Tuesday Minute
No. 23 | February 2, 2010

Parlez-Vous Cinéma?

Our theme this week
Film terms from the French

Featured this week
Monday         —   Mise-en-Scène

Montage

Pronounced, män-’täzh
Literally, putting together

The essentials
Yesterday we had “the shot.”  Today we have “the cut.”  Montage, broadly speaking, is an editing technique used to create a succession of images for a certain effect.

The word is French but was adopted by Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s.  Sergei Eisenstein called montage “the nerve of cinema.”  His theory was that images in a film sequence are not perceived as being next to each other but as being on top of each other—the whole of a sequence has a greater effect than the sum of its shots.

Montage can be used to create any number of effects.  The juxtaposition of images can be used to create conflict or establish rhythm or indicate the passage of time.  Montage condenses action and creates meaning.  A poor baby cries from hunger—cut—a king sits down to a sumptuous meal:  the filmmaker has made a point.

A montage may employ a variety of editing techniques:  cuts, dissolves, fades, wipes, superimposed images.  Some famous examples of montage are the shower scene in Psycho, the breakfast scene in Citizen Kane, and virtually any chase sequence, where editing and pacing are critical to telling the story and building tension.

Better than to read about it, though, check out the films below.

Beyond the final credits
It’s been said that mise-en-scène is favored by film realists, montage by expressionists.  Realism does tend to favor the long take, but the labels can’t be applied quite that simply.  Either technique can be used to create different effects, ranging from the naturalistic to highly stylized.  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, to cite one example, is hardly realistic but uses mise-en-scène masterfully.

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The Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Sergei Eisenstein, director
The Odessa Steps

Eisenstein on how he created rhythm and tension:  “The Odessa steps sequence in Potemkin is a clear example of this [rhythmic montage].  In this the rhythmic drum of the soldiers’ feet as they descend the steps violates all metrical demands.  Unsynchronized with the beat of the cutting, this drumming comes in off-beat each time, and the shot itself is entirely different in its solution with each of these appearances.  The final pull of tension is supplied by the transfer from the rhythm of the descending feet to another rhythm—a new kind of downward movement—the next intensity level of the same activity—the baby-carriage rolling down the steps.”

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Up (2009) 
Pete Docter, director
Carl & Ellie:  Married Life (A Love Story) 

The most sublime four minutes of film from all of 2009.  The wonderful score, by the way, is from composer Michael Giacchino.

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The Godfather (1972)
Francis Ford Coppola, director
The Baptism

On one level, there’s the evident conflict of images between the church scene and murders, but there’s a greater point.  The baptism you’re watching is not just the infant’s, but Michael Corleone’s.  Notice the use of sound, too.  Filmmaking doesn’t get any better than this. 

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Point of View
“Film is truth twenty-four times a second, and every cut is a lie.”
—Jean-Luc Godard

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1. Montage examples says:

   February 3, 2011 at 8:36 am

   [...] clipped from minaday.com [...]