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Montage-at-a-Distance, or: A Theory of Distance |
A birth without a
bearer: imagine a monster that devours the person from whom he came. Or perhaps
a process in which some die while ignoring the fact that they are giving birth,
while others, while being born, ignore the fact that they kill.
I
am not sure if these are the right terms that capture the essence of this method or theory but, for now, it
seems to me the most accurate definition.
For the phenomenon I want to discuss would
require not only changing established ideas but also our descriptive methods. Our
task is complicated precisely by the fact that, in our attempt to define this phenomenon, we will have to use
descriptive methods already known and
refer to established ideas.
As we all know, a long time ago, when man
wanted to move faster, he invented the wheel. Thousands
of years have passed and man realised that he wanted to move even faster. Then it became
clear that the very same wheel had become an obstacle to his desire to move faster. Why
do I say all this?
Because
many of my colleagues who have seen my films The Beginning aka Beginning (Skisb / Nachalo, 1967) and Us aka We (Menq / My, 1969) think
that, in these films, I resurrect or repeat the montage principles of the 1920s,
the principles of Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov. Similar ideas could also
be found in some film reviews published in the Soviet press and abroad.
This
is how I can answer that charge. Everything that could help me to express my
feelings and thoughts on screen has always been inspired by the best that not
only Eisenstein and Vertov created, but also by my direct and indirect mentors:
Sergei Gerasimov, Mikhail Romm, Sergei Yutkevich, Leonid Kristi, Sergei Parajanov,
Grigory Chukhrai, Ingmar Bergman, Alain Resnais, Akira Kurosawa, Pier Paolo Pasolini,
Stanley Kubrick and others.
Vertov
and Eisenstein were not my starting point; rather, I have come to formulate
similar principles as a result of my own work. Deep inside, I feel that I do
not repeat or imitate their principles, but rather try to do something of my
own.
And only gradually
I have come to realise how my conception of montage is different compared to
that defined by the montage theories of the 1920s.
I
would not like to proclaim banalities here, but I have to refer to some rather
familiar facts – since the distinctions I want to elaborate are
so fundamental that they require critical comparison with the foundational
principles of Vertov’s and Eisenstein’s montage theories.
***
As
we know, any kind of artwork has a form. But the laws for the creation of that
form, and therefore the laws determining its perception, are different for the
various arts.
So,
the works of spatial arts (graphic arts, painting, sculpture, architecture) are
perceived through our vision, and
their form, at any moment, can be wholly grasped. The general contours of the
visual art form are, as a rule, grasped before we can see the details.
Form
in other arts, such as literature and music, on the contrary, develops in time.
That is why, in these arts, we grasp the whole gradually, in our mind, out of
their details. The details appear one after another and merge themselves into a
whole, thanks to the necessary collaboration of memory. Here, as is well known, the general contours, as a rule,
are established only after the details are grasped.
As
to cinema, it relies simultaneously on the resources of both the spatial and
temporal arts.
But
we must not confuse, either in theory or in practice, this combination of
resources with the mechanical sum of the different elements of the different
arts.
Already
at the beginning of the 1920s Vertov wrote:
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We do not object to cinema’s undermining of
literature and the theatre; we wholly approve of the use of cinema is every
branch of knowledge, but we define these functions as accessory, as secondary
offshoots of cinema.
The main and essential thing is:
The sensory exploration of the world
through film. (1)
He
urged filmmakers:
– to flee –
out into the open, into four dimensions (three + time),
in search of our own material, our meter and rhythm. (2)
Montage
has emerged as the most important and precise instrument for the organisation
of cinematic material. If film directors and theorists of early cinema saw montage
as a means for the mere presentation of events on screen, Vertov and Eisenstein
demonstrated, respectively, its possibilities as a method of ‘organisation of
the visible world’ (3), and its importance as the ‘basic nerve’ of a ‘purely
cinematic’ realm. (4) ‘Cinema’, wrote Eisenstein, ‘is, first and foremost,
montage’. (5)
As
he developed the principles of sound cinema, Eisenstein introduced the
fundamental principle of the contrapuntal union of image and sound. In his theoretical works he strove ‘to find the key for the commensurability between a
musical sequence and a sequence of images.’ (6) Vertov formulated a similar
principle:
A sound film, not a soundtrack added to a silent film.
A synthetic film, not sound plus image. It
can’t be shown one-sidedly – in images or in sound alone. The images, in
this case, are only one facet of a many-faceted work.
[…]
The result is a third composition that is
neither in the sound nor the image but that exists only in the continual interaction of sound recording and image. (7) (I emphasise
this final phrase.)
