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“The Principles Of Montage” From The Practice of Film Direction
Lev Kuleshov
THE THEORY of montage in the cinema is a very important and interesting theory. It has
caused great concern even to me, as one who has occupied himself with this theory, as well as to
critics and filmmakers. Extremely fiery disputes flared around the theory of montage from its very
inception. The theory of montage demands a particularly attentive approach and study, because
montage represents the essence of cinema technique, the essence of structuring a motion picture.
Having worked a long time on the theory of montage, I committed a whole series of the crudest
errors. Previously, I had both concluded and written that montage was so crucial to
cinematography that everything else was secondary. Despite the fact that I had done much work on
the very material of motion pictures, on the shots themselves, I still placed all my emphasis on
montage, perfecting the entire conception of my theoretical work on it; and here lay my deepest
mistake. The fact is that film material (the selection of which is determined by the ideological
tendency of the artist) is the live person working on the screen, real life filmed for the screen. This
material is so variegated, so significant, and so complex that to render it by mechanical
juxtaposition through "film-specifics"--by means of montage--was utterly incorrect. It is here that
the political and artistic error of my past years has been. But even these works contain their
positive sides. From the viewpoint of these positive aspects we can also analyze the theory of
montage, because it is extremely important in the work of the film director. Since the theme of this
book is the practice of film direction, I shall touch upon the theory of montage as it concerns
practical work, without going deeply into theoretical analyses. I shall, however, have to provide a
few historical references so that the essence of the question is clear.
Montage first began in America. Prior to the Civil War and the Revolution, montage, as a
consciously expressed artistic method, was virtually unused.
We are aware that the motion picture camera photographs its surrounding reality. By
means of the cinema we can observe the world. Accordingly, the cinema shows us the conduct and
activities of people, existing in the reality around us. The conduct of people principally results
from their class interrelationships.
Thus, photographing separate actions and the various behavior of people on film, we
record the real material which surrounds us. Having recorded this material, having shot it, we can
show it on the screen. But this demonstration can be accomplished by various means. Before it is
possible to show the different pieces photographed in reality, it is vital to edit them, to join them to
each other so that the interrelationship demonstrating the essence of the phenomena around us.
The artist's relationship to his surrounding reality, his view of the world, is not merely
expressed in the entire process of shooting, but in the montage as well, in the capacity to see and to
present the world around him. A variety of social encounters, a class struggle takes place in reality,
and the artist's existence within a particular social class infl----ences his world-view. Artists with
differing world-views each perceive the reality surrounding them differently; they see events
differently, discuss them differently, show them, imagine them, and join them one to another
differently.
Thus, film montage, as the entire work of filmmaking, is inextricably linked to the artist's
world-view and his ideological purpose.
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S. M. Eisenstein, during one of his lectures at the State Institute of Cinematography, presented a
particularly vivid and interesting example of various different approaches to montage. Imagine
that in a period of two or three days a series of events takes place throughout the entire world.
These events are recorded by reporters, and news about them is published in various newspapers.
We are aware that both capitalist and communist newspapers exist. The very same events that have
taken place during the given three days are printed in both the capitalist and communist press.
Even if these events are printed without commentaries, without editorial explanations and
commentaries, but simply as a "dry chronicle," one's relationship to them, that is, the political
world-view of the editor of the paper still determines the montage of one or another paper. In a
capitalist paper all the events would be edited so that the bourgeois intention of the editor, and
accordingly, of the paper, would be maximally expressed and emphasized through the character of
the montage of the events, their arrangement on the newspaper page. The essential
exploitativeness of the capitalist system would be clouded over in the bourgeois paper in every
conceivable way, with the evils of the system concealed and the actuality embroidered. The Soviet
paper is edited completely otherwise: the information about these very same events would be
edited so as to illuminate the entire condition of things in the capitalist world, to reveal its essential
exploitativeness, and the position of the workers as it is in reality. It can be proved, with the facts
related to each other in this fashion, that the ideological sense of these facts would be differently
apprehended by the reader of the paper. In the communist paper the class nature of the fact will be
revealed, while in the bourgeois press this nature will be fogged over, perverted.
