Emotional Combinations in Montage

This article provides an overview of the multitude of ways montage can be used to create meaning and new images within film. Often times montage does not explicitly show an event, but rather it alludes to it. Through this process the viewer is often forced to create the story themselves and make connections implied through the film. The type of montage that stuck out to me most strongly when reading this article after seeing Battleship Potemkin was emotional. In this film strategy, the filmmaker creates a specific emotion within the shot not strictly relying on the image itself but the psychological reaction the viewer will have with the image.
For me, this was used successively but almost to an extreme in Battleship Potemkin. When the militia began to squash the protesters, the peasants and working class became dispensable. The scene itself is dramatic enough with the placement of images of the citizens running away in hoards cut with the militia walking in sync with guns down after them. Eisenstein takes this scene to a new level when he puts children in harm’s way. He uses two children and utilizes different techniques with each. First with the young boy stranded on the steps. His helplessness is included in a montage sequence where we then see hundreds of feet clambering down the steps. As a viewer, at this point my heart was racing in free for the little boys life. Einsenstein’s montage created an extreme feeling of fear and suspense as we awaited the little boys doom, which we eventually see of people stepping on him as they attempt to run to safety.
In the same scene, the baby carriage is to me even more emotionally jarring. We first see it teetering on the edge of a step as the guardian is shot and she looses her grip on the handle. Then we see it begin to roll down the stairs among a crowd of people who we already know as so focused on reaching their freedom that they stomped a child almost to death, so we assume they will be of no help to the baby. In this sequence however Einsenstein does not show us the baby’s fate as he does with the little boy. This leaves the viewer with an uncomfortable emotional feeling of uncertainty and sadness.