Film Analysis

Based upon our discussion above, we have chosen requiem of a dream as the film of our analysis. This film was based on a novel by Hubert Selby Jr., this story emphasizes on four individuals caught up by their addictions. Harry and his friend Tyrone are drug addicts living in a small island called Coney Island in an attempt to realize their dreams. Harry’s girlfriend Marion is another addict trying very hard to keep her distance from her wealthy father. With the money that Harry and Tyrone have gained over the summer, they plan to invest in their own habits. Meanwhile, Harry’s mother Sara, is convinced that she stands an opportunity to appear on her favourite show. Sara even visits a doctor who gives her a prescription for amphetamines in order for her to lose enough weight to fit into her favourite red dress. However, Sara has a habit of her own with the drug which is spiraling out of control. It is then portrays their downward spirals from hopes of dreams come true into a helpless state of moral and deterioration of health.

The sequence of shots during the drug taking process symbolizes the primary function of the montage which is to represent the passage of time. In this case, explaining how fast the process is but with severe consequences. The editing pace for the montages during the drug-taking process with fast cuts from the beginning of opening the bag of the heroin until the injection and pupil dilation is one of the example for it as it indicate how fast the drug-taking process and drug addiction can be.

It is also to show the trippy feeling of addiction as the director attempts to draw audience into the montage of drug-taking process in order to allow them to experience it themselves using close-ups of all the footages as well as sound effects. Audiences are fascinated by the fast cuts of the montages and thus they will expect more to come as how addiction works in reality because it will drive people to want more.

Same goes for the scenes where Sara Goldfarb tried to lose weight by taking diet pills instead of following the conventional methods of dieting. The director used different approach of montages to show the contrast of time passage when Sara tried to lose weight with the conventional and drug-taking method. The pace of montages is fast when Sara was taking the diet pills as they show how fast diet can become when Sara applied a different approach rather than following the conventional methods. On the contrary, the montage where Sara was waiting for the time to past before she took any diet pills was slow because it imply her anxiousness for the next meal as she was hardly satisfied from her previous meal where the portion was way less than her usual diet without taking the pills.

Other than that, it serves as a transition to different scenes and sometimes it also works as bridge between the same scenes to show the contrasts of the drug effect, especially before and after the characters took the drugs. For instance, the scene where Harry left his mother’s house, there is a moment he felt sad and miserable worrying about his mother’s intake of the amphetamines. As an escape from his misery, he took a dose of heroin in the taxi itself to feel better.

The moment when Sara was about to take her pill according to the routine, she somehow cannot feel the desired effects of the pills towards her body as she was unknowingly being immune to the effects of it, making her take more to feel the same way. As she was about to take the pill, she stopped wondering whether or not should she go beyond the prescribed dosage and finally she took two different pills at the same time hoping to revamp the desired ecstasy. Immediately she had hallucinations of her showing up on her favorite TV show and the refrigerator came to life.

The split screen when Harry and Marion while cuddling on the bed symbolized so near yet so far and there is an invisible wall between them and they couldn’t be together as if they came from different world. This could be one of the many consequences of taking drugs the director trying to show, an indication of them splitting up in the end.

The revolving shot of the sex scene of Tyrone and the shot when Marion and Harry were lying down on a bed, symbolizes the primitive desire of sexual needs and satisfactions as if a love of a mom to her kid. The sound effect of kids playing when Tyrone having sex shows that satisfactions from sex gives a sense of security . When the camera slowly tracks out and the spinning bed emphasizes how great the sex and the drug is. The Floating shot and feelings bring the audience to experience what are they going through.

Last but not least, a mixture of parallel editing and slow montages were used to describe the current predicaments of all four characters as things started fall apart during the middle end of the film. It is similar to the midpoint of the three act structure where characters were going through lowest point of as everything they do at that particular time. For example, Harry was forced to ask Marion to sleep with her psychiatrist, Arnold while Marion had no choice but to comply with his request in order to get money to buy drugs. In the mean time, Tyrone was alone sitting by his bed in naked while looking at his mother’s photo because he felt helpless and miserable as he could not find any drug supplier. As for Sara, her state of mind was fragmenting as she was wearing her favourite red dress while putting on make-up carelessly and danced around in her room. All these shots were to put together to form a sequence of shots with music to give a very depressing and regretful feelings of the characters and the situations.

