Soviet Montage Theory: History, Types and Examples

Soviet Montage Theory is an influential film movement developed in the Soviet Union in the early twentieth century that focuses on the editing techniques of a film over content alone. The primary premise is that different sequences edited together in juxtaposition can express a new and separate complex idea. The Soviet Montage ideology is the primary contribution of Soviet film theorists to film history.

In 1919, amid the Russian Revolution and civil war, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin nationalized Soviet cinema and dismantled existing production companies. The same year, Soviet director Lev Kuleshov established the Moscow Film School. While running the school, Kuleshov developed a film theory called the Kuleshov effect, which hypothesized that you receive more meaning from two shots side-by-side than a single shot alone.

Kuleshov’s montage technique influenced many popular Soviet filmmakers of the time, including Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and Vsevolod Pudovkin. In particular, Sergei Eisenstein, a student of Kuleshov, expanded these ideas into the Soviet Montage Theory known today. Eisenstein was the driving force in espousing the Soviet montage style, and his films were the first to spread the concept to international communities. His theories changed film editing techniques and contributed to the New Wave film movements in France and Hollywood.

The Soviet Montage movement officially ended when the Marxist leader Joseph Stalin rose to power after Lenin’s death, and Soviet Russia became less enamored with the antiestablishment messages of montage films. The government forced filmmakers to shift their focus from montage to Soviet Realism. Still, the cinematic ideas of the movement extended well into the 1950s and continue to live on in the editing techniques of modern filmmaking.

The director Sergei Eisenstein identified five different types of montage within Soviet Montage Theory:

1. 1. Intellectual montage: Intellectual montage is when you edit two shots together to connect them to an intellectual concept. A good example is Sergei Eisenstein’s film Strike (1925), where he edits between the slaughtering of a bull and the massacre of striking workers.
2. 2. Metric montage: Metric montage creates visual pacing within a scene by cutting to the next shot after a specific number of frames, no matter the content. According to Eisenstein, a musical score’s pacing (or meter) influences metric montage. You can use metric montage to ratchet up the tension in your scenes.
3. 3. Overtonal montage: Overtonal montage, also called associational montage, is when you use the other four types (intellectual, metric, rhythmic, and tonal) to create an even more complex and abstract effect on the audience. If you prefer mood or poeticism over logic and story, use overtonal montage.
4. 4. Rhythmic montage: Rhythmic montage, also known as continuity editing, preserves the continuity of a scene. The content of the frame is the leading element. An oft-cited example of rhythmic montage is the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin (1925), closely imitated in a similar stair sequence in The Untouchables (1987).
5. 5. Tonal montage: Tonal montage is when you edit together two shots with a similar thematic element or emotional tone. The elements you use could be visual or auditory. For example, in The Revenant (2015), a character’s steamy breath cuts to a foggy sky and then to smoke from a pipe.

Some of the most well-known movies that emerged from the Soviet Montage Theory film movement are:

1. 1. Kino Eye (1924): Directed by Dziga Vertov, this documentary follows the daily life of ordinary citizens living in a Soviet village. The film also popularized the term “kino eye” (meaning “film eye”), Vertov’s theory that the camera sees life more accurately than the human eye.
2. 2. Battleship Potemkin (1925): Set in 1905 during the Russian Revolution, Battleship Potemkin depicts the mutiny of Russian sailors subjected to harsh conditions aboard a battleship. Several subsequent films have imitated the Odessa Steps massacre scene of this Sergei Eisenstein–directed movie.
3. 3. Strike (1925): Director Sergei Eisenstein’s first feature-length film, Strike, is about oppressed workers under terrible conditions organizing a strike against their employers. Set in pre-revolutionary Russia, Eisenstein intended this movie to open a seven-part series, but he never completed them.
4. 4. The Death Ray (1925): One of the first full-length science fiction movies, this Lev Kuleshov–helmed film is about the invention of a death ray that’s stolen and used against citizens participating in labor strikes. The laborers then steal the ray and use it against their enemies.
5. 5. Mother (1926): Directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and based on the novel The Mother by Maxim Gorky, this Russian Revolution–set film captures the radicalization of a mother after her husband dies and her son gets arrested and sent to prison.
6. 6. Zvenigora (1927): This silent movie is part of director Alexander Dovzhenko’s Ukraine trilogy, along with the films Arsenal and Earth. A grandfather tells his grandson about a buried treasure and captures the history of Ukraine in the process.
7. 7. October: Ten Days That Shook The World (1928): This Sergei Eisenstein–directed historical film celebrates the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. It’s one of only two films the Soviet government commissioned.
8. 8. Man With a Movie Camera (1929): This Dziga Vertov–directed documentary film shows the daily life of citizens in Moscow, Kyiv, and Odessa during the 1920s. It’s most notable for pioneering new film techniques such as slow-motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, and split screens.

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