Conflict and Combination. A Marxist Reading of Film Editing.

      Upon reading Sergei Eisenstein's chapter "Beyond the Shot", I am struck by the implications of film as an extension of the montage and collision of meanings that has permeated human language and art. I saw the logic behind the argument his friend, Pudovkin, put forth about a montage being built brick by brick, but Eisenstein's point isn't about the shots themselves. It is about the relationship the shots have to one another, the conflict between them. We are looking at the space between shots and the spaces between them and where they overlap. 

    Overlaying the shots that a film presents in one's mind creates a diegesis. It evokes a world and emotion that no one shot could accomplish by itself. Much like many artists coming together and painting different parts of a panoramic view, we get more from them combined than we do from any individual. This is an argument, in many ways for fragmentation, but not isolation of those fragments. Funnily enough, Pudovkin may have bolstered this argument in "On Editing" as while he claims that montage is built one shot on top of the other, he demonstrates that editing has an enormous influence on the audience's emotional response and impression. Is editing not the art of joining two shots in a combination that evokes a chosen response? Is it not the conflict that arises between the shots that tell as much or more about the story and the intention of the piece than the shots themselves?Both of these theorists speak of the importance of context.

    Eisenstein's description of montage as conflict reads as rather Marxist. Of course one thinks of conflict theory in sociological terms, the theory that social change only comes about through conflict between the classes. Perhaps true understanding of the diegesis is only obtainable through conflict within the montage. Conflict between shots has everything to do with editing and is a relational state between the shots. 

 Some questions I still have about the text are what significance Eisenstein places, if any, on realism? His preoccupation with kabuki suggests that he values that highly stylized artform over the realism of using the camera in the way Pudovkin suggests we should as a means to offer clear lines of sight and perspectives for the viewer. Though I would argue both live kabuki and edited film manipulate their audiences and, in Pudovkin’s words either “excite or soothe the spectator.”