Vertov
thought that reality could only be truly grasped cinematically through the
documentary record of actual facts. He
called acted cinema ‘theatre restored’. (8) Eisenstein believed cinema has the right to use any kind of material, and
can go ‘beyond the played and the non-played’. (9)
Us was conceived and filmed by me as a feature film. Unfortunately, feature films are commonly understood as films in which individual characters are interpreted by actors. But the concept of the feature film is wider and richer than the concept of non-documentary film. (10) Even the philosopher Nikolay Chernyshevsky said that ‘to draw a face wonderfully’ is not the same as ‘to draw a wonderful face’. (11) In the same way, in the assessment of the aesthetic value of a represented object, there is room not only for the ‘who’, the ‘ what’ and the ‘what for’, but also for the ‘how’.
In my film no acting can be seen, and the particular
trajectories of people’s lives are not shown either. All this is the outcome
of a conscious decision in terms of directing the film and staging its
dramaturgy. The film hinges on a certain compositional principle, on
an audio-visual montage, without the assistance of any kind of verbal narration.
It is almost impossible to express in words the content
of such films. They exist only on screen; one must see them. But, since the form of any art work expresses its content, and the
unity of both is always determined by the coherence of the
worldview
of the author, I will try to explain here the ideas and
conceptions that guided me throughout its making.
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1.
Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, trans. Kevin O’Brien, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984), p. 14. The material for this book is drawn from
Vertov,
2.
Ibid., p. 7.
3.
Ibid., p. 72.
4.
S.M. Eisenstein, ed. & trans. Richard Taylor, Selected Works – Volume I: Writings, 1922-34 (London: BFI
Publishing/Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 150.
5.
Ibid., p. 138.
6.
Eisenstein, ed. & trans. Jay Leyda, The
Film Sense (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), pp. 67-109.
7.
Vertov, Kino-Eye, p. 243.
8.
Ibid., p. 101.
9.
Eisenstein, Selected Works, pp. 101-6.
10. Translator’s note: Pelechian is
playing on a double meaning of the term ‘feature film’ in Russian, which can
also be translated as ‘art film’, but designates the whole domain of feature (non-documentary)
filmmaking. It is in this sense that he emphasises the artistic, aesthetic
value of feature film, often lost in common usage of the term.
11. See his 1853 text ‘The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality’.
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The film title itself, Us, foregrounds the idea
that man comes to understand himself only as
part of a nation, as belonging to his people, to humanity
as a whole. I do not speak here only of
my consciousness as an author, but also about the consciousness of
the people to whom this film is dedicated.
These people are my contemporaries and
compatriots. I tried to construct a composite, montage image of their life on their own land.
Here, of course, there are certain features
similar to some aspects of my previous films: Land of the People (Zemlya
Lyudey, 1966) and The Beginning, in which I tried to create a broad social and political generalisation that
would unite the people represented in them. First, around the idea
of a single working day; second, around the idea of revolutionary history. But, besides these
similarities, there are also differences.
When I began working on Us, I set myself a series of new
objectives that would define its distinctive qualities.
If, in The Beginning,
the dramaturgy was-built
around the movements of human tumults and popular
masses, in this film I tried to get closer to singular individuals, to their souls. However, in this particular case, I did not set myself as a task to show individuals
that were unique. My task, once again, was to
show through a singular individual not only what was particular,
but also what was common to all of them – so that the image
of the represented people was the result of the appreciation of
the typical, and so in the mind of the audience the
image of the people as a whole, not the image of a single individual, could be born. I tried to offer a kind of cardiogram of the spirit of the
people and of the national character.
I decided to reveal the history of a nation
not through the great achievements of the past, but through observation of contemporaneousness, of contemporary man. I tried to draw on those real life events and
circumstances through which historical traditions are shown and perceived
in a more convincing way, demonstrating characteristic behavioural patterns of my people. Obviously, this image of a national
character, created by a montage generalisation, should have geared the ideological content of the film neither toward
nationalistic praise, nor towards the idea of national exclusivity, but towards
sincere patriotic feelings and civil pride.
My task was to discover international values common to all humankind in those national longings
and passions, so that the characteristics of the people represented in the film
would inspire audiences to experience the power and beauty of universal human
love, of unstoppable creative will.
Such were my main aims.
To what degree was I successful in achieving these aims? Am I
satisfied with my results? It is hard to give a definitive answer to these
questions. First of all, a rather long time has passed since I made the film. If
I were to make that
film today, I would do certain things in a very different way. Second,
the film has been repeatedly re-cut, undergoing some changes. I can
positively state that, basically, in the original version, I was able to
achieve all the aims I set myself. It demonstrated that audio-visual montage, without any verbal commentary, can be
successfully used to create a very long (30 minute) film.
