emotional or psychological meaning.

Metric Montage cuts shots after a specified number of frames, creating a jarring rhythm that affects the audience's tension.

Rhythmic Montage matches cuts to music or on-screen action, a technique often used in modern movie trailers.

Overtonal Montage combines metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage, as seen in the final standoff in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin used Soviet Montage theories to create a powerful piece of propaganda through its editing techniques.

Dziga Vertov's The Man with the Movie Camera showcased the process of filmmaking itself, using montage to create pure meaning from reality.

As Stalin's power rose, the Soviet government shifted towards Socialist Realism in cinema, favoring relatable stories that supported communist values.

The techniques of Soviet Montage continue to influence modern cinema, from classic films like Psycho to contemporary music videos and trailers.

Transcripts

The Russian Revolution marked the first major civil war fought in the age of cinema.

And the big winners in that struggle understood the unique ability of film to change minds

and inflame hearts.

Today, we’ll meet a bunch of filmmakers who spent as much time studying films as

they did making them.

We’ll see the founding of the world’s first film school.

And we’ll watch the rise of a cohesive, self-conscious, and game-changing film movement

that would unlock the power of the cut to create meaning, shape public opinion, and

call a hungry populace to action.

It’s time to cut... to Soviet Montage.

[Opening Music Plays]

In 1917, the second of two violent revolts

in Russia, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Tsar and brought the Bolsheviks to power.

“Bolshevik” means “majority” in Russian, by the way, and this political movement grew

from the peasant and working classes who acquired their power through persuasion and force.

That’s important.

You should remember that.

Because the resulting government, ruled by what would become the Communist Party, was

organized around principles of workers’ rights, state control of industry, and the

suppression of dissent.

So the government took a strong interest in film, because it recognized cinema for what

it was – a powerful tool for social and political influence.

But before it could get that engine started, the party had a few obstacles to overcome.

First, it needed to centralize the Russian film industry.

Prior to the revolution, there were a lot of production companies, mostly making pro-Tsarist films.

In 1918, the new Bolshevik government did what Germany had done in creating UFA – which

we talked about last time.

They took over the studios, combining them to form one state-owned company called Narkompros,

also known as The People’s Commissariat for Education.

Second, and more importantly, there was virtually no raw film stock in the country.

You're gonna need film stock if you're gonna make films.

The revolutionary government choked off imports,

and Russia didn’t have the capacity to manufacture much of its own stock.

So, some enterprising Russian filmmakers took a different approach.

They started studying films.

What?!?! That’s what you’re doing right now!

And they didn’t just watch them; they dissected them.

Literally.

They took the actual reels of film, cut them apart, and analyzed them.

How long were the shots?

What was the camera angle?

How was the image composed?

How did they do the thing?

And most importantly, how were the shots edited together?

In what order, and why?

Then they began experimenting – rearranging the order of the shots, shortening some, repeating

others – all to see what the effects might be.

To encourage this experimentation, the government founded the world’s first film school in 1919.

It was called VGIK, or the State Institute of Cinematography.

The most well-known and influential teacher at this new school was the filmmaker Lev Kuleshov.

And his most famous discovery bears his name and provided his students with the cornerstone

of a new cinematic philosophy.

What he discovered is now known as the Kuleshov Effect, and it came to light like this:

Kuleshov took a shot of a well-known Russian matinee idol named Ivan Mosjoukine

staring off-camera with no expression.

He then cut to an image of a bowl of soup, and then back to the shot of Ivan.

When he asked viewers what Ivan was feeling, they said he was hungry.

Kuleshov then took the same footage of Ivan, but this time intercut it with a shot of a

girl in a coffin.

Now, the audience said Ivan felt sad.

Finally, Kuleshov projected the shot of Ivan, then cut to a woman on a couch.

The viewers said he was feeling desire.

The Kuleshov Effect suggests that viewers draw more meaning from two shots cut together,

than either shot on its own.

And the Soviet filmmakers believed that phenomenon was the true power of cinema, something

no other art form can do: juxtapose two images in real time to create a new, and sometimes

unrelated, meaning.

It’s also one more example of film as an illusion of reality.

Kuleshov took Georges Méliès one step further: not only can a cut be used to hide a magic

trick, it is a magic trick!

And that wasn’t Kuleshov’s only contribution.

Or his only illusion.

He also developed a concept called Creative Geography, also known as Artificial Landscape.

