Montage is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are
edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. The term
has been used in various contexts. It was introduced to cinema primarily by
Eisenstein, and early Soviet directors used it as a synonym for creative
editing. In France the word "montage" simply denotes cutting. The term
"montage sequence" has been used primarily by British and American
studios, which refers to the common technique as outlined in this article.
The montage sequence is usually used to suggest the passage of time, rather than
to create symbolic meaning as it does in Soviet montage theory.
From the 1930s to the 1950s, montage sequences often combined numerous short
shots with special optical effects dance and music. They were usually assembled
by someone other than the director or the editor of the movie.
Development The word montage came to identify . . .
specifically the rapid, shock cutting that Eisenstein employed in his films.
Its use survives to this day in the specially created 'montage sequences'
inserted into Hollywood films to suggest, in a blur of double exposures,
the rise to fame of an opera singer or, in brief model shots, the destruction of
an airplane, a city or a planet. Two common montage sequence devices of
the period are a newspaper one and a railroad one. In the newspaper one,
there are multiple shots of newspapers being printed and headlines zooming on
to the screen telling whatever needs to be told. There are two montages like
this in It Happened One Night. In a typical railroad montage, the shots
include engines racing toward the camera, giant engine wheels moving
across the screen, and long trains racing past the camera as destination
signs zoom into the screen. "Scroll montage" is a form of
multiple-screen montage developed specifically for the moving image in an
internet browser. It plays with Italian theatre director Eugenio Barba's "space
river" montage in which the spectators' attention is said to "[sail] on a tide
of actions which their gaze [can never] fully encompass." "Scroll montage" is
usually used in online audio-visual works in which sound and the moving
image are separated and can exist autonomously: audio in these works is
usually streamed on internet radio and video is posted on a separate site.
Noted directors Film critic Ezra Goodman discusses the
contributions of Slavko Vorkapić, who worked at MGM and was the best-known
montage specialist of the 1930s: He devised vivid montages for numerous
pictures, mainly to get a point across economically or to bridge a time lapse.
In a matter of moments, with images cascading across the screen, he was able
to show Jeanette MacDonald's rise to fame as an opera star in Maytime, the
outbreak of the revolution in Viva Villa, the famine and exodus in The Good
Earth, and the plague in Romeo and Juliet.
From 1933 to 1942, Don Siegel, later a noted feature film director, was the
head of the montage department at Warner Brothers. He did montage sequences for
hundreds of features, including Confessions of a Nazi Spy; Knute Rockne,
All American; Blues in the Night; Yankee Doodle Dandy; Casablanca; Action in the
North Atlantic; Gentleman Jim; and They Drive By Night.
Siegel told Peter Bogdanovich how his montages differed from the usual ones:
Montages were done then as they're done now, oddly enough—very sloppily. The
director casually shoots a few shots that he presumes will be used in the
montage and the cutter grabs a few stock shots and walks down with them to the
man who's operating the optical printer and tells him to make some sort of
mishmash out of it. He does, and that's what's labeled montage.
In contrast, Siegel would read the motion picture's script to find out the
story and action, then take the script's one line description of the montage and
write his own five page script. The directors and the studio bosses left him
alone because no one could figure out what he was doing. Left alone with his
own crew, he constantly experimented to find out what he could do. He also tried
to make the montage match the director's style, dull for a dull director,
exciting for an exciting director. Of course, it was a most marvelous way
to learn about films, because I made endless mistakes just experimenting with
no supervision. The result was that a great many of the montages were
enormously effective. Siegel selected the montages he did for
Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Adventures of Mark Twain, and Confessions of a Nazi
Spy, as especially good ones. "I thought the montages were absolutely
extraordinary in 'The Adventures of Mark Twain'—not a particularly good picture,
by the way." Analysis of two typical examples
The two montage sequences in Holiday Inn show the two basic montage styles. The
focus of the movie is an inn that presents elaborate nightclub shows only
on the holidays. The film was in production when the United States
entered World War II. The first montage occurs during the
Independence Day show, as Bing Crosby sings "Song of Freedom". The 50 second
montage combines several single screen sequences of workers in an aircraft
factory and various military units in motion with multiple split screens, with
up to six images in one shot. The penultimate shot shows a center screen
head shot of General Douglas MacArthur in a large star with military images in
the four corners. The second montage occurs near the end
of the film, showing the passage of time. Unlike the clarity of the "Song of
Freedom" montage, this one layers multiple images in an indistinct and
dream-like fashion. In the film, the character played by Fred Astaire has
taken Crosby's partner, Marjorie Reynolds, to star in a motion picture
based on the idea of the inn. The 60 second montage covers the time from
Independence Day to Thanksgiving. It opens with a split screen showing three
shots of Hollywood buildings and a zoom title, Hollywood. Then comes a zoom into
a camera lens where Astaire and Reynolds are seen dancing to a medley of tunes
already introduced in the film. The rest of the sequence continues to show them
dancing, with multiple images of motion picture cameras, cameramen, a director,
musical instruments, single musical notes, sheet music and dancers' legs
circle around them. Several times six images of themselves also circle the
dancers. Only the opening shot uses a clearly defined split screen and only
the second shot is a single shot. Both of these styles of montage have
fallen out of favor in the last 50 years. Today's montages avoid the use of
multiple images in one shot, either through splits screens as in the first
example or layering multiple images as in the second. Most recent examples use
a simpler sequence of individual short, rapidly paced shots combined with a
specially created background song to enhance the mood or reinforce the
message being conveyed. Sports training use
The sports training montage is a standard explanatory montage. It
originated in American cinema but has since spread to modern martial arts
films from East Asia. Originally depicting a character engaging in
physical or sports training, the form has been extended to other activities or
themes. = Conventions and clichés =
The standard elements of a sports training montage include a build-up
where the potential sports hero confronts his failure to train
adequately. The solution is a serious, individual training regimen. The
individual is shown engaging in physical training through a series of short, cut
sequences. An inspirational song typically provides the only sound. At
the end of the montage several weeks have elapsed in the course of just a few
minutes and the hero is now prepared for the big competition. One of the
best-known examples is the training sequence in the 1976 movie Rocky, which
culminates in Rocky's run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The simplicity of the technique and its over-use in American film vocabulary has
led to its status as a film cliché. A notable parody of the sports training
montage appears in the South Park episode, "Asspen", noted above. When
Stan Marsh must become an expert skier quickly, he begins training in a montage
where the inspirational song explicitly spells out the techniques and
requirements of a successful sports training montage sequence as they occur
on screen. The same song was later used in Team America: World Police in a
similar sequence. In "Once More, with Feeling", an episode
of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy Summers does an extended workout while
Rupert Giles sings one song; this distortion of time is one of numerous
musical conventions made literal by a spell affecting Sunnydale. Prior to this
sequence, Buffy Summers voices her concern that "this whole session is
going to turn into some training montage from an '80s movie" to which Rupert
Giles replies "Well, if we hear any inspirational power chords we'll just
lie down until they go away". Ironically, the original 1992 film of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer includes a very clichéd training montage.
References External links
Movie Montages at Cracked.com Montages at TV Tropes