Montage

A sub-concept of Editing. Editing joins shots; montage is the case where the join is the content, where two shots placed together produce a meaning neither holds alone. The word has three uses: in French, cutting; in Soviet theory, argument by collision; in a Hollywood cutting room, the dissolve-linked sequence that gets a character through a decade. This wiki uses the second sense, and the interesting question is whether the Soviet claim survives contact with an audience. The library's practitioner says it often does not.

Collision, construction, or obscurity

Giannetti gives the Eisenstein position at full strength. Editing "ought to be dialectical": the relation "between shot A and shot B is not AB (Kuleshov and Pudovkin), but a qualitatively new factor—C (Eisenstein)". Transitions should jolt. "For Eisenstein, editing produces harsh collisions, not subtle linkages. A smooth transition, he claimed, was an opportunity lost."

Bordwell and Thompson start lower, with Kuleshov. Their term is constructive editing, and the Kuleshov effect is defined without reference to ideas: a whole assumed from parts never shown together. Intercut a face with soup and viewers report hunger, so "the cutting actually created the performance". Eisenstein, in their account, pushed this tool until clashes "would prod the spectator to engage more actively with the film". Montage is a spectrum, not a doctrine.

Reisz and Millar, who had cut films, are the sceptics. They describe Eisenstein's continuities as proceeding "by a series of collisions, giving an impression of a constantly shifting and developing argument", then test one against a viewer. Their verdict on the Kornilov sequence in October is that the effect "fails when put on the screen because it remains obscure". Reisz does not say montage fails; he says intellectual montage tends to.

Giannetti reports the theory. Bordwell reduces it to a perceptual mechanism any film can use. Reisz asks whether a given collision reaches the person in the seat.

On the bench

Psycho — the shower scene is the strongest evidence on Reisz's side, because there the collision reaches everyone. The shower scene is built from 78 setups records that no shot shows the knife enter flesh, so the stabbing exists only as an inference built between cuts: the Kuleshov effect in Bordwell's sense, run at a speed that turns inference into assault. The censors saw nudity that was not photographed.

Alice — the prologue is the same principle with one cut instead of fifty. Soundstage Monterey against real Socorro, Alice Faye against Mott the Hoople: shot A and shot B produce a C, a life's disappointment, that neither contains. You'll Never Know, then Mott the Hoople shows the collision carried in the audio as much as the image.

What to look for

• Find a moment where the meaning is in no single shot. What two shots make it, and what is the C?
• Does the film withhold an establishing view, and what does your mind build to fill it?
• Is the collision felt, or does it stay on paper? Reisz's test: would a first-time viewer get it?

In the books

In general, that term refers to cutting together portions of a space in a way that prompts the spectator to assume a spatial whole that isn't shown onscreen.

— Film Art on the Kuleshov effect, fa 226

For Eisenstein, editing produces harsh collisions, not subtle linkages. A smooth transition, he claimed, was an opportunity lost.

— Giannetti, um 168

The effect, which on paper looks ingeniously double-edged, fails when put on the screen because it remains obscure.

— Reisz & Millar, tfe 23

The Soviet chapter of Narration in the Fiction Film treats montage as a mode of narration; its pagination is unchecked, so it is a pointer, not a source.