1. What is Cinema? Lecture 4: Dialectical montage

2. Lecture outline 1 Early editing (a gloss) 2 Eisenstein and Soviet aesthetics 3 Cinematographic principle (the ideogram) 4 Constructing conflict: dialectical montage 5 The Influence of Eisenstein: Claire Denis 6 The Limits of dialectical montage: Deleuze/Deren

3. Films referred to: Dziga Vertov (1929) Man With a Movie Camera Sergei Eisenstein (1925) The Battleship Potemkin Carl Dreyer (1928) The Passion of Joan of Arc Claire Denis (1999) Beau Travail Maya Deren (1945) Study in Choreography for Camera

4. 1 early editing Editing enabled the manipulation of space and time: - Continuity editing - Parallel editing

5. Continuity Edwin Porter The Life of an American Fireman (1903) First film to develop a plot using internal and external locations, it used a setting of seven different scenes presented as a continuous story.

6. Soviet Cinema: formalism Cinema is more than simply the mechanical reproduction of reality. It constructs reality for artistic ends. It reconfigures space and time. Film aesthetics can have political effects and implications. Cinema can be a revolutionary medium.

7. Key film formalists: Hugo MUNSTERBERGRudolf ARNHEIM Bela BALAZSSergei EISENSTEIN

8. 2 Eisenstein and Soviet aesthetics

9. Eisenstein in Hollywood

10. Eisenstein in Mexico (1930-1)

11. 3 Cinematographic principle Eisenstein draws on his formative work on Japanese theatre particularly the visual language of calligraphy.

12. From the hieroglyph to haiku to the ideogram.

13. ‘From separate hieroglyphs has been fused the ideogram.’ Dog + mouth = bark

14. Cinematic language splits into two: Denotation – the meaning of a word in relation to an object Depiction – how it is shown or represented

15. Eisenstein borrows from the language of biology: ‘The shot is by no means an element of cinema. The shot is a montage cell’. Cinema = organic forms + industrial forms

16. ‘…from the collision of two given factors arises a concept’.

17. 4 Constructing conflict: dialectical montage

18. Dialectical form (from Marxism and philosophy) Thesis + antithesis = synthesis

19. Nature (organic life) + machine (industry) = cinema as third term

20. 5 The Influence of Eisenstein Claire Denis (1999) Beau Travail - Individual shot sequences move us into different spaces (not continuous POV) - Use of opposites in organic life and the tank to make the viewer think of the soldiers in these terms or a third term?

21. 6 The Limits of dialectical montage: Deleuze/Deren

22. Giles Deleuze Cinema 1: The Movement Image (1983) Cinema 2: The Time Image(1985) ‘From a shock of two factors a concept is born’.

23. Maya Deren (1917 – 1961) American avant-garde filmmaker making films in 1940s - Deren’s film is a dynamic shock to thought in its use of the body to re-write time and space -Oppositional forms are part of the film’s structure, but they are only supporting the continuous movement of the body - Montage here supports continuity despite its provocation to thought