Soviet Montage Movement and its Impact on Film Making

Running head: SOVIET MONTAGE MOVEMENT
Soviet Montage Movement
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1SOVIET MONTAGE MOVEMENT
The making of film has always been a challenge to the producers and directors. This was
more challenging in the early years of the twentieth century when the entire world was standing
on the brink of the First World War, one of the most horrifying wars witnessed by humankind
(Feldman, 1998). Towards the end of the war, the entire Europeans landmass was ravaged and
even the Soviet Union faced widespread repercussions. This common masses of the land were
completely disillusioned with the advantages of war and they needed some kind of distraction to
help them to come out of the miserable social and economic conditions (Feldman, 1998). This
period saw many changes in the thought process of the people who started to believe that some
changes were needed immediately in the society so that such horrific conditions might never
reoccur. Some of the people of Soviet Union took up this initiative by revolutionizing the sphere
of film making within the country (Feldman, 1998). This essay seeks to discuss the montage
movement introduced in the Soviet Union in the early years of the twentieth century. The paper
further seeks to analyze the changes brought about in the sphere of film making by focusing on
the main theme of the movie The Man with the Movie Camera, directed by Dziga Vertrov. This
movie shows the beginning of the Montage Movement and how it had a deep impact on film
making. The essay concludes with the importance of films for the society and for continually
changing and revolutionizing the social structure.
The importance of art is that art has always had a special place in the lives of individual
(Vaughan, 1979). Art is the mirror image of the prevailing social conditions in the world; it tries
to depict the real life conditions of the people and also, what are the various desires and needs of
the humankind. For instance, Anatole Chernyshevsky (1855), in his work “The Aesthetic
Relations of Art and Reality” opined that art simply does not show the beautiful and desired life,

2SOVIET MONTAGE MOVEMENT
but it also shows what the reality in the world is during that point of time (Vaughan, 1979). This
art can be show cased in a variety of ways such as painting, through acting, through singing and
dancing and various other ways by which the emotions of an individual is brought out in front of
an audience in an exquisite manner. This fundamentally central position that art occupies in the
daily lives of human beings makes it very challenging for the different makers of art to always
cater to the different needs of different individuals and to make the various forms of art
appealing to their audience (Vaughan, 1979). Moreover, these people also have the responsibility
to do something constructive for the society as it is solely through the various forms of art that
human beings get inspired to bring in revolutionizing changes in the society for the welfare of
the people (Vaughan, 1979).
The revolutionizing idea of montage emerged in the twentieth century to show in detail
the prevailing social situations to the common masses (Petric, 1996). The directors believed that
film making should not only be confined to a utopian idea, but rather, should portray the ground
reality. The Soviet montage theory tries to show that movies should not only be made on the
based on the scripted emotions of the actors. Rather, they should also try to show the real
emotions of the people who are not aware that a movie is being shot (Petric, 1996). This will
help the audience to know what the expected behavior of an individual is when dealing with a
particular circumstance. The montage theory tries to underline the importance of the shot rather
than simply focusing on the content of the shot. The main focus in such a theory is to show real
emotions and behavior of the people (Petric, 1996). The idea behind such movies is usually very
complex and the audience is left hanging on to the edge of their seats as no story line is revealed
in a proper sequence. It is only towards the end of the film that the audience finally gets to know
what the entire movie was on about (Petric, 1996). The Soviet montage theory thus laid more