Montage

The five accepted types of montage are as follows:

Metric – the shots are cut after a constant amount of time, regardless of the action that the shot contains. This is commonly seen in modern music videos, where the cuts are synchronous to the beat of the music.
Rhythmic – cuts are based upon continuity, and attempt to emphasise flow from shot to shot.
Tonal – utilises the emotional content of shots, rather than manipulating their lengths.
Overtonal – incorperates elements of the metric, rhythmic, and tonal montages, to create a more complex effect on the audience.
Intellectual – creating a metaphor that does not exist without the juxtaposition of shots.

Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is a post-modernistic film, directed by Dziga Vertov. The camerawork and use of editing is extremely innovative for the film's era.

Although there is no formal narrative, the franatic nature of the hour-long "part documentary, part cinematic art" piece demonstrates an abundance of montage effects, such as the graphic match – two consecutive images that are unrelated, apart from by visual similarities:

It also incorporates elements of meta-film, such as when the camera cross-cuts from a man riding a motorcycle, to an audience watching the man on the motorcycle.

A blunt depiction of Vertov's innovation is this shot, which has been edited to create the illusion of a giant man filming a miniature city:

The Kuleshov Effect

Around the year 1920, Russian psychologist Lev Kuleshov experimented with people's interpretation of the same facial expression, based upon the image it is paired with. For example, when paired with an image of food, the actor was perceived to be hungry. The results of this experiment significantly influenced the development of montage theory.

Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948, Russia)

Eisenstein was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1898. He moved to Moscow in 1920, and began working in theatre. In 1923 he wrote his first essay on theory, The Montage of Attractions, and directed his first film, Glumov's Diary. He focussed on studying crowd simulation, and camera angles, but he is most noted for his pioneering use of montage, describing it as the essence of film.

He believed that the juxtaposition of two images creates a third, more equivocal "image" – a "tertium quid". He argued that montage, especially the intellectual type, should be treated as an alternative to continuity editing. Interestingly, he also believed that montage arises from the collision of shots, which are perceived "not next to the other, but on top of the other".

Eisenstein's most appreciable exhibition of the power of montage is possibly the Odessa steps sequence of his film, Battleship Potemkin (1925), where he manipulates the viewer's sense of time, by extending the crowd's journey down the steps over a matter of minutes.

The sequence also demonstrates montage's ability to evoke emotion, as the baby's pram is shown rolling down the steps. As seen below, the shots each have a completely different composition, which makes the sequence more dynamic, and therefore dramatic. Each shot also generates its own symbolism. For example, the shot of the baby crying introduces the hazard; the person running obliviously in the background, represents the effect of violence on people's empathy towards even the most innocent lives. This is similar to another montage in the sequence, which depicts people running over a child's body, whilst a man watches in terror.

A following high-angle shot shows the pram rolling down the steps, consequently inflating the audience's emotional engagement with the diegesis.

Towards the end of the whole sequence, we see two short montages that encapsulate the idea of "tertium quid". In the first, cherubs – a symbol of innocence and peace – are shown as if they are punching, which could be interpreted as representing the innocent population's ineluctable decision to resort to violence.

The second of these explicit montages shows a lion – a symbol of power and authority – waking up, and looking shocked.

Together, these two montages foreshadow the people's rise against mistreatment, and the authority's deposition.