The montages of the last scene shows cuts from all four character going through a series of grief, the director uses a fusion of soviet montage and parallel editing in emphasizing the consequences they are going through because of their addiction towards drugs, as the cuts becoming rapid, it adds more suffering to the characters. Audience’s fascinations towards fast cuts are now substituted with a series of painful experience which immediately change their impressions toward drugs.

After analyzing Soviet Montage and its characteristics, processes and influences, we could say that the film Requiem For A Dream is a good portrayal of Soviet Montage. Though, the portrayal of it differs from original purpose of Soviet Montage, the essence of it is beautifully applied by the director to engage audience’s emotions to the sequence of shots in order to conclude to the next scene.

Influence & Impact on Contemporary Films

Montage served different purpose and has several meanings in the context of film and is not exclusively used to refer to Soviet Montage. It is used as a synonym of editing. In Hollywood cinema it means to edit a concentrated sequence using a series of short shots as brief transitions to create the effect of the passage of time or movement over large distances or for expressionistic moods and representation of symbolic meanings. Contrary to the conventional styles and movements, the soviet filmmakers was stepping away from common narrative structure and adapting what has come to be called "Soviet Montage". This new theory of editing was invented by Sergei Eisenstein and then adopted by a few other Russian filmmakers. Eisenstein, however, was the one who discovered its potential and first put it to work to make the people in the audience think whatever he wanted them to think of. “Thematic” or Soviet Montage was achieved arranging striking juxtapositions of individual shots to suggest an idea that goes beyond meanings within an individual shot. It is called collision montage as sequences create significant effects mainly through editing. Its rejection of the forms and conventions of the dominant Hollywood entertainment cinemas have inspired many film-makers to challenge the styles by creating films which emphasizes on the editing which aims to shatter the illusionistic storytelling and seamless continuity cultivated by Classical Hollywood.

In films nowadays, the technique of the Montage Theory is frequently applied in various conventional films in the hope of enhancing psychological relationships between the images in the montage. They would apply the technique as an explanation for longer narrative within short period of time. An example of montage used in contemporary films would be the training sequence in the Rocky (1976). Throughout the montage shows how Rocky trains for his upcoming important boxing match by running through streets, doing sit up and pushups, punching large piece of meat, running up and down of the stairs while in the mean time there is this song singing “Trying hard now… Getting strong now, Won’t be long now… Gonna fly now.” The passage of time was explained through the montage and in the mean time it also indicates that Rocky is exerting a great deal of energy in getting ready for his big fight with heavyweight champion Apollo Creed. It brings the narrative along forward by compressing shots of Rocky’s training into a short three-minute sequence. 

Similar to the Rocky, the montage is also used in romance-genre films to portray the romantic moments and sweet memories a loving couple has been through together for a long period of time by showing a sequence of short footages consisting key events in the narratives from time to time. For instance, in the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) where Benjamin and Daisy were living together for the first time after knowing each other for so many years. In this sequence, the montage shows that the couple started living in a small apartment with not much of the furniture except a piece of mattress which both shared and slept on most of the time. In between, there are shots of the couple lying on the bed hugging and kissing each other from time to time while at the same time the narrative progresses as it started to dissolve into the same location but with more decorations and different time. As time goes by, their house started to filled with more furniture and they even painted house and making fun of each other during the process. Also, there is narration throughout the montage as Benjamin Button was describing his feeling during that period of time and how beautiful the memories are back then. All these shots were put together to imply to the audience how much time they spent with each other and how loving they were during that time. All these sequence of shots which lasted for years were then edited and put in together in a 58-second long montage in order to show all the quality time they have spent together and explain about the development of their relationship.