The released version retains the fundamental ideological
conception, and the expression of the theme of
the nation that can be understood by all
humanity. Nevertheless, it lost the
poly- and multi-faceted quality of metaphorical personification and, as
a result, its integrity. Its metaphorical
value diminished, even in those moments that are more visible in the
present version. Thus these eliminations have
mutilated not only the form of the film, but also its content.
A few words about the kind of eliminations inflicted on
the film. As I have already said, it rested on the juxtaposition of the projection of bigger-than-life
images of individual persons, and the aggregate
representation of the feelings and conditions of the masses. We were able to film some real
events, through which the creative will of the masses revealed itself. This
footage took a prominent, almost the most
important, place in the film. Unfortunately, this footage had
to be cut out of the film, due to grave political reasons that did not have any relation whatsoever to the film’s aesthetic
value. Instead of the eliminated episodes, we had to
look for other film material which could express ideas about this creative
will. So, for example, shots of men breaking
and carving stone were included in the film.
This treatment of the theme was merely
symbolic in the end, and is much less vigorous than the material in the
first version.
During the process of trimming the film, I established a
cruel law: any
change in the film breaks its balance and initiates a series of other changes. To rebuild one part means rebuilding the
whole.
When I finally
finished the long version of the film, I had to listen to a
series of criticisms and remarks. I must talk about some of them to
make my position clear. This position remains the same across all versions of
the film.
For example: I was told that, in order to depict national specificity, it
would be more appropriate to give more picturesque details of the everyday life
of the people. My critics must surely have been thinking about the preparation of the shashlik, the ‘nerds’ game, and so on. But stringent analysis demonstrates that these exotic details do not correspond to my
aims, since they represent a superficial and impoverished representation
of national specificity. These exotic details
cannot be elevated to the status of
an authentic national tradition, which is determined by inner reason.
Another question that has been asked is ‘Why
are the soldiers protecting the border not shown in your film?’ I
answer that there are no soldiers
protecting the border in my film, and there are also no plumbers – many other people, who work in many other
important professions, are absent.
It is important for me to show creative men, not to
enumerate their professions.
I have been reproached for reminding everyone about the
massacre of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks. What can be said to this? Not
long ago, I learned that one of the members
of the jury of the Oberhausen Film Festival asked his Soviet colleagues: which historical event is shown in the archival material of Us? He was
told that in 1915, when Europe was at war, a
slaughter took place in Armenia in which one and a half or two million people
were killed. He was not aware of this and remained doubtful about the number of
deaths: ‘Are you sure? Perhaps they were twenty thousand? Two million
people, you say? But this is almost half the
people killed in Auschwitz!’ That is correct. When I remind people about this
event, I do not try to focus the attention of the audience on that
concrete fact. I try to highlight the terror caused by the imperialist wars
that force one nation to kill another. The
archival footage included in the
film contains French newsreels of the war, as well as German and British newsreels. In saying this, I
want to stress the idea of the inadmissibility of any hostility between nations, of any kind of genocide. The honour of a
nation does not lie in the extermination of other nations. And this goes
for all nations. So when the film shows the return of the Armenians to the homeland, this archival footage
speaks of the inadmissibility of world wars that take people away from
their lands, from their compatriots. These shots
demonstrate the revival of the nation,
the process of formation of the contemporary qualities of the national
spirit – qualities that develop during the social cataclysms and revolutionary
processes of the 20th century.
***
In selecting the material for this film, the most
important thing was not the factual contents of the shot, but its
metaphoric resonance. The archival footage was complemented by the material shot by my cinematographer so that, in all the
main scenes of the film, there are shots of the masses produced by the
filmmaker. The episode titled ‘The Grand
Burials’ and the final episode referring to repatriation have the same underlying structure.
In
order to maintain the uniformity of cinematography, the footage shot by the DP was reprinted from the negative. And the use of archival footage was relatively
limited.
I
have already said that, in selecting the archival material, the most important condition was its metaphoric
resonance, its expressivity, its capacity to communicate a generalisation.
When the montage was completed, it became clear that medium shots were almost
completely absent from the film, that it was
wholly comprised of long shots and close-ups. This was not a chance
occurrence. I do not deny the role of the medium shot in cinema, and I admit
that its use can be very valuable. But,
looking for the most accurate expression of the idea in my film, I chose another method, and I consistently
refuse to use medium
shots. A close-up, as a rule, is more
expressive than a medium shot, where the object is surrounded by the details of everyday life.
Many people think that a close-up must
not be placed right next to a long shot, that they can be connected only through the insertion of a medium shot in
between. I think this is a myth, an artificial,
normative rule. I am convinced that the
possibilities of montage are boundless. No one can deny that it is completely
feasible to edit a close-up of a
human eye right next to a very long shot
of the galaxy!
