Cinema of Interval: Sergei Eisenstein′s Theory and Practice of Montage

In the history of cinema, Sergei Eisenstein is always considered as a pioneer to conceive of cinema primarily as a form of expressing thought rather than as a representation of reality. For him, montage is the indispensable method to construct an open totality of thought and image in movement. It functions as a basic thread running through two poles of filmic composition, that is, the organic and the pathetic. The organic is concerned with the composition of the film structure as a whole, while the pathetic is involved in an ongoing process of registering a leaping point in various filmic sequences. The ultimate goal of montage for Eisenstein is to create the cinema of ideas which can synthesize both emotional and intellectual elements in the filmic composition. In his system of intellectual cinema, the identity of image and thought externalizes the sensory-motor unity of nature and man along the ascending spiral of centrifugal force of the film. Indeed, in both theory and practice, Eisenstein firmly argues that nature not only provides basic laws for the organic composition of the film, but also expresses itself in the form of the whole which brings out the experience of totality in the film text, the audience, and surely Eisenstein himself.