Sergei Eisenstein's Theory of Montage - Essay Example

His film theories have been assimilated by collecting and analysing drop by drop the essence of knowledge ranging from Pavlovian psychology to linguistic theories of that period to constructivist ideas on visual arts and sculpture in particular and to the bio-mechanics theory evolved by Mayerhold in the field of acting. Also his film theories had been nourished by the fountains of Hegelian dialectics, various schools of Europian art and basic conceptions of Europian music and literature. (Harcourt, 1974, p.37) Eisenstein’s major film theories are weaved around a basic concept in film making, namely montage.

Montage is a French word and the meaning of this word is merely editing. The process of joining together the pieces of film is the idea that is conveyed by this word. The beginning of the history of montage can be summed up in these words; “Edwin. S. Porter discovered the possibility of creating narrative structure by inter-cutting sequences, thereby allowing different elements of story to coexist in an illusion of simultaneity. D.W. Griffith further developed and refined the technique, “invented” the close up and perfected parallel montage, the fundamental element of film narrative construction in which two events separated in space but co-existing in time are paralleled to one another for contrast, suspense and tension.

” ( Kolker, 1983, p.15). The American film director D.W.Griffith was the first to make a powerful use of montage in films. His film, “The great train robbery” produced in 1903 was a classic and powerful example of montage editing. In this film, when persons went out of a door in one location and then another shot was shown in which they entered another location, the viewer arrived at the inference that they entered directly from one to the other location. Thus for the first time film showed that space and