Film and Collision

One of Eisenstein’s major points in his essay is that montage consists in the collision of the film’s various shots, each of which is an instance of montage in itself (“The shot is not a montage element—the shot is a montage cell (a molecule)” – 28). He sets this conception of montage against Pudovkin’s more traditional idea of montage as the gradual building of meaning by adding bricks to the stack of bricks that is a film. Eisenstein’s collision can happen in any number of ways or directions, rather than following a linear path of juxtaposition.

Eisenstein’s montage as collision argument led me to think of other collisions in the cinematic experience that might follow from this foundational collision. The main other collision I can think of is the mass collision inherent in film and the experience of viewing/making it, namely the convergence of: (i) natural phenomena or people/actors; (ii) the mechanical camera; (iii) the director(s); and (iv) the spectator(s). For example, as Eisenstein points out, the intersection between natural phenomena and the director is the camera. This intersection produces the camera angle (“The position of the camera represents the materialisation of the conflict between the organising logic of the director and the inert logic of the phenomenon in collision, producing the dialectic of the camera angle” – 20) that will set up the intersection of the director and spectator, whose every experience (of the natural phenomena/people) must pass through the filter of the camera as an intermediary.

I think the idea of collision is a useful one for conceiving of how films create meaning. When Nature and Industry meet at Art (Eisenstein 24) or art and science make films (Benjamin 806), everybody’s invited to the party. Collisions allow everyone to bring something to the table: phenomena and actors can bring their aura (or not), the director can bring her bias, the spectator his expectations (“we resassemble the disintegrated phenomena into a single whole but from our own perspective, in the light of our own orientation towards the phenomenon” – 17), and the camera can bring its duplicitous friend reality.

There is a meeting point somewhere between the reality the director is trying to interpret or portray (Bazin: for a “dramatic, moral, or ideological” purpose – 174) and the meaning the spectator takes away (passive absorption like Benjamin says: “Reception in a state of distraction” – 809) or seeks out (active). It’s almost as if the director allows the spectator to see what he will in the shot-montage, but the director controls the collision of the overall montage by the shot-montages colliding. After all, the temporal aspect of film exerts a powerful controlling influence on the viewer’s experience (Benjamin: “The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene that in is already changed. It cannot be arrested. Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as follows: ‘I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images’” – 808)

In October, Eisenstein clearly has a Marxist agenda seeping from the seams. Although the message is at times, as Sonora has said, “about as subtle as a hammer to the head,” Eisenstein’s incredibly fast-paced juxtaposition between shots demands greater participation from the viewer just to figure out what is happening, as in the machine gun scene toward the beginning of the scene. If you blink or, God forbid, sneeze, you’ll definitely miss something and maybe even something “important.” Plus, with looking away from the screen, there’s always the danger your head with collide with the viewer next to you, always a dangerous prospect.


Questions & Random Comments:

• If I understood Eisenstein correctly, he doesn’t think films should be trying for realism, which he abandoned after 1924-5 (38) and about which he says: “Positivist realism is by no means the correct form of perception. It is simply a function of a particular form of social structure, following on from an autocratic state that has propagated a state uniformity of thought” (17). However, October begins with an explicit claim to realism, saying “with the greatest realism” and panning itself of as an “ ‘eyewitness’ account.’” I thought it was particularly hard to pin down where Eisenstein wants film to fall on the spectrum from pure reality to pure interpretation of reality. Is this a case of Eisenstein the theorist conflicting with Eisenstein the director? Perhaps another collision…

• Should film do what it is? Kracauer and Eisenstein seem to agree that film should do what it is best suited as a medium to do, be that contact physical reality or lead the viewer to meaning by using montage and individual shots as instances of montage. Can we have artistic films that don’t capitalize on the medium of cinema? Or am I just revealing my own penchant for plot?

• Benjamin claims: “individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to produce” (805). Do you think this is true or possible? When you watch a comedy in the movie theater, do you think you laugh because something is coming up that the director has intended to be funny and most will find it so, or because what comes up is funny?