Classical Realist Texts: American Films between 1916 and 1960

Montage

Table of Contents

1. Mise-en-scène in classical American films

2. Montage in classical American films

Montage in Classical American Films

• As mise-en-scène, montage must help a narrative move on without distracting the attention of the viewer from it.

• Smooth flow from a shot to the next shot

CONTINUITY EDITING

Montage in Classical American Films

Continuity editing

PURPOSES

• To tell a story coherently and clearly;• To map out the chain of actions in an un-

distracting way

Montage in Classical American Films

GRAPHIC CONTINUITY

• Shot-Reverse Shot• The positions of figures, the balance of

compositions, and the set designs must be kept consistent over shot-reverse shots.

• The overall lighting tonality and colour schema must remain constant over shots.

Continuity Editing

Continuity Editing

Non-Continuity Editing

• An example which ignores the rule of continuity editing. Ozu’s films

Montage in Classical American Films

EYE-LINE MATCH

• Shot A presents someone looking at something off-screen; shot B shows us what is being looked at by him/her.

Montage in Classical American Films

• Eye-line match• Alfred Hitchcock’s

Rear Windows (1954)• In one shot Jefferies

looks through his camera and the next shot shows what he is watching.

Montage in Classical American Films

180-DEGREE RULE

• Two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other.

• The axis of action (or centre line, 180º line) is assumed between two characters. Then, this axis of action determines a half-circle, or 180º area, where the camera(s) can be placed to present action.

Montage in Classical American Films

• Examples of the scenes which blatantly ignore the 180-degree rule

• Jean-Luc Godard, A bout de souffle (1960)• Ozu Yasujiro, Tokyo Story (1953)

Montage in Classical American Films

TEMPORAL CONTINUITY:

• Time, like space, is organized according to the development of the narrative.

• ORDER, FREQUENCY, DURATION

Montage in Classical American Films

• ORDER

• Continuity editing typically presents the story events in a 1-2-3 order.

• With the exception of occasional flashbacks.

• Christopher Nolan’s Memento: its narrative told in a backward 3-2-1 order

Montage in Classical American Films

• FREQUENCY• Classical editing also typically presents

only once what happens in the story.• Non-classical montage• Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin

(1925)• Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989)

Montage in Classical American Films

• DURATION• In the classical continuity system, story

duration is seldom expanded or shortened. The story time is equal to the film time.

• Story time is extended in the famous Odessa Steps scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Montage in Classical American Films

• JUMP CUT• A device to compress (dead) time. (A man

enters a large room at one end and must walk to a desk at the other end. Jump cut eliminates most of the action of traversing the long room.)

Montage in Classical American Films

• Unobtrusive jump cut - a cut which does not make the viewer aware of it.

• Excess dead time must smoothed over either by cutting away to another element of the scene or by changing camera angle sufficiently so that the second shot is clearly from a different camera placement.

• Jump Cut

Expressive Montage

• Obtrusive, jugged jump cut• An action is abruptly interrupted before it is

completed or a scene begins in the middle of an action after it has already started.

• Jean-Luc Godard, A bout de souffle (1960)• Lars von Trier, Dancer in the Dark (2000)• One of the avant-garde’s favourite

expressive techniques.• Making artificiality evident.

Expressive Montage

• CROSS CUTTING • Alternates two or more lines of actions taking

place in different places simultaneously. • Cross cutting could be employed to enhance

reality and truth effects, but is generally associated with more formalist editing.

• Edward Yan’s Yi, Yi (A One and a Two, 2000)• Francis Ford Coppola, Godfather

Expressive Montage

• David Lean as a master editor

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)• Formative editing jumping thousands of miles

in space over two shots

Expressive Montage

• The most audacious editing

2001 Space Odyssay • Time travels million years in one editing.