The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film
Passages from the Cinema Journal regarding the idea of montage in soviet art and film:
“Between 1924 and 1930, several Soviet films exhibited a radically original film style, generally known as the montage style. Montage was used to build a narrative (by formulating an artificial time and space or guiding the viewer's attention from one narrative point to another), to control rhythm, to create metaphors, and to make rhetorical points.
The possibility of the montage principle's application in various arts becomes more likely when we notice that the Soviet montage films reveal two fairly distinct tendencies. Kuleshov's films, and most of Pudovkin's, use montage solely for rhythmic and narrative ends; the juxtaposition of shots becomes a way to bring out the shape and nuances of a story.
Eisenstein's and Vertov's films, though, constantly go beyond narrative editing to make metaphorical and rhetorical statements by means of montage. The theories of Eisenstein and Vertov are often extravagantly ambitious. Eisenstein claims that his theory foresaw "transmuting to screen form the abstract concept, the course and halt of concepts and ideas-without intermediary. Without recourse to story, or invented plot." Vertov asserted that the news- reel can include ideological argument, "any political, economic, or other motif." ”
Source: Bordwell, David. "The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film." Cinema Journal 11, no. 2 (1972): 9-17.