Use of Soviet Montage in Strike 

‘Strike’ is Sergi Eisenstein’s first full-length film, released in 1925. ‘Strike’ is a silent film about the workers at a factor

As well as that, Eisenstein uses Montage in order to show multiple events that are occurring at the same time. For instance, when the workers are revolting against the factory, the shots we are shown keep switching between two of the workers having a fight with one of the owners, while we are also shown all the workers running out of the factory and becoming free. 

Cinematography and editing are presented in Breathless, (1960) by Jean-Luc Godard, by using multiple techniques. This includes jump cuts and making scenes longer than standard. Godard creates this unconventional timing in the scene where the characters, Michal and Patricia, are driving in the car and several jump cuts are used.

These jump cuts are inconsistent and appears to be unconnected and random. This creates the Brechtian technique, used in theatre, which reminds the audience of the fact they’re watching a movie. This was also used in the scene where Patricia waits in the taxi while Michal gets out to speak to a man. The usual way of presenting this scene would be to have the camera follow Michal and allow the audience to hear the conversation however instead, Godard had the camera remain inside the taxi and have the conversation appear as a mix of ambient noises to show it from the perspective of Patricia because she, nor the audience, can hear what’s going on.

The “pointless” jump shots were unusual because although Michal was continuously talking, and Patricia hadn’t changed positioned, the jump shots still persisted. It is strange due to the purpose of jump shots being to cut to the next scene, although the scene still took place normally. By disconnecting the audience from the film, it allows them to understand it better and observe from better outlook. By being emotionally involved in a film, you allow your emotions to distract you from the real message behind the story. By feeling what the character’s feel, your reliable outsider’s perspective is gone. Another reason for these random jump cuts was because Godard was told to make the film a bit shorter.

Due to audience’s during “The Golden Age of Hollywood” becoming used to films ending with the protagonists having a happy ending, Breathless stood out even more because of Michal’s death, showing the opposite of what you would expect out of the film. Another way that Breathless was so different was that, due to a low budget, they replaced the idea of a constructed set with a real street in Paris in the final scene. These features, among others, were all reasons as to how French New Wave changed cinema.

Strike (1925, dir. Serge Eisenstein) is a silent film. It was created during the rise of the soviet union and tells the story of one of the workers. The way he does this is by featuring different soviet montage techniques. This includes Metric Editing which is a technique in which lengths of shots make the tempo of the scene. This is used at the start of the film where this strike was being organised

To increase the tempo of the scene, he quickly cuts between the factory worker’s faces with only a second in the shot for the audience to process what’s happening. This is barely any time at all, which only speeds up the scene and creates a sense of chaos and panic and gives the audience a sense of urgency; which correlates to what the workers are feeling.

To allow the audience to understand each of the characters, Strike uses the intellectual method of editing when the agents are being introduced. In this scene, it cuts from pictures of animals, to the pictures of their faces, and then reveals their code names. This creates an understanding as to why they were named after the animals they were. He fades the animals’ faces into the characters to make the comparison obvious, and then traits that the character has that the animal also has will seem more noticeable to the audience.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920, dir. Robert Weine) was created in Germany by a film studio known as Decla. It is a well-known silent horror film that influences many other films, including some in modern day cinema as well as film noir in the 1950’s-60’s.

In this scene, you are able to see where these strips of light have been painted on the floor. It was made in the period of German Expressionism which allows this to show the genre of the film. One feature that is shown is the Distorted Landscapes, which is prominent in this shot. The set appears disoriented due to the slanted window which, again, accentuates the context of German Expressionism, however this could be viewed as a foreshadowing of the fact that this story was told by a mental patient with a disoriented mind. This warped appearance allows the audience to see things through the mind of the mental patient. This twist ending was what made The Cabinet of Dr Caligari a cinematic breakthrough, due to the unreliable narrator and the plot-twist.

In this film, an “Iris Wipe” is frequently used which is an editing effect that typically closes the iris of a camera and then slides a piece of card over it to make the shot cut to black. This technique was used in the shot where Francis tells the story about the fair. In this flashback scene, the iris cut shows the audience that it is a flashback scene and creates a surreal like feeling to the scene to make sure that the audience is aware that it’s a memory. This film had no outside shots and was produced entirely on made up sets which means that they used artificial lighting. This led to them painting strips onto the sets of light and dark in order to present shadows and contrast.

The characters’ emotions had to be cleverly expressed, due to the fact they couldn’t talk, and also highly detailed. Weine found a way to show how each character was feeling, in this film, by the use of makeup. When Cesare is first exposed to the audience, his dramatic makeup is emphasised in the close-up where he is first revealed. The dark eyes and lips establish him as the villain, and create a creepy feel to the audience. The Mise-en-scene in this film was used as expression in order to create emotions that can’t be presented through speech to the audience.

Breathless Task

The use of editing in Strike (1925, Sergei Eisenstein) was heavily used in order to tell the tale of the factory workers and it used Soviet Techniques like Montage heavily in it.

One of the main themes from the film, comes as the form of a clear social divide. The workers are seen as worlds away from the bourgeois, perhaps representing the widening gap between the classes at the time. Audiences would relate to this, regardless of their class because this idea was actually happening within the society at the time of the tsarists regime, which was with living memory of the majority of people  A parallel montage is used to show a happy scene of the proletariat eating. This shows how the proletariat work together and a bond which works well particularly with the proletariat at the time of the film’s release. Although they did not have much money, they had love which is shown by their clear happiness.

Next, we are shown a similar scene where the bourgeois  also eat breakfast. However, they are shown without family to represent their selfish greed leading to a lonely life of isolation. This shows of how greed is evil and that it corrupts people, leaving them by themselves, isolated. This montage is significant because it shows a clear divide, this is more important for the audience at the time because their emotional investment in the film would increase because they are understanding and first-hand experiencing this social divide.