Besides conveying the passage of time, montage is also used to create the effect of expressionistic mood in a way that various shots are combined to formed a sequence in a slower pace to amplify the engagement of audiences feeling and experience towards the characters and atmosphere within the film. As background music and sound effects are widely used along during the montage, it tends to create more realistic feelings for the audience as the music allows film makers to touch on the emotional facets on the audience and draw them deeper into the films. In the film Pearl Harbour (2001) by Michael Bay, the part where Japanese air fighters have not yet started the assault towards US Navy at Pearl Harbour, the montage shows that different military units and officials conversation which together brings the feeling of calm yet tense as some of them were very relaxing as they are not aware of the Japanese fighters that are approaching the harbor nor did they expect any possible hostility from Japanese army because of the false friendly show on news. On the other hand, all the US army officials such as the admiral, strategic analyst and others were very tense as most of them were very suspicious towards the Japanese army because they were aware of Japanese’s threats towards the pacific fleet and they were very skeptical of the Japanese fleet which disappears at the pacific ocean as they suspect that it might be heading towards Pearl Harbour, which it did then. Therefore the mixture of relaxation and nervous expressed throughout the montage tends to give the audience a very tense feelings as they are now very nervous and worry about the US Navy and people in Pearl Harbour because they are way off their guards at that moment while the Japanese air fighters were slowly approaching towards them. It is like calm before the storm which then explodes when the assaults started.

As for the representation of symbolic meanings, there are films which use series of short shots and link them together to create an association for a particular meaning. As Sergei Eisenstein explained his montage theory of collision suggesting individual shots are used as fragments or parts of a whole scene, and not in collision with each other. (creative geography). Therefore, two short footages which alone depicts different meanings were put together to bring out a different meaning, just like how thesis and antithesis were add together to form a synthesis. With that, the best example of films applying the collision theory would be the Requiem For A Dream (2000) by Darren Aronofsky where there is an immense amount of montages which applied the collision theory to depict meanings to audience which not only serve transition, but more importantly they bring out meaning and feeling the director intended to show to the audience in the hope of engaging them into the mind and reality of the characters within the film. For example, every time when one of the main characters was taking drug or pills, the drug-taking processes were shown using a fast pace montage with different shots including the heroin bag, the syringe, US dollar cash rolled up, sniffing heroin, boiling glucose with heroin and etc. and all these shots were put together to form a sequence of montage that not only help to transit the narrative of the film but also to explain the process of it while imply how fast the transaction, consumption and addiction as well as the state of mind of ecstasy can be without knowing how slow and long the pain and suffering will become after. The close ups of all the shots showing details of the process along with sound effects aim to give audience the trippy feeling of addiction as it draws them into the characters’ perspective when they were taking drugs. Also, the montages where Sara was taking the diet pills and waiting for time to pass have their own meanings as well as they were used as a contrast to how different it is to lose weight naturally following conventional way compared to taking diet pills. The fast pace of the montage for taking pill implies that losing weight by taking pills can be as fast as the montage is while the slow pace of all the clocks, television and close ups of Sara as montage signifies how long it takes for a person to lose weight without taking diet pills. Thus, it shows the contrast of the diet process.

Despite of its brief period of time, Soviet Montage managed to influence not only the Soviet cinema back then, but it had inspired many of the prominent film makers which have successfully created many films using the Soviet Montage theory and has entertained countless of audience over the pass decades. The use of Soviet Montage has become so commonplace in mainstream film today that we take it for granted that this important part of film grammar had to be invented by a small group of Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s. (Rock, A.)

Unique Characteristics of Soviet Montage

Unlike Montage where by a combination series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information, Soviet Montage on the other hand is a style of filmmaking that is evolved to immerse the audience in a story and disguise technique was turned upside down in order to create the opposite emotional effect to bring the audience to the edge of their seat, and in the case of the Odessa Steps sequence, to push the viewer towards a feeling of vertigo. In a simpler form, Soviet Montage combination series of short shots are edited into a sequence to create symbolic meaning.