This effect can be created when two segments of film shot in entirely different locations

are cut together to make them appear to be happening in a continuous space.

If you’ve watched Doctor Who, this is how they make it seem like the TARDIS is bigger

on the inside.

Just kidding. It actually is!

We call the overarching theory of film developed

by Kuleshov and his students Soviet Montage.

Montage comes from the French word, meaning “assembling” or “editing” or... "montage."

And the theory of montage proposes that films derive their ultimate power and meaning through

the way the shots are cut together – their order, duration, repetition, and rhythm.

Beyond that, Soviet Montage filmmakers believed that for film to reach its true potential,

the cuts themselves should be visible.

The audience should be aware of them.

That the illusion should be obviously constructed, and not hidden.

We call this style of editing discontinuity editing, and it fit quite neatly into another

political idea the Soviet Montage filmmakers had: that the artist was an engineer, simply

another worker, joining shots the way a brick-layer builds a wall or a factory worker assembles

a vehicle.

For these folks, the process of filmmaking was as much a political statement

as the movie itself.

Within Soviet Montage, there are a lot of ways to juxtapose images.

There’s Intellectual Montage, for example, which refers to the juxtaposition of two otherwise

unrelated images to create a third idea in your mind.

This is the purest form of Soviet Montage, and Kuleshov’s experiment is a perfect example.

Ivan’s face juxtaposed against soup equals hunger.

Tonal Montage puts together two or more shots that have similar tonal or thematic qualities.

The idea here is that these shots build on one another and reinforce the emotional or

psychological meaning the film is trying to convey..

Two rams butting heads next to a fist next to people rioting and you’ve got images

that may make you think of conflict.

But, a flower opening next to a baby yawning next to a sunrise might be beginnings.

To take a great – and decidedly non-Soviet example – think about Dumbledore’s death

scene in Harry Potter.

The shots between Snape and Dumbledore are drawn out, still, each wrestling with his

emotions, followed by Dumbledore’s slow-motion fall.

Metric Montage dictates that shots are cut after a specified number of frames, regardless

of what’s happening in the shot.

This can be quite jarring, as on-screen actions are interrupted, but the rhythm of the editing

itself has a psychological effect.

The speeding up or slowing down of edits can greatly affect the amount of tension the audience

is feeling.

There are moments in the famous shower scene from Psycho where Hitchcock uses this technique,

cutting between the knife and the victim without regard for continuity, tone, or musical rhythm.

And, any modern action movie tends to pick up the pace of the editing as the fight scenes

pick up intensity.

Rhythmic Montage, on the other hand, matches the cuts to music, sound effects, or action on screen.

Marching feet or beating drums.

Modern movie trailers do this all the time, using music to link various shots from a movie.

And finally, overtonal Montage is the combination of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage.

One of the best examples of Overtonal Montage

comes from the final stand off in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

we see Tonal Montage in the Mise en Scene. Desert, cracked Earth, tired and weathered faces,

a cemetery, this is the end, death is coming.

[Craig sings theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly]

Rhythmic Montage is pretty obviously used as the scene is punctuated

with cuts of the 3 gunslingers based on the rhythm of Ennio Morricone's incredible score.

Finally, Metric Montage.

We begin the sequence is long cuts

but as the intensity picks up, we cut faster and faster and faster UNTIL!

Now, imagine you’re a Soviet Montage filmmaker, and you’ve spent months or years studying

films and developing your theories.

What happens when you finally get your hands on some fresh film stock in the early 1920s?

That’s right.

You start making films with a vengeance.

Not, like, films with "a vengeance" in the title, like Die Hard with A Vengence

but like, you make films with the attitude of vengeance.

One of the most influential Soviet Montage filmmakers was a former engineering student

named Sergei Eisenstein.

It was Eisenstein’s second feature film, Battleship Potemkin, that launched him to

international fame and provided a blueprint for how filmmakers could incorporate Soviet

Montage theories – particularly intellectual montage – into fiction films.

Made in 1925, Battleship Potemkin tells the true story of a mutiny aboard a Russian battleship

in 1905.

Rather than focus on a single protagonist, the film dramatizes the miserable conditions

of the sailors as they toil under officers who beat them and deprive them of food.

In the film’s most famous section, the Odessa Steps Sequence, the sailors are cheered on

by the people of Odessa… until Tsarist troops show up and slaughter the crowd.

The shots themselves are fairly horrifying – bullet wounds, trampled children, anguished

parents, a baby carriage rolling perilously through the middle of the battle.

