“Battleship Potemkin” directed by Sergei Eisenstein (1925) is one of the earliest montage film where the film was edited in such a ways as to produce the greatest emotional response (Quoted from Wikipedia). From the view of overtonal montage, the entire film allows the audience to see clearly with whom they should sympathize. In this film, the audience expressed their sympathy, pain and sad feeling which established the subdominant mood that take place for even more complicated meaning.
Intellectual montage is shown in Odessa Staircase episode in which Tsarist soldiers massacre the Odessans. The scene in the black and white film is the massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps. the shots showing Tsar’s soldiers in their white summer tunics marching down an endless stairs (Primorsky Stairs) in a rhythmic, machine-like fashion, firing into the crowd combining with other shots such as Cossacks charges the crowd at the bottom of the stairs as well as the shots where a mother pushing an infant in a baby carriage falls to the ground.
All the shots when combined together, it eventually creates a scene telling the audience that there is chaos happened in that particular location. It creates sad emotion and pain feeling to the audience as they predict “death is coming”.
We can see that there is revolution of soviet montage after the production of early films. After the Soviet revolution (1955), the Primorsky Stairs had been renamed Potemkin Stairs in the way they want to honor the 50th anniversary of the film “Battleship Potemkin”. However, the Potemkin Stairs were given back their original name, the Primorsky Stairs after Ukrainian independence. In fact, most of Odessites know and refer to the stairs by their Soviet name.
Soviet montage has been widely used in contemporary films and it gives a huge impact and slightly more advanced compared to early films. In contemporary films, the technique of soviet montage is always applied to improve psychological relationships between the images in the montage of the film. Compared to earlier soviet montage films, soviet montage technique had inspired many of the well-known filmmakers which had successfully created many soviet montage films. In fact, we can see there is revolution and had impact on the audience. The audience are usually entertained through the soviet films. The use of soviet montage has become so important that it plays a central role in the films today.
“Requiem For A Dream” directed by Darren Aronofsky (2000) is a film that shows the drug-induced utopias of four individuals where their addictions eventually become stronger. The entire film is showing ‘addiction’ from the characters feelings and emotions as well as soviet montage. Drug is the main source for them to achieve their dream. For example, Sara Goldfarb consumed weight-loss pills in order to fit into her old dress to be on television. However, she ignored Harry’s warnings about the pills that contained amphetamine addiction because she insists that the great opportunity to be on television has given her a reason to live.
In terms of the images, the quality of pictures is good and pretty. When you watched it once, you feel to watch it again. In this film, the images and impacts are hard to predict. It consists of most disturbing motion pictures about drug addict. The film portrayed the individual emotional core and how characters self-destruct.
From the view of mise-en-shot, various shots are been used in the film such as parallel editing, split screen, top view, extreme close up, fish eye view, time lapsed photography and the use of filters.
Tonal montage is used in this film where emotional meaning of the shots is used to establish the dominant mood. For example, Sara is so desperate to appear on television therefore she went for diet by consulting doctor which eventually move to quick cut showing addiction, trippy feeling of addiction. Her depress feeling was totally dominate the entire film.
Besides that, intellectual montage also shown in the film where conflicting shots are made to provide the meaning behind. Audience will get to know what the scenes all about are once they watch the continuous scenes and combined them together. One of the example in this film is there are few shots of drugs, genes, lighter, bubbles, syringe, boiling glucose as well bottle and pill showing that Harry is having drug hallucination.
Other than that, when Sara is consuming drug pills for her diet plan, there are separate shots comprising cup, grapefruits, eggs and refrigerator where when all the shots are combined together, the audience can clearly seen the process of Sara’s diet.
“Spiderman” directed by Sam Raimi in 2002 is the firsts film of the Spider-Man film series based on the fictional Marvel Comics (Quoted from Wikipedia). In this film, intellectual montage had been widely used. The first example is there are a few seconds’ shots showing the picture of spider shadow, bone membrane, DNA indicates that the main character, Peter Parker was bitten by the spider and he is suffering from pain.