One main characteristic of Soviet Montage films is the downplaying of individual characters in the centre of attention whereby single characters are shown as members of different social classes and are representing a general type or class imitating Marxist Concept which believe more on society rather than individual .For Instance, in Eisenstein's Strike there is only one character named individually in the entire film. This proves the theory portraying collectivism rather individualism to propagate how united are the people against whatever political climate in Russia.

The central aspect of Soviet Montage style was the area of editing. Cuts should stimulate the spectator. In opposition to continuity editing Montage cutting often created either overlapping or elliptical temporal relations. Elliptical cutting creates the opposite effect. A part of an action is left out, so the event takes less time than it would in reality. Elliptical editing was often used in the form of the jump cut. For instance, in Strike, Eisenstein cuts from a police officer to a butcher who kills an animal in the form of a jump cut. This is to indicate the butcher not being part of the story but should be able to create or make the viewer think about the relation and come to a conclusion as if the workers were slaughtered like animals in reality.

5 Methods of Montage:

1.      Metric Montage – The editing work is done according to a specific number of frames, follows by cutting to the subsequent shot regardless of the event within the image. This is done to draw out the fundamental response of the audience.

2.      Rhythmic Montage – this is done through cutting based on continuity, producing visual continuity from edit to edit. A very fine example of Rhythmic montage is from II Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo where the protagonist and the two other antagonists face each other in a three-way duel.

3.      Tonal Montage – This uses the emotional meaning of the shots, to emphasize a response from the audience in a more complicated manner than Metric or Rhythmic Montage. For instance, a sleeping baby would express his or her calmness and relaxation. The prime example for this montage method from Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin, where audience can witness the death of a revolutionary sailor Vakulinchuk.

4.      Overtonal Montage – it is a collection of Metric, Rhythmic and Tonal Montage to create its effect on the audience for a more complex effect. It is best shown in a film called Pudovkin’s Mother, where the men are seen as workers walking towards a protestation at their own factory and later in movie, the protagonist uses ice to escape.

5.      Intellectual Montage – it is used as a bridge to connect and create meaning completely outside the depiction, unlike continuity editing, where images are created in a smooth space or time. In general, ‘intellectual montage’ is when the image is not represented by a particular idea. Basically, it uses shots which, combined, emphasize an intellectual meaning. The effect is shown through conflict such as juxtapose shots that have no direct relationship. The best example for Intellectual Montage is from a film called Strike. 

In this film, cut of shots include striking workers being assaulted and a bull being butchered. This is done as metaphor to show how workers are being treated like cattle. The butcher is here a nondiegetic element. Anything that is part of the film story world is diegetic. A nondiegetic element exists outside the story world. There is no connection between the slaughters of the animal. The use of such nondiegetic shots was a total direct portrayal of Eisenstein's theory on intellectual montage creating effects through conflict such as the juxtaposing of shots that have no direct connection as all.

It is also shown in a film called The Godfather, where killing scene was shown during the baptism of Michael’s nephew. The whole scene was to show the murder “baptize” Michael into a life of crime. Another example is from a film called Apocalypse Now, juxtaposing shot was used in the execution of Colonel Kurtz. 

Another example of contemporary films adopting intellectual montage would be  In     Boogie Nights, Dirk Diggler announces at the conclusion of filming a pornographic scene that he can "do it again". There is then a quick cut to a champagne bottle uncorking at a post-shoot party. This particular scene represents both ejaculation and Dirk's celebratory initiation into the world of porn.

In a nutshell, Souviet Montage involves editing as a much more pronounced feature than in German Expressionism. It explores the ways in which each shot gained intensified meaning from its relationship to the shots deliberately placed before and after it. For Eisenstein it is in the tension (or conflict) between shots that meaning is created. Montage cinema demands that audiences continuously search for the meanings created by the juxtaposition of two shots and can be seen as alternative to the dominant continuity editing style of Hollywood cinema. Putting shots A and B together does not result in AB but in the emergence of X or Y – something new and larger than AB. This moved the theory of montage on from Kuleshov and Pudovkin who believed shots are like bricks in the way they construct a scene. Kuleshov and Pudovkin aimed at linkage rather than conflict