Thus, based on this example, it becomes clear that montage (the essence of all art) is
inextricably tied to the world-view of the person who has the material at his disposal.
The account is evident to everyone. But in the beginning of my work in cinema the
question of montage, the questions of aesthetic theory generally, were questions which were
substantially murky for me, and I did not connect them with class interpretation, with the
world-view of the artist.
In order that the development of my artistic direction, and the direction of my comrades
who worked along with me, be clear, I shall describe my relationship to montage starting with the
first steps on my work in film.
I began to work in the cinema in 1916. We were extremely helpless artistically at that time.
The cinema was only halfway toward being an art form at that time, and, honestly speaking, it
didn't really exist at all. We knew and heard nothing about montage. We only wondered about how
to approach this new cinematographic art, so as to learn truly how to work with it artistically, so as
to learn how to understand it seriously.
The war was still going on in 1916 and the international marketplaces were closed off to
Russia. Because of this, Russian cinema began to develop quickly and independently. Swirling
around the films were discussions, disputes, analyses; film gazettes and journals began to appear;
in the pages of the theatrical journals a theoretical dispute emerged. The argument was whether
film was an art form or not. We--the young generation of filmmakers--engaged in this dispute with
the most active participation, despite the fact that we had no arguments, no evidence that film was
an art. It was these disputes that led to the beginning of the genesis of the theory of montage. We
developed a series of discussions and debates on the theme of montage theory, and in a few years I
began the book which is titled Art of the Cinema. It was published still later, in 1928, and
subsequently it became an example of major arguments, major studies. Because of its foundation
the book was deeply erroneous.
Since we ourselves did not know how to orient ourselves in the cinema, nor what cinema
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was--whether it was an art form or not--we decided to direct all our attention to motion picture
production. We frequented motion picture theaters and looked at everything, whatever films were
on the screen, and furthermore, we did not simply look at them, but we examined them with an eye
toward their class appeal.
Dividing the theaters into those in rich bourgeois neighborhoods and those of the working
classes, we noticed that in the central theaters viewers' reactions to films were more reserved than
in the working class theaters around the city's edge. And it was extremely important, during our
investigation, for us to locate those isolated moments in a film which elicited a viewer's reactions
to the particular action he is shown. It was important for us which films the viewer watched
attentively, the particular moment the viewer would laugh, sigh, or groan. It was likewise
important to us what was happening on the screen at that moment, how the film appeared to be
made in that section, how it was constructed. Films made in different countries are differently
perceived by the audience.
First of all, we divided the cinema into three basic types: the Russian film, the European,
and the American. (In the European cinema at that time, films made by the Swedish firm,
"Nordisk,” were quite popular. That firm’s films in no way resembled the European-type films, but
resembled the American films much more.) When we began to compare the typically American,
typically European, and typically Russian films, we noticed that they were distinctly different from
one another in their construction. We noticed that in a particular sequence of a Russian film there
were, say, ten to fifteen splices, ten to fifteen different set-ups. In the European film there might be
twenty to thirty such set-ups (one must not forget that this description pertains to the year 1916),
while in the American film there would be from eighty, sometimes upward to a hundred, separate
shots.
The American films took first place in eliciting reactions from the audience; European films took
second; and the Russian films, third. We became particularly intrigued by this, but in the beginning
we did not understand it. Then we began to reason as follows: An argument ensues about
cinema--is it or is it not an art? Let us set up a camera, actors, create decorations, play out a scene,
and then let us examine the photographed segment from the viewpoint of the solution of this
problem. If a good photograph results from the given piece--one which is well-shot, and
beautifully and effectively conceived--then we can say: This is not cinematic art, this is merely an
art of the photographer, the cameraman. If the actor performs well, we can say about the segment:
Whatever the actor can do here, he also does in the theater. Where is the specificity of the cinema
here? If the decor in the film is good, and the work of the designer good, then once more it can be
said that there is not any cinema here: it is the work of the set designer.
