Editing (1)
Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin

Steven Shaviro
October 19, 2011

Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948)

• Soviet film of the 1920s: Cinema & Russian Revolution
• Eisenstein's earlier works (silent, experimental)
• Strike (1925)
• Battleship Potemkin (1925)
• October (aka 10 Days That Shook the World) (1928)
• The General Line (1929)
• Eisentstein's Later works (sound, less experimental)
• Alexander Nevsky (1938)
• Ivan the Terrible, Parts 1 (1944) & 2 (1958)
• Eisenstein as film theorist:
  • Montage: conflict & dynamism

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

• Based on real events: failed revolution of 1905
• Political propaganda
• Individual lives, swept up in History
• A drama of mass action (no individual heroes)
• Nonactors, appearing against naturalistic backgrounds
• Use of montage
• Repeated images: the sailor smashing the plate
• The lion statues
• The Odessa Steps

The Odessa Steps (1)

• Long shots vs. close-ups
• Soldiers vs. the people
• Crowd vs. individuals
• Conflicting movements & rhythms
• Different camera angles
• Troops march & people flee, left-right, down steps
• Groups going up steps, right-left, to meet troops
• Precision of troops vs. chaos of people fleeing
• Jump cuts, reaction shots

The Odessa Steps (2)

• Average shot length: 52 frames (just over 2 seconds)
• Dilation of time (sequence is far longer than actual event would have been)
• Rhythm of scene (fast & frenetic, with pause in the middle)
• Individual dramas, standing out from the crowd
• Mother carrying injured son
• Drama of the baby carriage
• Woman with glasses

Basics of Editing/Montage

• The relation of shot to shot (or of image to image)
• Putting together individual pieces of film to create a larger structure
• Editing as the syntax of film: creates meaning by combining or juxtaposing shots
• Editing both divides (ruptures continuity) and unites (re-establishes continuity)
• Optical effects: shots linked via fade-out, fade-in, wipe, dissolve
• The CUT: the most common means of joining shots

Levels of Editing

• Relation of individual shots
• Shots together ===> Sequence
• Sequences together ===> Scene
• Scenes together ===> Narrative
• Systems of editing for organizing the film as a whole
• "Invisible Editing": the Hollywood Continuity System (to be discussed next class)
• Alternative continuity systems (Ozu)
• "Chaos cinema": disjunctive action editing today
• Eisenstein and Soviet montage

Powers of Editing

• Editing produces relationships
• Editing can mimic the way we look at the world, directing our attention from one object to another
• Editing can also give us forms of perception that go beyond what we see in reality
• Consider the difference between:
• Seeing an action in one continuous shot
• Seeing the same action in a series of separate shots
• Analyzing a complex action, by breaking it into parts
• Putting actions & behaviors in relation to one another & to their environment
• Context is (almost) everything.

Editing Relations

• Breaking down an action into a cause-and-effect sequence
• Showing different perspectives on the same event
• Leaping from one space to another
• Leaping from one time to another
• Unlike some other aspects of filmmaking, editing is radically different from how we "naturally" see the world...
• ...yet we have no difficulty in making sense of a film that consists of 800 or more separate shots

Basics of Editing: The Cut

• The CUT: the break between two shots from two separate pieces of film
• Cuts usually follow a logic of action, interest, or emotion
• From subject of action to object of action
• From act of looking to thing being looked at
• Back and forth, as in a conversation
• From the establishing shot of an entire scene, to close-ups of important parts of the scene
• Crosscutting and parallel editing
• Shock cut: a jarring juxtaposition of unrelated images
• Jump cut: an abrupt cut that violates time continuity

Patterns of Editing: Space and Time

• Cutting establishes spatial continuity
• Sequences shot separately seem to fit together
• The Kuleshov Effect
• We mentally relate a reaction shot to the previous shot
• Part for whole: in the absence of an establishing shot, we infer the spatial whole from the parts
• Temporal Relations
• Editing establishes time sequence (linearity, simultaneity, flashbacks and flashforwards)
• Manipulation of time through editing (contraction or expansion of time)

Other Editing Patterns

• Nondiegetic inserts
• Flashbacks and flashforwards
• Montage sequences
• Abstract editing
• Graphic match, linking otherwise unrelated shots
• Match on action: continuities of movement
• Rhythmic editing: patterns of shot duration
• The norm: series of shots of similar duration
• Gradually increase or decrease shot duration
• Fast cuts in action sequences
• Rhythms of crosscutting or parallel editing

The Art of Editing: Alfred Hitchcock, The Birds (1963)

• Conversation in the cafe
• Character definition
• Relations between characters
• Society in disarray
• Watching the birds attack the gas station
• Shot/Reverse Shot (the cafe, and the gas station as seen from the cafe)
• Graphic contrast: directions of movement in successive shots
• Alternation of mobility and stasis

The Art of Editing: Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho (1960):
The Shower Sequence

• Surprise: violates narrative expectations
• Rhythm: from quiet/slow to rapid/frantic, and back
• Heavy montage: 87 shots in 45 seconds
• Cumulative power of fragments and repetition
• We don't clearly see the murderer
• Only one shot shows knife actually touching flesh
• Motifs of eye, shower head, swirling water
• Bernard Herrmann's shrieking staccato violins