Poetic creations: how Vsevolod Pudovkin changed the language of cinema
Editing has always been one of the foundational bedrocks of cinema, but two of montage theory’s most famous forefathers had vastly different ideas on how it should be used and what it should be used for, with Vsevolod Pudovkin regularly finding himself in direct opposition to Sergei Eisenstein.
The idea behind montage theory was the belief that editing is just as important to the medium as shot composition, with Eisenstein deeming it “the nerve of cinema”. In essence, it’s the glue that holds the art form together, with editing capable of turning a well-shot film into a masterpiece by way of aiding and enhancing the imagery through the notion of individual shots acting as layers that build upon what came before and not simply a sequential necessity that furthers the story linearly.
Pudovkin and Eisenstein both propagated montage theory as the means of conveying a film’s ideological, thematic, and intellectual heft. The contents of a frame in a microcosm held minimal power individually, but when connected together and edited into a cohesive whole, it was the very essence of cinematic grammar. Pudovkin claimed that words weren’t the most important method of relaying a message, with montage the defining aspect of cinema’s bespoke form of communicative language.
Whereas Eisenstein deconstructed his montage methodology into metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal, and intellectual – based on how many frames are in each shot, the content of said shot with additions including music, the intention of generating a reaction from audiences, and the juxtaposition of multiple shots to extract intellectual meaning, respectively – Pudovkin had his own set of principles.
He was of the mindset that films aren’t necessarily filmed but built. Each individual shot is a single building block and just one of many raw materials that can be processed and constructed in order to create the effect the filmmaker is seeking to elicit among the viewer.
He experimented with shot length, positioning, and placement to have the end product reflect the vision of the filmmaker, writing in Film Technique and Film Acting that “to show something as everyone sees it is to have accomplished nothing”.
Pudovkin’s approach to montage focused on the idea that the juxtaposition of individual shots or images in a film sequence could create meaning and emotional impact beyond what could be achieved by each shot independently. He believed that the essence of cinema lay in the way shots were assembled to form a whole rather than in the shots themselves.
Eisenstein may have favoured metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal, and intellectual editing to underline his approach to cinema, but Pudovkin had his own mantra that he adhered to. His preferences included contrast montage, parallel montage, and associative montage.
These techniques involved two shots with disparate meanings being placed next to each other to create an emotional response, the intercutting of similar shots to create a sense of simultaneous goings-on, and linking shots based on thematic and emotional connotations as opposed to straightforward narrative continuity.
Pudovkin was always more poetic in his creations, placing a stronger focus on the lyrical qualities of cinema that allowed one shot to seamlessly flow into the other on a deeper level, while his contemporary favoured the conflict of dissonance to hammer home the classist discrepancies and socio-political chasms that defined Russia at the time he was carving a new path through the industry.
If anything, the language of modern cinema is more heavily attributed to the former than the latter, with Pudovkin of the belief that actors aren’t required to do any acting by the strictest definition, but it’s the context, situations, and scenarios they perform under that affects an audience – through montage – by way of how they relate to exterior forces.
At first glance, the composition of something like 1926’s Mother seems disconnected from each other from scene to scene, as it’s peppered with repeated shots of Russian vistas that have little bearing on the story. However, by the time the title character and her comrades march towards the prison in a defiant final stand, everything that’s come before informs what’s happening in the moment, with the melting snow and cracking of a frozen river illustrating the gradual warming of the revolutionary tendencies that define the film.
It’s a disservice and a misnomer of some extent to label Pudovkin as being melodramatic, but compared to the more calculating Eisenstein, that’s exactly what he was. Whereas one of them is heralded as among the most influential and important figures in the history of celluloid – and deservedly so – the other reinvented both the concept and context of what montage could achieve.
It’s arguable that Pudovkin’s influence stretched far wider over a longer period of time than Eisenstein’s, given the way editing and montage continue to be used in almost every major production, from the independents to Hollywood blockbusters as a means of informing the audience of much more than the image right in front of their eyes.