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In this comparison immediately the first thing to appear clearly relating to the principal function of montage in our cinema is – not only and not so much to show or to present, as to signify, to give meaning, to designate. (12) |
One of the main issues in my work on this film was the montage of the visual and the aural. I tried to
find the organic unity between the two, so that the visual and the aural can simultaneously
express one and the same image, one and the same thought, one and the same affective sensation. So that the sound
would be inextricably linked with the image, and the image would be inextricably
linked with the sound! My starting point was, and still
is, the fact
that the only justification of the use of sound in my films should
be, in a figurative way, its aesthetic
function. We must
find the critical expressiveness even in ambient noises and, if it
is necessary, we must transform their resonance.
That is why synchronous sound and voice-over commentary remain
absent from my films.
Thus the most important function of
expression of thought is delegated
to montage. Unfortunately, many people define this kind of cinema as ‘montage film’ and, in so doing, they automatically accuse them of some
artistic deficiency and perhaps even
conceptual deficiency. One may as well accuse
music for its musicality; trees for their woodiness; jokes for their lack of seriousness.
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12.
Eisenstein, ed. & trans. Jay Leyda, The
Film Form (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), pp. 237-8. Translator’s note: the William Powell translation of this essay
(‘Dickens, Griffith and Ourselves’ in his version, ‘Dickens, Griffith, and the
Film Today’ in Leyda’s) renders ‘near’ as ‘closely’, and the chain of
italicised words ‘to signify, to give meaning, to designate’ as ‘to mean,
to denote, to signify’. See Selected Works
– Volume III (BFI/Indiana, 1996), pp. 193-238.
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If it were possible to use synchronous
sound alongside the image in such a way that the sound is able to carry its
metaphorical function, it can and must be used. The same can be said with
regards to dialogue and
the use of off-screen commentary: they should aspire to become indispensable elements of the image.
I cannot imagine any of my films without
music. When I write a film script, I must envisage,
from the very beginning, the musical structure of the film, its musical accents, the
emotional and rhythmic character of the music for each sequence. For me, music
is not an addition to the image. It is, first of all, the expression of an idea,
which conveys, in its indissoluble unity with the visual, the meaning of the
image. For me, it is also the music of the form. I mean that the unfolding form
of the musical work depends, at each moment, on the form of the whole, on its
composition, its duration. I have already said that any change or reduction in
any fragment of the film forces me to make other changes, to rebuild the whole
film. Now I want to discuss this in more detail.
Whenever
I cut out this or that fragment of the film material, I had to substitute it.
Not only because of thematic considerations. The duration of the whole film and
the duration of each sequence are determined by the same law. From this point
of view, the film is similar to a musical work. I substituted the material that
was cut with other material, but not because I needed to show a specific fact
at that particular point in the film. For me, it was much more important not to
lose the theme that should he heard in this particular place, with this
particular duration. By eliminating a fragment, the proportions of the film
were broken, the compositional time was broken. In order to save the
compositional line, I sometimes had to insert some neutral material into the
film although, in a figurative sense, it was a material of an insignificant
value. (As examples, I can refer to the shots of the broken-down car, of smoke,
and some others.)
All
this has to do also with the work with the soundtrack. Here, the laws of
compositional time act with the same precision. One must find the exact ‘dose’
of duration and degree of resonance for each acoustic element, and establish
the exact balance of the movement of sounds.
From
the moment cinema acquired sound, many different definitions of the role that
sound plays in a film have been generated. Sound (including music) is seen as an
element of the narrative representation, as an illustration, as an
accompaniment, as a means of creating a certain mood, and finally as a contrapuntal
element. Through my own practice, I have gradually come to conclusion that none
of the above definitions satisfies me, and that the potential possibilities of
film sound are significantly broader and richer. I have always strove to model
the sound/image combination on an analogy not with the physical mixing of
elements, but a chemical reaction. And suddenly I realised that, by trying to emphasise
the value and the expressiveness of sound, I am editing not only the soundtrack,
but also the image – and, in so doing, I violate those montage canons and
methods that I had previously tried to follow.
I
would like to focus the main part of my theoretical work on this ‘deviation’.
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***
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13.
Eisenstein, The Film Sense, pp. 1-65.
14.
Vertov, Kino-Eye, p. 8.
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I define this type of montage as montage-at-a-distance.
Here I will explain the mechanics of montage-at-a-distance using the material of my own films. Such ‘mechanics’ are
determined by a single purpose: to express the ideas that occupy
me, to communicate to the audience my philosophical position.
In Us, the
first bearing element of the montage-at-a-distance appears in
the very beginning. The film starts with a pause that is
followed by a shot of a girl’s face. The figurative meaning of this shot is
not yet clear for the audience; initially it creates only a
feeling of anxiety and meditation. At this moment music
is introduced, and after that comes another pause with a
fade-out. The face of the girl appears again on screen after 500 metres of film, accompanied by the same symphonic accord.
