Soviet Montage

Soviet filmmakers made editing the heart of cinema: two shots collide, and the viewer's mind supplies a third idea.

When: 1924–1930
Where: USSR
Films: 4 · 2 guided
Named by: 8 guides

Where it sits

The first filmsSoviet MontageBritish documentary movement · Direct cinema and cinéma vérité

Context

What was happening

The Soviet Union in the early twenties: revolution won, civil war over, a new state with a great deal to explain to a vast country of many languages, where many could not read. The state backed cinema as a way to reach them, and young filmmakers gathered in Moscow with more ideas than equipment.

They looked hard at American films and their crosscutting, and Lev Kuleshov's workshop turned the question into experiments. Editing, more than acting or sets, came to be seen as the place where a film is truly made. Between 1924 and 1930 they made that belief the subject of their work.

The signature

What you see on screen

1Collision cutsTwo unlike shots meet, and the cut makes an idea neither holds alone.
2Rhythm of editingShots get shorter and faster as tension builds, until the cutting is a pulse.
3The crowdMasses, workers and soldiers carry the story, not one star.
4The camera's eyeOdd angles, double exposures, a cameraman and editing table shown on screen.

The people

Who made it

SESergei EisensteinThe theorist of collision. Battleship Potemkin, October.
DVDziga VertovNewsreel maker and radical experimenter. Kino-Pravda, Man with a Movie Camera.
VPVsevolod PudovkinMontage as construction, shot by shot, around human drama. Mother.
LKLev KuleshovThe teacher whose Moscow workshop tested how viewers join one shot to the next.

The films

Defining films, in order

1STARTBattleship Potemkin1925
Mother
2STARTMother1926 · not on Cinespective yet
3October1928
4STARTMan with a Movie Camera1929

To start with: Battleship Potemkin · Mother · Man with a Movie Camera. Then the rest, in the order they came out.

Its constellation

Where it came from, what it led to

Led to

British documentary movementDirect cinema and cinéma véritéCinema NovoThird Cinema

Open the galaxy of movements

Legacy

Where you still see it

You still see it wherever a cut is meant to argue, not just to connect. The British documentary school of the thirties, with films like Night Mail, turned labour into rhythm this way. Cinéma vérité, Brazil's Cinema Novo and Third Cinema all took something from it. Even The Cranes Are Flying, in nineteen fifty-eight, carried its visual daring back into Soviet cinema.

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