But Eisenstein’s real innovation lies in the use of montage to bring life to the chaos,

madness, and violence of the action.

Eisenstein wanted the juxtaposition of sometimes-unrelated images to jolt the audience out of their complacency.

The film is also a powerful piece of propaganda, which we’ll define as a biased or misleading

communication designed to promote a particular point of view.

And just because something’s propaganda doesn’t mean that it’s false.

The Tsarists really did put down a revolt in Odessa in 1905!

But by making the sailors and civilians so innocent and the officers and Tsarist troops

so cruel, the film comes down on one side and stokes the viewer’s outrage against

the other.

We’ve seen this before – in the egregious re-writing of American history in Birth of

a Nation – and we see it today – in everything from political ads to issue documentaries.

Film was and remains one of the most powerful tools of persuasion in the world.

Another Soviet filmmaker who excelled at persuasion, but took a different approach to montage,

was the documentarian Dziga Vertov.

Vertov began his career as an editor in 1918, before becoming a cameraman and travelling

around the country taking newsreel footage.

Vertov was an opinionated and rigorous thinker, and he banded together with other like-minded

documentarians to propose their own ideas about film.

They called themselves “Kinoki” or “Cinema-Eye” and

wrote manifestos dissing fiction films.

They believed that only documentaries could be true and honest.

Vertov’s goal was to use the camera to record quote-unquote “reality,” and then arrange

his shots using montage to create pure meaning, rather than tell a story.

His masterwork is The Man with the Movie Camera, made in 1929.

It follows a day in the life of a city, from empty streets and sleeping figures through

work and meals and evening traffic.

Actually, the film is as much about the process of making the film as it is about anything else.

We see the cameraman shooting the footage.

We see the editor, Yelizaveta Svilova, who was also Vertov’s wife, choosing shots and

cutting them together into sequences that we then see unfold on screen.

Vertov uses special effects, freeze frames, special camera rigs, animation, compositing,

even non-linear editing – all the tools cinema had at the time.

He painted a portrait of his city, its people, and the artist as an engineer, pulling back

the curtain to reveal the truth of how the film was made.

But of course, as we’ve talked about, film is ultimately an illusion of reality, not

reality itself.

Film scholars have long recognized that however useful Vertov’s theories were in making

films, they don’t account for the fact that all moving photographs are by nature constructed realities.

Whether they’re in service of a fictional story or a documentary, they’re chosen and

cut together to articulate a point of view.

Just as there’s very little “reality” in reality TV, so Vertov’s documentaries

are simply a different use of the magic trick of film.

As power shifted to Stalin, western films began to pour back into the U.S.S.R., and

film stock became more readily available.

And the government cooled on the esoteric Soviet Montage filmmakers.

Audiences wanted something more accessible, more emotional.

Socialist Realism, which began as a movement in literature, became the state-supported

style of cinema.

Filmmakers were told to focus on realistic stories that supported communist values.

A sort of propaganda-through-relatability, rather than abstract theory.

A prime example of this is the 1935 film Youth of Maxim.

The story follows a naive, young factory worker in pre-Revolutionary Russia who helps his

colleagues hide a subversive teacher from the police.

Over the course of the film, the young man is radicalized and eventually joins the Revolution.

Rather than use jarring cuts and juxtaposition, the film relies on a much more smooth, mainstream

style, encouraging viewers to identify with the character and buy into the reality of

the story.

That brought an end to the Soviet Montage movement.

As often happens, however, the techniques developed by the Soviet Montage filmmakers

continue to influence cinema to this day, in everything from the shower scene in Psycho,

to the latest music video.

And movie trailers… pretty much all the movie trailers.

Today we learned how the Russian Revolution led to a subsequent revolution in cinema.

We talked about how the Soviet Montage filmmakers believed editing was the most foundational

element of film technique.

We looked at some of the filmmakers who put those theories into practice, and how their

films worked as state-sponsored propaganda.

Next time, we’ll cross back to Hollywood to witness the Golden Silent Era and the rise

of the studio system – where movies were made as art, entertainment, and commerce,

more often than political statements – as the story of film continues.

Crash Course Film History is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios.

You can head over to their channel to check out a playlist of their latest amazing shows,

like Brain Craft, It’s Okay to Be Smart, and Physics Girl.

This episode of Crash Course was filmed in the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Studio with the

help of all these nice Kinoki and our amazing graphics team, is Thought Cafe.