Sound in the Bazin Reading

I found it interesting what Andre Bazin had to say about the introduction to sound in cinema. Like the introduction of any new technology, it was looked at with apprehension. People that are so used to one method of doing something are obviously going to have a tough time accepting a revolution of established technique. However, like Bazin said, sound did not come to destroy the established cinema, but to fulfill its prophecy. He refers later to how there is a dividing line that held cinema back from seeming realistic, and that was the barrier of sound. When this was introduced, cinema did not die, because the cinema in place wasn’t the sole representation of the art form. Art is an organic, living, breathing institution that builds upon what has been accomplished in the past through inspiration and technological innovation. The ultimate goal is to represent the world as we perceive to the best of our abilities, in order to convey messages or purely out of the desire to portray narrative. Sound allows narrative to become more complex and adds many stylistic options to the creation of a story. I would say that introduction of sound in cinema is tantamount to the introduction of color in its effect on progressing towards realism.

PSYCHO

According to Antonin Artaud; "When we no longer find fulfilling meaning in either ourselves or in life itself, a painful cleavage is created: “the poetry which we no longer succeed in finding in the world around us or inside ourselves can then appear on the wrong side; consider the crimes whose perverse gratuitousness is explained only by our powerlessness to take complete possession of life”, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). O’connor.

The hotel in which Bates ran is very similar to his fantasy world which he conducted. He was in complete power of both and therefore achieved somewhat of a Godliness power. It is made evident at the beginning of the film that he expressed his artistic creativity through his hobby of stuffing birds. In order to preserve the bird Norman took the necessary measures to maintain the external body. Norman also applied this concept when attempting to immortalize his mother. Stuffing the birds essentially immortalized them for their bodies truly never leave the world. Essentially, Norman does the same for his mother as he creates the illusion she is still alive. In doing so he gave a voice to his mother, authoring her every word and action believing this to be the solution to his repressed feelings and problems in reality. His artistic ability for creating the illusion of life was not only projected in his work, but onto the strategic murders of his victims.

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.

Montage?

I really liked the article's beginning in that it traced the roots of Japanese culture as a means of unveiling modern Japanese cinema. That "timeline" was a great way of helping me to better understand how this has evolved over time and is a true process. Eisentstein begins by explaining how cinema is a montage. He spoke of its beginning form, the hieroglyph, which later morphed into brush and ink. This use of symbolism and representation was then compared to how we use montage within the context of the cinema: ".., combining shots that are depictive, single in meaning, neutral in content- into intellectual contexts and series."

He then transitions into the use of haikai, an ancient form of Japanese poetry, and explains how their use as an ideogram provides a means of uncovering an abstract concept. While referring to Japanese pictorial art, Eisentstein says, "Is not this process that of the ideogram, combining the independent "mouth" and the dissociated symbol of "child" to form the significance of "scream?"

Eisenstein later goes on to further analyze these montage sequences, particularly in specific shots from the film Potemkin. He explains that we as an audience combine these elements into one whole and uncover reasoning according to our own relations to the event. Eisentstein says, "Step by step, by a process of comparing each new image with the common denotation, power is accumulated behind a process that can be formally identified with that of logical deduction." That is motage.

Eisenstein readings

I consider this article hard to understand because he introduces many topics at once and confuses a little.  What I got from the reading  is that cinematography as the author introduces it, is montage.  The author mentions what montage should be compared and "how the representation of objects in the actual (absolute) proportions proper to them is, merely a tribute to orthodox formal logic." (131).  What I understood about this quote is how do we relate an object to its own logic and how we make sense of it.  To put it more simple I relate cinematography to montage in the sense that cinematography is the decision making in the lighting and the camera when recording photographic images in films and montage is a technique that uses special effects including music to introduce compressed narrative information  

Eisenstein reading

I thought it was a very enlightening statement when Eisenstein suggested that montage was an “…unrolling of an idea with a series of single shots…” rather than a stacking of shots like building blocks. This is an idea performed masterfully in his epic staging of the Cossacks vs. the people on the steps of Odessa. There are continual shots that switch from the people and then to the Cossacks, both from long shots and close-up. What is important that also has to do with the tempo of the sequence is the way the film takes its time to show the brutality of the Cossacks. The framing has everything to do with the feel of the sequence because it heightens emotions, leaning toward the people’s side.

The Shots of the Cossacks are never close-up; always from a wide shot, displaying them as a wall of unwavering force descending on the people. The quick shots to the civilian reactions show the fear, anger, and pain as they are brutalized one by one. All of these elements show what Eisenstein meant when he referred to the montage as “unrolling of ideas.” These are not simply pictures stacked on top of each other, but multiple points of view fitted together with a purpose to keep a steady tempo while heightening emotion and accomplishing its point. This is what I took from the article in relation to the film we screened, though I admit I found this reading very hard to follow.

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.