Soviet Montage

Pudovkin and Eisenstein
by Daniel Robbins - 7 December 2009
Presented to Prof. Mark Harris and TA Brent Strang
FIST 210 - Silent Cinema - UBC

Vsevolod Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein both take a holistic view on montage; that the completed film is greater than the sum of a film’s parts. Their execution of this view, however, is very different. Pudovkin chooses to build meaning by adding pieces together, whereas Eisenstein uses pieces against each other to create a new meaning. This ‘construction’ versus ‘collision’ can be seen in each of their early works. Considered two of the greatest films of the silent era, Mother (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1926) and Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) exemplify the montage theories of these two directors. With reference to those films, a close look at some of the techniques the two use, and how they use them will provide a specific example of the way these films work. Eisenstein and Pudovkin both use some of the same techniques as well as using some that the other does not use. Through the use of these methods of montage they are able to construct a meaning and theme to their films in similar but very different ways.

One aspect that can be used to show the difference in the editing styles of Pudovkin and Eisenstein is the close-up shot Pudovkin thought “the close-up directs the attention of the spectator to that detail which is, at the moment, important to the course of the action” (Pudovkin 67).Pudovkin uses the close-up to move the story forward, by showcasing the elements that he feels are the most significant.

This is especially noticeable in the scene in Mother in which soldiers come to the Vlasov home to question Pavel Vlasov (Nicolai Batalov) about the resistance effort, and about the leaflets and arms associated with it. Pudovkin uses close-up shots of Pavel’s, his mother’s, and the soldier’s faces during the conversation. He then uses a shot of Pavel’s hands clenching behind his back emphasizing the character’s emotion. Instead of using a long shot to show the short conversation, Pudovkin uses tight shots of the important characters and pieces to construct a feeling of tension in the scene that would be absent in a long take from a wide angle.

He uses this same technique later in the film when the mother visits Pavel in jail. The close-up on hands comes again when the mother passes Pavel the note with the plans for the escape. Rather than showing the visit from a wide angle shot, he uses close-ups of their faces and more importantly, their hands, to emphasize the important features of the scene. Intercut with the conversation between Pavel, we see what the prison guards are doing. One guard is falling asleep, and the other one is rather preoccupied with tormenting, and ultimately smashing a bug that had become stuck. These shots do two things simultaneously: the guard smashing the bug that was already trapped seems to be a metaphor for the oppressive tsarist regime, and the sleeping guard as well as the preoccupied guard is of an equally antiauthoritarian sentiment. Showing these bits in close-up Pudovkin is saying that the guards are callous and inept, respectively. These shots, while seemingly unrelated are “no sort of interruption at all. [They represent] a proper form of construction” (Pudovkin 68). While they are presumably in the same room, we never see a wide shot of the whole scene playing out. Instead we get little glimpses into the most important actions of everyone involved. Pudovkin uses the close-up to create an extra level of depth that would be absent if he merely used a wide shot. He brings attention to details that he thinks are important to guide the way the viewer views not just the scene, but the characters as well.

Eisenstein uses the close-up in a much different way than Pudovkin. He believed that close-ups “give place to long shots” (Eisenstein, Notes 59). Eisenstein makes greater use of the long shot than does Pudovkin. He lets a view from farther away take over and only uses close-ups to create a new feeling. He uses the close-up to interrupt the shot and break the rhythm to create something new. Examples of this can be found in the famous ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence of Battleship Potemkin.

The beginning of the scene is dominated by wide shots of the masses running down the steps. While the frame is filled with the stairs and people, it is not by any means a close-up and nothing is isolated as important. After he has established the sense of mass panic through these types of shots, he begins to move in to singular characters. An old man falls to the ground, and we get a medium close-up of him trying not to get smashed. We do not feel any extra emotional attachment to this man, since he has not been introduced previous. Instead Eisenstein uses this close-up to shock the view and to amplify the emotion of the scene. Going back to the long shots, we do not think about the old man, it merely heightens the effect brought on by the shots previous. If these shots were separate, they would take on entirely different meanings. Or, as Eisenstein would put it, “depiction is in the shot; the image is in the montage” (“Rhythm” 227). If we were to see the old man first, or exclusively, fighting for his life in a sea of panic we would surely identify with him. Having the wide shots of mass pandemonium precede the close-ups of the man forms a new perspective on it.