However hard we tried, we could not find a fundamental, designative specificity of the art of
cinema. What were we thinking about? We were thinking then about a very simple matter--every
art form has two technological elements: material itself and the methods of organizing that
material.
No art exists independently, by virtue of itself alone.
The problem of art is to reflect reality, to illuminate this reality with a particular idea, to prove
something; and all this is on!y possible when one has something to evidence, and one knows how
to go about it, that is, how to organize the material of the art form. Here the fact emerged that the
artist, perceiving and generalizing reality, performs a definite, purposeful ideological work.
Reflecting in his production an objective reality, the artist must express his ideas, demonstrate
something, propagandize something: while all this is only possible when he has something to
produce, and he knows how to work, that is, how the material of his art is to be organized.
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In the cinema the understanding of the material and the understanding of tha' organization of
this material are particularly complex, because the material of the cinema itself demands particular
organization, demands particularly extensive and specifically cinematic treatment. The cinema is
much more complicated than other forms of art, because the method of organization of its material
and the material itseft are especially "interdependent." Let us say, in the case of sculpture--having
the fact and phenomenal appearance of reality, as well as the artistic idea, illuminating this reality
with a particular object--we take a piece of marble, give it that form which is necessary for the
expression of that appearance of reality, and the result is the production of a piece of sculpture. For
the expression of that phenomenon in painting we take pigments and begin to organize them
according to the demands of the best and most vivid expression of that phenomenon, and we get
the production of a painted art work.
In the cinema the question of the constitution of a film is a far more complicated one. In the
cinema, being possessed of an idea, taking the material--actual life or actors--and organizing it all
by one or another method, is insufficient.
But more about this later. Thus, finding nothing in any particular segment of the film material
specific to our art, consistent with the views of the time, we decided that the specifics of cinema
were con'tained in the organization of the cinematic material (which meant separate shots and
scenes), in the joining and alternation of scenes among themselves, in other words, in montage. It
seemed to us at that time absolutely apparent that the American films achieved the greatest
audience reactions, because they contained the greatest number of shots, from the greatest number
of separate scenes, and accordingly, that montage, as the source of expression, as the artistic
organization of material, affected the viewer more strongly and vividly in American films.
At that time we regarded the artistic effect of American film on the viewer very naively. The real
essence of the American cinema, the real reason for its specific influence on the audience, escaped
us.
But the matter, from my viewpoint, lay in the following: The flowering of American cinema
was the result of the development of American capitalism. Capitalist America was being
constructed, capitalist America developed, because the American society needed strong, energetic
builders, fighters for the strengthening of the relics of capitalism. The Americans needed to utilize
human resources at their disposal for the creation of a mighty capitalist order. This society required
people of a strong bourgeois psychological orientation, and world-view. Thus what was
completely clear was that the task of American cinema was the education of the particular sort of
person who, by virtue of his qualities, would fit in with the epoch of the development of capitalism.
At the same time capitalism inevitably nurtured the development of a proletarian class, and the
consciousness of this class must have
been awakening and developing; and it is utterly apparent that capitalism had to cloud this
consciousness, to distract it, to weaken it. American art inevitably had to become a "consoling" art,
an art that lacquered reality, an art that diverted the masses from the class struggle, from an
awareness of their own class interests; and, on the other hand, it had to be an art that directed
energy to competitiveness, to enterprise, la rded with bourgeois morality and bourgeois psychol-
ogy. That is how the "American detective" was created--the American adventure films. From
one point of view, they brought attention to energy, to competitiveness, to action; they attracted
attention to the type of energetic and strong "heroes" of capitalism, in whom strength,
resourcefulness, and courage were always victorious. On the other hand, these films accustomed
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one to bigotry, to the lacquering of reality, "consoling" and educating one to the fact that with
corresponding energy a person can achieve individual fortune, can provide rent for himself, and
can become a happy landowner.
The dramatic line of energy of the competition, the action and victory of those who found
the strength in American films (to achieve their ends), created the rapid American montage of
incidents. The American viewer demanded that directors pack the greatest amount of action into a
given length of film, the greatest number of events, the greatest possible energy, pitted characters
against each other more vigorously, and built the entire construction of the film more energetically
and dynamically. From this point of view, from the viewpoint of the construction of rapid action
montage, American cinema was a progressive "presence" at that time.