This bearing element of montage is reintroduced for the third time at the end
of the film, in the repatriation episode, but this time only as
sound: the symphonic accord is heard again over the shot of the
people who have exited onto the balcony. This kind of
construction can be understood most easily as a repetition. But their repetition is not the only function of these montage elements.
For
example, in my first film, Mountain Patrol (Gornyp patrul, 1964), which
tells a story of the brave men who, day after day, look after the safe passage of the
trains running along the gorges of
Armenia, this device of shot repetition is also used. The film starts and ends with the same shots depicting
the climbers working in the mountains
with their lanterns against the darkness of the sky. Here again, there is a distance between the shots.
But this distance (as well as
sameness of the shots) does not amount to a montage-at-a-distance effect in this film – only to a repetition, a
return to the initial mood, thus facilitating
its lyrical resolution.
A similar device was used in Land of the People, built on a different montage method: the
principle of the associative collision of the shots, connected by the same
theme. This theme is the endless discovery of the beauty of the world by a man through
his life and work; this theme is deployed through the images of a working day
in a big city.
This film starts and ends with a repeated image of Rodin’s
sculpture ‘The Thinker’; a sculpture, known by all, that has become a symbol of
the eternal expression of human thought.
Besides the function of repetition, which gives to the
film its poetic resolution, it is possible here – potentially – to also
discover the function of working-at-a-distance. When the film ends, the Rodin sculpture
acquires a qualitatively different meaning from the one it had at the beginning;
the final shot seems to open a new cycle of thought, which waits for its
continuation beyond the limits of the film.
With regard to Us,
the repeated montage elements go decisively beyond the limits of the functions
they fulfilled in the films Mountain
Patrol and Land of the People. In Us these elements are entirely
subordinated to the task of supporting the general construction of the montage-at-a-distance.
The shot, shown at a particular point, reveals its
entire semantic effect only some time later, when a montage connection has been
established in the mind of the spectator – not only between the repeated
elements, but also between the material that surrounds them in each particular
case.
So the key bearing montage elements convey only the most
condensed expression of the theme but, at the same time, through establishing
connections across the distance, contribute to the semantic development and
even to the evolution of those shots and episodes with which they had no direct
contact.
Each time, these elements appear in a different context with
a different semantic meaning. And, the most important principle of all: this is
the montage of contexts.
By changing the contexts, we achieve the intensification
and deepening of the theme. And when, at the end of Us, the symphonic accord is heard once again, the meaning of the
image of the girl at the beginning becomes clear.
This triple occurrence (the little girl at the beginning
– the girl in the middle – the people on the balcony at the end) allows us to
see the foundation of its montage-at-a-distance. But in Us there are also other bearing elements, presented in the image
and the sound. These elements appear one after the other in the first half of
the film. I will list them here: the sighs; the sound of the choir; the first close-up
of hands; the image of the mountains. Afterwards, these elements seem to branch
out – some elements of the image and of the soundtrack shift to other segments,
other places and other moments of the action. They extend partially into other
episodes, colliding with other elements and situations. But as soon as the
image of the girl appears for a second time, all these disconnected
elements
are reassembled and, as if receiving a new order,
they follow in a different sequence, in a modified form, to fulfill new functions.
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First enters the choir, then the sighs
(which have transformed into a yell), then the hands and, finally, the
mountains once again.
I want to once again stress: montage-at-a-distance
can be built out of visual elements, and out of sonic elements, as well as from
any assemblage of image and sound. By organising my films around such connections of elements, I hope that
my films themselves become similar to live organisms, supported by a
system of complex inner links and
interactions.
It is easy to see that in Us, the best parts are the first and the third. They are the best precisely because, in them, the montage-at-a-distance works most effectively. In the second part, because of the cutting out of episodes
and the introduction of substitutions, the principles of montage-at-a-distance
do not work. This leads to the weakness of the second part, which turned out to
be the weakness of the film as a whole.
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I think this explains the remarks I
discussed earlier, which spoke not of those insufficiencies that are
present in the film but of those which are, conversely, not present in the film.
So, once the system of montage-at-a-distance
is found, it is henceforth impossible to make any particular change, to arbitrarily eliminate one or another element. The system is
accepted in its entirety, or else rejected in its entirety.
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Some analogies can be found between the interaction
of the elements-at-a-distance I am talking
about, and composition in poetry and music. But these
analogies have an external and, more importantly, a descriptive
character. The way they function is
different in principle, so that the analysis
of such analogies requires special attention and separate, detailed, concrete
discussion.