After the old man, a young boy falls and is trampled by the masses. Eisenstein offers not only close-ups of feet crushing the boy’s body, but we get close-ups of a woman devastated by this sight. This, the viewer feels more sympathy towards, but again it is the relation between these shots and the ones around it that truly shapes our emotions. Both the boy, and the woman are unidentified, these are the first shots we see of them. Despite this, however, the viewer immediately assumes that the woman is the boy’s mother. There is no other clue to lead to this conclusion besides the montage. Any concerned person would react much the way the woman does upon seeing a young boy beneath a stampede. The close association between the two that leads to a mother-son relationship in our minds comes from Eisenstein’s use of the close-up. Had we seen this interaction from the same wide shot that precedes it, it is likely we would not be drawn to that conclusion so hastily. The interaction may have gone unnoticed.

Our opinion on the relationship between characters seems not to be the only goal to Eisenstein, however. He also uses these sections of montage in such a way that we do not think that these are the only people that terrible misfortune such as this is coming to. Eisenstein does this to “express the mind of the people and not of the individual” (Rotha 230). His shots of the masses in conjunction with these isolated instances suggest that there are countless others sharing this experience, and these are just a few examples. While making significant us of the long shot, Eisenstein uses the close-up shot in collision with other shots in order to create a new meaning within the film and to the audience.

Although Eisenstein and Pudovkin differ on their use of the close-up, they both use it effectively in their montage. One aspect of montage that they do not both use is visual symbolism. Specifically with reference to Pudovkin’s Mother and Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, Pudovkin makes effective use of an editing technique, which he calls ‘symbolism’, that is virtually absent from Eisenstein’s film.

Symbolism, as Pudovkin describes it, “introduces an abstract concept into the consciousness of the spectator without use of a title” (Pudovkin 77). In several cases throughout the film Pudovkin incorporates shots, usually of the naturally world, that have no direct link to the narrative. They provide, rather, a new level of understanding to the narrative.

In Mother, immediately after the scene in the jail, as discussed above, Pudovkin cuts to shots of free, running water and children, accompanied by titles saying, “Outside.…it was spring”. It is not until after this short departure from the narrative that we return to the mother, who is seen walking alone, and alone amongst the children. He thin cuts back to Pavel in his dark, confined jail cell. Pudovkin cuts from the jail to the running water to emphasize how trapped Pavel is in jail. He is both kept from the beauty, and peacefulness of nature, and kept from running free like the water. Since Pavel represents the people fighting back against the oppressive authority, this juxtaposition gives “pictorial form to the theme” (Dart 15). Through this use of symbolic imagery in montage Pudovkin is able to transcend the story for a moment to make his theme clearer.

The flowing of water comes up again at the climax of the film, of the two forces, the people and the state, meeting at the demonstration. As the two forces collide, Pudovkin shows the water flowing underneath the bridge, with the ice breaking on the pillars. Contrasted with these shots are low angle shots of the soldiers, and high angle shots of the marching people. In the combination of these shots, “the irresistible forces of nature are compared to irresistible political forces, creating a powerful image” (Dart 15). Just as the water emphasized Pavel’s oppressed position in jail, here the water emphasizes the power of the state over the common people. With the added dimension of the symbolism, Pudovkin is able to guide the viewer’s reading of the scene.

Pudovkin adds elements of the story to elements that fall outside of the story in order to construct a stronger feeling for his theme. Through “powerful associative montage” he makes it clear to his view what he is trying to say. This is not the case for Eisenstein. He “does not seek help from outside sources, from irrelevant but symbolic references, as does Pudovkin, in the expression of his content” (Rotha 231). Most all of the images that appear within Battleship Potemkin fall within the film’s narrative construct. This seems to be a major difference between the two. Eisenstein even accused Pudovkin “of using hackneyed images dependent upon verbal metaphors” (Sargeant 170). These kinds of images seem unnecessary and distracting from Eisenstein’s collision montage. He does not need to add extra images; through the rhythm of his editing, he is able to convey his theme.