Historical Background of Soviet Montage

The year 1905 brought about turmoil and communal unrest in Russia. Whereby many of Russia’s citizens were angry with their government, particularly with Tsar Nicholas II, who was the Russian monarch at the said time. Many citizens wanted the right to hold democratic elections, freedom to form unions, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. Moreover, many lower class workers in factories began to go on strike and refused to pay taxes in order to demand these political changes. This carried on till 1917, where a series of revolutions flared up again. But this time, the revolutionaries succeeded in getting Nicholas II to give up his control of the government. This resulted in the Russian government ruled by a democratic government for about eight months before the Bolshevik party overtook control of the government. The Bolsheviks believed in the Marxist ideals of Communism and it was under their rule that the USSR was formed and Russia became a Communist state. It was in this revolutionary circumstance that the concept of Soviet montage was born.

This new Communist government encouraged the development of the national film industry. But many of the early Soviet filmmakers were too poor to afford cameras and film stock to shoot new films. As an alternative, they began to experiment with editing old films. They took old footage from pre-revolutionary Russian melodramas and a few rare Hollywood films and re-cut them and merged them together in unconventional ways.Under the guidance of filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, a group of film students studied a unique film and its editing techniques in detail. The said film is Intolerance (1916) by D. W. Griffiths. After a while, they started to experiment with re-editing the film and discovered that they could radically change the meaning and feeling of the film just by editing it differently. In an experiment, Kuleshovmerged together a series of shots which had been filmed entirely out of sequence and in different times and places, which are - a waiting man, a walking woman, a gate, a staircase, and a mansion. The audience read spatial and temporal sense into the sequence, deciding that they saw the man and the woman meeting in front of the gate at the same time.This experiment led many Soviet filmmakers to realize that the meaning of a film is not innate in the images themselves, but rather in the juxtaposition of those images side by side. This led to the development of montage theory, or the theory that images could be combined together in ways that could create new meanings that weren’t innate to the images themselves.

In the 1920s when the Soviet government was finally able to purchase some film equipment and film stock, VsevelodPudovkin(one of the influential montage theorists and filmmakers in Russia at this time and also one of Kuleshov’s apprentices), Pudovkin began to create some very interesting and confrontational films using his theories about montage. Pudovkin believed that film actors don’t really act. Rather, it’s the context the actors are in that creates emotional and intellectual meaning. And this context is established through montage by showing the relationship of the actor to exterior objects. For example, his film Mother (1926) is about factory workers who try to form a union to protest unfair working conditions in the time period just before the first Russian revolution. The factory owners and policemen who oppress the workers wear sinister looking leather gloves. Pudovkin cuts between images of these oppressive men and close ups of their tightly clenched fists, evoking a symbolic equivalent, suggesting violence and aggressiveness.In other words, Pudovkin often cut between two images to suggest a symbolic link or connection between them. By seeing these two images side by side, the filmmaker encourages you to figure out that there is a psychological relationship between the two shots. Whereby the two shots combined together to create a new idea.

Another individual that shared Pudovkin’s commitment to the revolution and to the Communist ideals of the new Russian government is Sergei Eisenstein. Both of their films had themes exploring social conflicts and the oppression of the Russian lower class. Pudovkin’s use of montage was intended to enhance the dramatic narrative, whereas Eisenstein wanted to interrupt the narrative with clashing ideas, wherethe transitions between shots should not be smooth. Rather, they should be sharp, jolting, and even violent because conflict is universal. In addition,  Eisenstein felt that films could include images that were thematically or metaphorically relevant, regardless of whether they could be found in the location of the film or not. For example, in Eisenstein’s first film Strike (1925), he spliced together images of workmen being shot down by machine guns with images of oxen being slaughtered. The oxen were not literally on the location where the story takes place. The image was merged in for metaphorical purposes, similar to how literature might make a figurative comparison.

The use of montages has become common in mainstreamfilms todaywhich tend to gravitate more to Pudovkin’s style, using montage to enhance the emotional drama of the story and to suggest a psychological relationship between the images in the montage. Stereotypically, Hollywood montages are used in order to communicate a great deal of information in ashort amounttime.