In European films, produced in those countries where the growth of capitalism was not so
stormy as in America, where the American struggle for survival did not exist, there were no
conditions for the genesis of a rapid, energetic montage.
Thus the structure of American films of that time, the method of their editing, was, to a
certain extent, a progressive occurrence. That is how we perceived it at that particular time. We
decided that the American system of montage would give us the opportunity in our Futuristic
works "to create" havoc, to break with the old world, the old petty bourgeois morality. That is
where our deepest mistake lay. Perceiving the petty bourgeois axioms of American montage and
American morality in their entirety, we introduced elements of bourgeois art into our own films
unintentionally--a "consoling," bourgeois morality, and so on; and that is why, along with a certain
benefit derived from the uncritical study of American montage, came great harm.
It seems to me that all the errors of my filmmaking during the ensuing years have their
roots in this Period--in the period of a blind acceptance of American film culture. This is
explainable by the fact that, in our time, we were convinced that American montage invariably
inculcated boldness and energy, indispensable to revolutionary struggle, to revolution.
We understood montage futuristically, but when it came to the negative aspects of its
relationship to the bourgeois essence of American films, we were gulled.
I return to our "history." Studying montage we decided that in American films not only did
the scenes change and alternate more rapidly than in European or Russian films, but the majority
of these scenes were likewise comprised of a whole order of elements, of separate pieces, separate
compositions-that is, we classified the internal division of scenes into the now universally familiar
close-up, medium-shot, long-shot, and the rest. At that time this convention was new to us, and it
was most important for us to have discovered it in the American cinema. We could see that in
individual scenes the Americans used so-called "close-ups"--that is, that at necessary, expressive
moments, they showed things in large format, more distinctly, that in a given moment, they
showed only what it was necessary to show. The close-up, the compositional expression of only
the most important and necessary, proved to have a decided influence on our future work in
montage.
The close-up established exceptionally broad possibilities for the future montage
construction of motion pictures. By means of close-ups, we arrived at the study of the potentialities
of montage, we determined what it was possible to achieve through montage, how expressive its
artistic strengths were . . . and a whole order of other crucial and interesting moments for our work.
We ascertained what montage would permit while simultaneously depicting lines of action
in different locations.
* * *
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We likewise decided that montage had an enormous influence on the semantic
comprehension of what is on the screen.
Let us say that an actor is performing some sort of dismal moment; you film his drawn face.
The face is shot in a setting of "dismal context." But there are instances when this face within a
"dismal" scene, by virtue of its compositional properties, is found to be suitable for a cheerful
scene. With the help of montage, this face could be spliced into such a scene, and instances do
occur when a particular performance by an actor is given a totally different meaning through
montage. I recall, even in 1916-1917, how the then famous matinee idol, Vitold Polonsky, and I
had an argument about this property of montage to override the actor's performance. Emphasizing
that, however one edits, the actor's work will invariably be stronger than the montage, Polonsky
asserted that there would be an enormous difference between an actor's face when portraying a
man sitting in jail longing for freedom and seeing an open cell door, and the eepression of a person
sitting in different circumstances--say, the protagonist was starving and he was shown a bowl of
soup. The reaction of the actor to the soup and to the open cell door would be completely different.
We then performed an experiment. We shot two such scenes. exchanged the close-ups from one
scene to the other, and it became obvious that the actor's performance, his reaction of joy at the
soup and joy at freedom (the open cell door) were rendered completely unnoticeable by montage.
We made use of this example to emphasize that, apart from montage, nothing exists in cinema, that
the work of the actor is absolutely irrelevant, that with good montage it is immaterial how he works.
This was incorrect because in a particular instance we have bad dealings with the poor work of an
actor; and, clearly, then, these two reactions are completely different, and it is not always possible
to alter the semantic work of an actor. (In certain instances the cited property of montage can be
used, say, to correct an error, to change a scene, to reconstruct the scenario. It is extremely
important, however, that it be possible and necessary to use this property only if there is a shooting
script, a specific purpose, not in the actor's performance, but in the nature of the filming itself, in
the type of face, or in the social concept.)
