Montage and the Reader

In Eisenstein's article about montage he talks about the use of montage throughout Japanese art and culture, while pointing out that the cinema is seemingly the only art form in Japanese culture that is lacking in montage. Eisenstein quotes Nobuchi and says, "it is the readers who make the haiku's imperfection a perfection of art." However, when quoting Nobuchi Eisenstein isn't just making a statement about the use of montage in haikus, but about the use of montage in all art forms. Montage works, and works powerfully, because of the art forms audience. People do not live in a vacuum, and it is our cultural expectations and the connotations of the images used in montage that audiences are aware of that makes montage an engaging and powerful way of presenting art.

In Battleship Potemkin Eisenstein uses montage editing to create tempo and rhythm to help tell the story and give the film meaning. For example, during the scene on the steps of Odessa, Eisenstein sticks quick shots of stone lions in with the action in order to convey to us the rising action and anger of the scene. It is our understanding as an audience of what a lion is (fierce, powerful, dangerous, brutal) that allows the shot to add meaning to the sequence. If the audience had never seen a lion, did not know what a lion was, or thought that lions were actually gentle creatures, this shot would not have made sense and may have detracted from the sequence instead of adding to it. Finally, montage editing adds to the experience of a film because it intellectually engages the audience and forces them to make connections, the same way the heiroglyphic language of the Japanese does.