The early days of montage school

Strictly speaking, the early films did not have montage editing, nor did they decompose and recombine time and space.

Lumiere's movies are actually just a display of new technology and a simple game. It uses a very simple method to make a film, that is, aim the camera at a scene until the film is finished. This is a naturalistic record lacking montage conception.

Mei Liai began to connect the shots taken in different scenes to narrate, which made the film have the characteristics of "decomposition and combination". Obviously, he is one step ahead of Lumiere. But the whole scene was shot from one camera, and the lens connection is also the simplest connection. He didn't understand the great significance of this connection combination.

At the same time, American directors Porter and Griffith are also looking for a unique way to structure movies. In 192, Porter made use of some film materials reflecting the life of firefighters in the old film library, and made up the pictures of saving mothers and children in the studio by actor's acting, and then spliced the material films and the supplementary films properly to form The Life of an American Firefighter. Porter's attempt is a big step forward than Lumiere and Mei Liai's, and it explores the possibility of freedom of time and space for movies.

On the basis of Porter, Griffith became the first person who consciously used "montage" in film history. In The Adventures of Dawley (198), Griffith created the technique of "flashback"; In the bleak villa (199), he first applied parallel montage and created the famous "last-minute rescue" technique; In Ramona (191), he created a great vision; In Pastor Longerda (1911), he used a very close shot and developed the skill of alternately cutting people. In The Massacre (1912), he first applied mobile photography.

despite Griffith's above-mentioned series of creations, and in his two masterpieces "The Birth of a Country" (1915) and "Claiming with Different Groups" (1916), he applied his new skills skillfully, but he never put his montage method into order. It seems that he works mainly by intuition and an inexpressible love for film means, and he never shows that he is aware of these principles. He thinks that montage is only the most powerful assistant to vividly express drama stories, and uses montage only as a technical means. In essence, he has not understood the basic nature of montage and its full potential.