He deliberately defies logical usage of screen direction in order to create a rhythmic feeling. During the scene on the deck while the officers are bringing in the tarpaulin to execute the mutinous sailors, he clashes neat, orderly compositions with movements of ambiguous screen direction. As the sailors attempt to escape through the hatch, the Admiral fights them off. The way Eisenstein shows this we see it from various angles, and the Admiral throws the different guys in separate directions. This creates a sense of chaos, and pins that chaos not on the lowly sailors, but on the established authority. As things fall back into order, we see multiple shots of the men turning their heads, some to the left, and some to the right. We see the officers deployed to retrieve the tarpaulin and they turn to leave in seemingly opposite directions. Cuts to change angles are not on action. Eisenstein shows movement in every direction, and shows movements more than once in a way that creates an even more chaotic rhythm to the situation. Then, the Admiral calls, “Attention!” and we see five different shots of straightening. Officers sanding up straight, guns parallel. We also see shots of the Potemkin’s looming cannons. Throughout this scene everything Eisenstein offers comes from the world that the narrative creates, but he uses them in collision to create a new feeling. Without this editing, it might appear to the viewer that the mutinous sailors are in the wrong. But Eisenstein’s use of montage leads us to the conclusion that the sailors are doing the right thing to escape the evil of the authority.

Another instance of Eisenstein’s use of rhythm in montage to communicate his theme comes again from the ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence. He contrasts shots of the mass chaos of the people with the orderly marching of the soldiers, then again with the panic and then the stroller falling down the stairs. “One aspect of movement (people running, falling, tumbling down the steps) gives way to another (rolling perambulator)” (Eisenstein, Notes 60). He creates a rhythm that evokes a feeling and emotion that is separate from any of the images involved. The editing suggests that the Cossack soldiers are inhuman, machine-like, monsters, and the people of Odessa they are marching on are ‘good’. Through nothing else than the editing, Eisenstein makes his point loud and clear.

Eisenstein uses motion in his images against each other to create a meaning, while
Pudovkin constructs a theme through the addition of shots. Or, in the words of Paul
Rotha:

The rhythmic cutting of Eisenstein is governed by the
physiology of material content, whereas the editing of Pudovkin is controlled by the constructive representation of the elements of the scene, governed by the psychological expression of the content. (Rotha 233)

Eisenstein uses shapes, lines, and motion to create a rhythm that conveys his theme. Pudovkin gets his point across by adding shots together to emphasize his thesis. Though they are both done effectively, they are done in very different ways. Amy Sargeant quotes Léon Moussinac comparing Eisenstein and Pudovkin saying, “[a] film by Eisenstein resembles a shout; a film by Pudovkin evokes a song” (Sargeant 168). Here lies the difference between the two styles. Pudovkin constructs his theme through the use of the beauty of nature to draw an irony from the situation. Eisenstein, however, creates a rhythm that he can then disrupt with disorienting, blunt collision of images and motions to prove a point. Pudovkin viewed editing as “in actual fact a compulsory and deliberated guidance of the thoughts and associations of the spectator” (Pudovkin 73). He believed that without editing, the spectator would draw nothing from the film. The filmmaker would not be able to make a statement through the cinema without montage to guide the viewer’s thoughts through and beyond the film. Eisenstein took a somewhat different view on the subject saying that, “any two pieces of a film stuck together inevitably combine to create a new concept, a new quality born of that juxtaposition” (Eisenstein, Notes 63). He thought that one plus one does not equal two in film; he believed that adding one shot to another creates a third idea. It is the job of the filmmaker to juxtapose the correct images in just the right way in order to elicit the theme that he wishes to convey.

Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, two of the earliest great editors in the cinema, are still studied today because of their inventive and effective use of the ‘montage’ to create a meaning from their films. They did so through using some of the same, and some very different methods. Even using some of the same techniques, such as the close-up shot, the way they made these techniques work within their films varies considerably. Eisenstein uses collision of images to create a rhythm that develops his theme. Pudovkin constructs his theme through the addition of shots, both from within and from outside of the narrative construct. These two directors use montage in their own way to create a powerful statement in their films that comes directly from the use of editing.

Works Cited:

Dart, Peter. Pudovkin’s Films and Film Theory. New York: Arno Press, 1974. Print.

Eisenstein, Sergei. Notes of a Film Director. New York: Dover Publications, 1970. Print.

---. “Rhythm”. Towards a Theory of Montage. Trans, Michael Glenny. London: British
Film Institute, 1991. 227-48. Print.

Pudovkin, V.I. Film Technique and Film Acting. Trans, Ivor Montagu. London: Vison:
Mayflower, 1958. Print.

Rotha, Paul. “The Soviet Film”. The Film Till Now. London: Spring Books, 1967. 217-
51. Print.

Sargeant, Amy. Vsevolod Pudovkin: Classic Films of the Soviet Avant-Garde. New York:
I.B. Tauris, 2000. Print.