In this example, we taught that montage alternations are not only contained in the segments
themselves, but in the very action that is being photographed. Imagine, if you will, that we have an
alternation of segments through montage. I conceive them in terms of a line. (See Fig. 2.)
There are separate marks of A, B, C, D, E, F -- places marking the splices of montage segments,
establishing their interrelationships, their interactions. The rhythm and meaning of the montage is
not only derived from the interaction and interrelationship of the given segments marked on the
line, but the montage also resides within these shots, in the filmed action of the person, for example,
in the actor's performance (this internal rhythm is also apparent in the drawing of the sinusoidal
curve).
Within these segments, the actor somehow conveys himself, performs some sorts of
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emphases through movement; his work has its own montage curve, particularly in montage
interactions and alternations. It is these very alternations, in meaning as in rhythm, which are
inextricably connected with the alternation of the segments themselves--that is, the internal
montage of the construction of the shot cannot be separated from the entire montage construction,
from the montage of the shots. But at the same time, one must not forget that the location of the
shot in a montage phrase is crucial, because it is the position that, more often than not, explains the
essence of the meaning intended by the artist-editor, his purpose (often the position in the montage
alters the content). Let us recall the example of the bourgeois and the Soviet newspapers about
which Eisenstein spoke. The interaction of separate montage segments, their position, and likewise
their rhythmic duration, become the contents of the production and world-view of the artist. The
very same action, the very same event, set in different places with different comparisons, "works"
differently ideologically. Accordingly, a montage of segments in its turn is related to an intra-shot
montage, but at the same time, the shot position in the montage is inextricably tied to the
ideological purpose of direction of the editor.
It is interesting that when the director does not know his work with actors well enough,
when he does not have sufficient command of the technique of this work, he tries to rectify all his
errors and tries to compensate for the inadequacies of his acting with montage; and when the
director constructs the basis of his picture principally on montage, he gradually loses confidence in
his work with the actor. This can be tested in a particularly vivid and revealing example. One of
our distinguished directors--the director Pudovkin, working in his films principally on montage
construction--loses his previous ability to work with actors more and more with each new film;
and Pudovkin generally always worked well with actors. In his own time he had command of
acting technique, but because he often expressed ever more complex situations in his scenarios,
not through the work of a living human being, but through various combinations of montage, it
seems to me that gradually he began to lose the indispensable contact with the actor and the ability
to direct him.
The director can always be put in a situation when it will be necessary for him to work with
poor acting material, when it will be necessary to work with actor-mannequins in typage, when the
person physically fits the role but is unable to perform as an actor. Furthermore, in films with large
formats, in complex films, where there are many performing personnel, where typage is also
important, it is inevitable that scenes are encountered in which one has to work with people who
are unqualified as actors. Doubtless, the work of such an accidental actor (not an actor but a type)
will be very poor in quality, and it is here that the role of montage, correcting and adjusting the
actor's job, is highly significant. In the example of' the selfsame Pudovkin, we can see how people
who are utterly unable to work as actors, demonstrate what Pudovkin required, performing
adequately in a whole host of scenarios and thematic situations.
We must remember once and for always that all artistic sources are fine for the
achievement of a correct ideological position in a film, and that is why, when a vivid expression of
an idea must be achieved through montage above all, one must work "on montage," and when an
idea must be expressed through the actor's work above all, one must work "on the actor."
At all events, one must study montage, one must work on montage, because it has an
extraordinary effect on the viewer.
In no case should one assume the entire matter of cinematography to be in montage. And
when we conduct a brief survey of the material of cinema, because it is filmed in shots, we will see
that film material is so varied, so complex, that the quality of films never depends entirely on
montage. It is determined (by the way of the ideological purpose) by the material itself, especially
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since the material of cinema is reality itself, life itself, reflected and interpreted by the class
consciousness of the artist.