Here I will elaborate on another essential
feature of montage-at-a-distance. In the system of relations-at-a-distance, not
only the semantic meaning of different shots is modulated; it also seems
necessary to rethink and rename the usual designation of these shots (i.e., wide shot, medium shot, long shot). For example, the final full shot of Us – the people standing on balconies – acquires the function and the resonance of a close-up, because
of the relations-at-a-distance with other shots. The same logic operates in the episodes ‘The Grand Burials’ and ‘The Repatriation’, which assume the individual value of ‘close-up’ shots, although both episodes are
comprised entirely of medium shots. As we
can see, the traditional
designation of the shots – long shot, medium
shot and close-up shot – thus acquires a provisional, unstable character. In each of these cases, any of
these three shots can be given the title of close-up, depending on the task and on the charge that the montage-at-a-distance gives them. As a result, by
changing the place and influence of a shot, the montage-at-a-distance can
lead to the predominance, as well
as changing the balance between shots.
The main, distinctive feature of montage-at-a-distance is that the montage connection is established not only between the isolated elements as such (a point
with a point) but, and this is more
important, between whole sets of elements (between a point and a group, between
a group and a group, between a shot and an episode, between an episode and an
episode). Thus one process starts to interact with another, diametrically
opposite to the first one. I define this fact, provisionally, as a block principle of montage-at-a-distance.
In Us,
the initial episode ‘The Grand Burials’, which is built using various montage
methods (including montage-at-a-distance), takes on the new function of influence-at-a-distance.
We can see this block function when we
reach, in the last part of the film, ‘The Repatriation’. When block episodes
interact at a distance, they reveal, on the one hand, the specific character of
the theme; on the other hand, they give to this theme an unresolved character, as
each episode ends in ‘its own place’, with a question mark.
So, on seeing the burial episode on screen,
we derive from it an autonomous meaning of concrete burials, and we construe
the image of the people in a typical life situation.
The final, repatriation episode also has an
autonomous meaning when we see the concrete fact of the men returning to their
homeland; at the same time, we perceive the image of unity between men and
nature.
But because these two blocks separated by a
certain distance in the narrative are made with the help of the same thematic
elements (in one block, the close-up shots of the hands carrying the coffin,
and the image of the steep and craggy mountains; in the other block, the
intertwined hands in an embrace, and the mountains, not steeping down this
time, but extending upwards), then the interaction at a distance takes place
not only between these elements, but also – with their help –among whole
block-episodes.
As a result, we can see how these episodes ‘erupt’
beyond the limits of their real, autonomous themes and, thanks to the influence
of the block montage, change their individuality – creating a new idea, at the
same time communicating a new nuance, a new understanding, a new resonance, to
each separate episode:
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in the
first case: ‘loss, death’; in the
second case: ‘finding, life’
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This block montage method is also used in The Inhabitants (Tarva Yeghanaknere
/ Obitateli, 1970), as well as The
Beginning.
The Inhabitants is based
on the idea of a humane attitude toward nature and wildlife: ‘Stop, man, and look
around: what have you done?’ It is about the assault of man against nature, and
the rise of the threat of a change in nature’s harmony.
The Beginning is dedicated
to the great revolutionary processes in the social transformation of the world.
It is based on the connections between numerous documents from historical film
archives. Here the method of block influence is used according to other
combinations of elements.
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The first bearing section of the montage comprises a
group of shots: Lenin’s raised hand; the appearance of the title The Beginning; and the images of running
men, from the time of the October Revolution. The second bearing section is represented
by the final episode, where once again the title The Beginning appears, but this time against a background shot of a
multitude of people running, images taken from contemporary news footage of the
social struggle in different countries of the world.
I will not elaborate specifically on other bearing montage
elements here: sonic, as well as visual elements (music, the sound of gunshots,
the image of hands, shots of men hammering, and so on).
Due to the interaction at a distance of these two bearing
blocks, all the individual themes, each separate from the other, are placed in
compositional hierarchies of various kinds and, at the same time, they
constitute an entire whole that carries not only the feeling of deep connection
between the past and the present, but also the idea of the connection between
the present and the future – thus adding depth and nuance to the treatment of
the main idea of dialectical continuity and the infinity of social development.
In this manner, various themes, introduced at different
ends of these films, due to the interaction between the blocks, work as
opposite aspects of the same process.
If, in The
Beginning, I show the gradual development of the life process, from causes
to consequences, in Us the opposite
path is revealed: from consequences to causes. I show in the first place the
event, and afterwards I find the origins of this event, its historical
explanation.
As we can see, in The
Beginning the historical becomes contemporaneous, and in Us the contemporaneous becomes
historical.
Here we can see yet another basic resource that is provided
by the method of montage-at-a-distance.