Moreover, “Spiderman” is not only appeared in film but it has also appeared in comics, novels, colouring books as well as cartoons. In another word, this film has slowly expanded to other media especially print media. Revolution is clearly shown here in terms of channel of publishing which includes printing and broadcast media.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King(2003) directed by Peter Jackson. There is a tonal montage falls on a scene to describe a character’s emotion and mood.
In the castle scene, the king, Denethor is having delicious meals and asking Pippin to sing a song for him. Then extreme close-up of Denethor is eating and the food sauce is squeezing out from his mouth, this shows that how selfish of Denethor is. Jump into close-up of the war horses legs running and close-up of the armies and horses of Minas Tirith running towards to the Orcs’ camp. The Orcs appear in their camp and prepare for war. Back to extreme close-up to Denethor is eating peacefully. In contrast, close-up of Faramir on horse is going to fight for the war. Back to the castle, Pippin singing, he hopes from the song lyrics to wake Denethor’s mind up. Then, the war begins. Close-up of Denethor’s hand is separating the dump stick with the chicken and the mid-shot of horse running. This contrast has shown that the armies and horses may like the chicken, died with uncompleted dead body. Jump back to the close-up of the Orcs prepare to release the arrow to shoot, and the horses running. Back to Pippin singing, and jump to the Orcs start to shoot, then extreme close-up of Denethor’s mouth with the excess chicken’s blood, Pippin cries. In this series of shots has shown that the armies sent to the war may die with bloods and how Pippin feels worried, hopeless, and sad about Denethor selfishness.
In this tonal montage, Denethor only cares about himself, worries about Aragorn and Gandalf try to depose him. He never cares about his people in his country and his son, Faramir. He enjoys his meal but he does not care and worry about the armies who sent out to save his country, they may have danger and they may die in the bloody war.
This montage describes the characters feelings and minds. Moreover it also describes how worried of Pippin to Faramir and the armies sent out to the war. The tonal montage also describes the complicated mood, feelings, and conditions in the scene.
2012, (2009) directed by Roland Emmerich. There is a scene which that Jackson, Kate, Gordon and their children are trying to escape from the “yellow stone” by plane. The Yellowstone Caldera erupts and explodes. The stones are blasting everywhere with fire. Gordon is controlling the plane, the blasting stones are exploding everywhere with a high rate of speed, it seems to describe that how nervous of them that they are trying to escape as fast as possible. The explosion is so huge and this has describe how fear they are in the Yellowstone area. When the plane of Gordon is entering into the exploded ash cloud area, the shots in the plane suddenly turns into dark, this has meant they feel hopeless and feel that they may die. After they have successfully escaped from the exploded ash cloud area, they saw the sunlight, this has shown that they have hope to live again and they leave death further away from Yellowstone.
The Day After Tomorrow, (2004) directed by Roland Emmerich. There is a bird eye shot of the busy New York City. Then, it jumps into shot in the busy street with cars honking everywhere. The dog is barking. There are a lot of birds are flying all around the sky. The people along the street look upon to the sky with curious faces. The birds flying along the city. Pan down to a zoo where the sea lion is making noise. Continue into the bears area, the bears roaring in their cages. The wolves are roaring and biting the cages. This whole series of short shots have described that the animals have sensed the end of world is coming.
In a nutshell, montage has its own creativity to have more imagination spaces for the audiences to interpret by their own feelings. It is able to empower the emotions, feelings, and meanings of the whole entire scene. Different shots can stimulate the audience’s different feelings when they are watching the films. This is how beautiful montages will be in a film.
References
A. Al. IMDb. ( 2011). 2012. Retrieved April 3, 2012, from
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190080/synopsis
Antrisky. IMDb. (March, 2012). The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King. Retrieved March 9,2012, from
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/synopsis
Briant-6. IMDb. (March, 2012). The Day After Tomorrow. Retrived April 4, 2012, from
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319262/synopsis
Wikipedia. (n.d.). The Battleship Potemkin. Retrieved March 7, 2012, from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battleship_Potemkin
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