As we know, Eisenstein, in a critical discussion with
Vertov, set against the latter’s Cine-Eye his own slogan of the Cine-Fist;
against Vertov’s ‘’I see’, his own ‘ I understand’. (15) Those were two
different approaches, two different attitudes toward the conceptual and montage
interpretation of the original cinematic material. ‘Thinking on the celluloid’,
Vertov did not separate himself from direct observation of reality; while
transforming what he filmed into a poetic image, he kept the factual primacy of
the life material. Eisenstein himself created and gave form to the initial
material of his films, already understanding the film at this stage as a secondary
reality, which gave him the possibility of embodying the historical in the
contemporaneous, of interpreting the contemporaneous as historical.
Now we can say not only that Eisenstein’s and Vertov’s
principles were opposites – but that, paradoxically, they in fact agreed with
each other. Both cases spoke, although in different ways, to the system of the author’s worldview as a
measure and gauge of the filmed material.
And the experience of montage-at-a-distance in The Beginning and Us shows, in turn, that the task of conceptual and semantic organisation,
as well as the interpretation of original (primary or secondary) material,
requires not only the Cine-Eye and the Cine-Fist – as the systems of the author’s worldview for
the measurement and evaluation of the filmed material – but also the Cine-Will: that is, the cinematic system or cinematic method for the
measurement of the system of the author’s worldview.
***
In order to more clearly demonstrate the specificity of montage-at-a-distance,
I will present the following diagrams.
If the montage connections, examined from the point of
view of ‘collision’ or ‘interval’ between adjacent shots, can be designated in
this way –
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15. Eisenstein, Selected Works – Volume I, pp. 58-64. Translator’s note: we have adopted
Taylor’s rendering of Cine-Eye and Cine-Fist throughout this text; other
references (such as Michelson) use Kino-Eye, etc.
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–
then, from the point of view of montage-at-a-distance, the
relations between the shots (or blocks) look very different:
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This diagram highly simplifies the real situation, since
the interaction-at-a-distance between shots and blocks occurs over different distances,
through multiple intermediate links, through paths so complex and so full of
twists and turns that it is impossible to grasp immediately the trajectory of
the general form of their common movement. Besides, there is no need to do that
here.
I will say what is most important: montage-at-a-distance
forges the film structure not in the form of a usual montage ‘chain’, nor even in
the form of a combination of different chains, but finally creates a circular
shape or, more precisely, a rotating spherical configuration.
The bearing shots or segments, by representing the more intensely
‘charged centres’ of the montage-at-a-distance, not only interact with other
elements in a linear fashion, but also fulfill a kind of ‘nuclear function’ by maintaining
the bidirectional connection with any other point, along vector lines, with any
other segment of the film. By doing this, they initiate among all the
subordinate links a chain reaction, descending on the one hand, ascending on
the other.
The bearing segments, connected by these lines, create gigantic
circles on both sides, trailing along in their respective rotation all the
other elements of the film. They rotate in colliding centrifugal directions, catching
each other, and seemingly crashing into each other, as do the badly adjusted teeth
of a cog.
Every time, in any position, at any point of screen time,
they constantly change their position and configuration, which creates the
effect of a film pulsating or breathing.
In the montage-at-a-distance method, the interaction
between all the elements of montage happens so fast, instantaneously,
practically simultaneously, that the
measure of speed becomes independent of the measure of the distance between
these elements.
If the method based on the collision of adjacent shots
essentially created distances (or intervals) between shots, then montage-at-a-distance,
by making the shots connect through a distance, intertwine them so strongly
that, in fact, this distance is annihilated.
Montage-at-a-distance is not a trove of ready,
autonomous procedures that can be used in any way whatsoever.
It is a method to express the authorial thought of the
film director, and it can be put to use only in the way required, each time, by
a concrete idea or conception.
One must envisage beforehand – on the basis of a specific
conceptual aim – and one must know which elements can and will interact at a distance,
must know their thematic content. One must plan beforehand all the paths of
their journey, all the means of development, the changes of angles and
coordinates of every kind, that these elements create in each segment of time,
from the starting point to the arrival point.
In short, one must have a clear view of everything from
the beginning, so that one can fully control all the processes and, consequently,
be certain of the course of audience reaction to the film.
The features and traits of montage-at-a-distance that
have become clear have such deep roots that they lay the ground for a new explanation
of the nature of cinema, and of the laws of cinematic art.
For example: the montage-at-a-distance method is based
not on the ‘continual
interaction of sound recording and image’, as
Vertov said (and Eisenstein concurred), but on the constant interaction between
‘diffuse’ processes, where, on the
one hand, the image is disintegrated by
the soundtrack and, on the other hand, the soundtrack is disintegrated by the image.
A reflection of these processes can be traced on screen,
although it is difficult to capture them there.
If we examine it closely, we discover that the image on screen,
as it unfolds detail by detail, cannot be grasped in its entirety before we
make out the details (as is the case with spatial art); on the contrary,
because it is perceived through the eyes, it acquires the contours of the whole
gradually, from the particularities that follow each other and are connected together
in our mind with the necessary participation of memory. And this, as we
know, is characteristic of the temporal arts.
As a result, what emerges is similar to a vision of the
contours of an architectural construction – not in its
entirety, but detail by detail, following one another and connecting into a whole,
not only through the eye but, most important of all, with the help of memory:
not in space, but in time.
The fact that they unfold in time gives instability to
the spatial arts, and on the other hand, the spatial dynamics adds instability
to the temporal arts.
That is why, on screen, ‘hearing’ turns into an unstable
condition of viewing, and ‘seeing’ becomes an unstable condition of hearing.
Thus, such a state of the different elements of a film
which, taken separately, are dislocated from their own ‘territories’ and lack
stability, proves the fact that what takes place on screen is not a direct interaction
between the different spatial and temporal processes, but indeed the interaction
between opposite and unstable processes where, on the one hand, the image
functions as a transformed sound and, on the other hand, the reverse of this
process takes place: sound functions as a transformed state of the image.
Since in montage-at-a-distance the elements of the
spatial and temporal arts, although in an unstable process of disintegration,
never fuse together, retaining a distance between each other, we can see that,
in this case, the cinematic artwork is not built out of the synthesis of the
spatial and temporal arts as such, but rather upon the foundations on which each
of these spatial and temporal arts is based, in its particular way.
In other words: cinema, based on the method of interaction-at-a-distance, cannot be any longer called a synthetic
art, since it does not ‘drink from the waters’ of literature, music and
painting, but rather from the same source that literature, music and painting
themselves do.
It follows thus that the birth of cinematic art cannot
be understood as a synthetic, mechanical or non-mechanical, merger of different
kinds of art.
Cinema is not born from them; on the contrary, these arts
should, in principle, have their origin in cinema – in spite of the fact that
the objective historical process we all know tells us that we had, saw and knew
those who were ‘born’ before we had, saw and knew who ‘gave birth.’
Let us return now to our opening image of the monster
devouring that from which it is born. This image should not strike us as strange
or absurd; rather it is one of the most striking conclusions derived from the
theory of distance.
Both the method and the system of montage-at-a-distance
do not deny or eclipse Eisenstein’s and Vertov’s montage methods, but ‘the
extent of the influence’ of their methods within interaction-at-a-distance is
reduced, and fulfilling a circumscribed, limited function.
I am convinced that cinema, based on the method of montage-at-a-distance,
is capable of revealing and explaining the connections between known and
unknown events of the world around us, connections that could not have been explored
by a cinema based on either the interval theory or the collision theory of
adjacent elements.
Montage-at-a-distance cinema is able also to reveal any
kind of movement: from the lowest and most elementary to the highest and most
complex. This cinema is able to simultaneously speak the languages of art,
philosophy and science.
We can recall here that the very word cinematograph comes from Greek words that
signify the inscription of movement.
***
I consider my film Us,
and those previous to it, to be exploratory works. The method of image creation
that I discovered there, has not yet achieved a complete and finished form in
them. This is precisely why my films do not represent the conclusion of my
exploration, but only a very important stage for me.
Until now, I have been able to work only with
documentary material. In fiction cinema, this experience can achieve persuasion
and verisimilitude in the creation of ambiance and atmosphere, achieve a
dramatic intensity. I believe the way to use the principles of montage-at-a-distance
can be found, and must be found, in fiction cinema. By incorporating acting and
colour into this method, the fiction cinema will help to deploy all the
resources of this method, resources that will no longer be limited to the
documentary medium.
To achieve this, I think it is necessary to use all the
resources of cinema that were discovered by our teachers. But the development
of cinema requires also that new resources of aesthetics expression be found.
It is in this sense that I referred to the old story of
the invention of the wheel.
I want to say by way of conclusion: if Vertov, relying
on his montage method based on the interrelation between adjacent elements, invited
filmmakers to go ‘flee – out into the open’, into the relativity of space and
time (according to Albert Einstein’s theory), then the method of montage-at-a-distance,
based on complex forms of the interrelation of different processes, pushes to
the outermost, into a place where our notions and laws of space and time are
useless; where those who are being born do not know whom they kill, and those
who are dying do not know whom they beget.
This
is a new translation by Julia Vassilieva of Pelechian’s major theoretical work
(first composed and dated March 1971 – January 1972), based on its definitive
version as published in his book Moe Kino (Erevan: Sovetakan Grogh, 1988).
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from Issue 6: Distances |
Original Russian text © Artavazd Pelechian, 1988. This English translation © Julia Vassilieva and LOLA, December 2015. Cannot be reprinted without permission of the author and editors. |