Pudovkin's creative idea

Pudovkin's thought has a great influence on the development of movies, especially his theory emphasizes the narrative of movies, which supports the melodrama mode of the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1930s and 1940s to some extent. Therefore, his thought has always been controversial in history, especially with Eisenstein. Eisenstein pointed out: "pudovkin's idea is that montage is just a combination of shots. In order to clarify a theme, a sequence is arranged one after another. I think montage is a kind of conflict, a conflict between two elements, and a concept put forward by generate. I think the R combination is only a possibility and a special case. "

The purpose of pudovkin's "shooting" is to highlight the importance of details, reproduce plots and events through their decomposition and combination, and make montage a continuation of plot fragments; Strengthen the narrative power of movies.

In Eisenstein's view, pudovkin's idea is to bring montage, a new film modeling method, into the traditional category of reproduction aesthetics, which is a retrogression on the road of modernism aesthetics.

Pudovkin's creative path was also regarded by avant-garde artists in the1920s as a continuation of the narrative structure of Griffith's films.

Compared with Eisenstein

The difference between Eisenstein (1898 ~ 1948) and pudovkin Eisenstein's early period lies in their emphasis on conflict, such as "juggling" and "intellectual montage"; Pudovkin emphasized the role of connection.

Eisenstein believes that conflict is the feature of montage, and new representations and concepts are produced after conflict. Pudovkin emphasized consistency. He believes that montage is a scene composed of multiple shots, a paragraph composed of multiple scenes, and a part composed of multiple paragraphs. There is a clear connection between these fragments. People don't feel interrupted and jumping, and get an unintentional stimulus.

Eisenstein's theoretical achievements: He began to publish papers in the early 1920s, and then made in-depth exploration and research on montage film theory during his teaching in the Soviet National Film School, making great contributions to the formation of a relatively complete montage theory.

As for "juggling montage", as mentioned above, "juggling montage" was first put forward by Eisenstein when he was engaged in drama creation, but the practice of this theory was embodied in his film creation. He once said in the article "Montage of Variety": "Variety is every particularly exciting moment in the drama, that is, the factors that can urge the audience to influence their sensory or psychological feelings, that is, each factor that can guarantee and accurately predict that if arranged in an appropriate order as a whole, it will cause some emotional shock, and they are the only means that can be used to show the final ideological conclusion." He further pointed out that "it is not a static' reflection' of an event, and it does not make all the possibilities of activities within the limits of the logical performance of this event, but jumps to a new stage: it forms a montage of arbitrarily selected (within the scope of connecting the thematic links of the functional performances) and those independent vaudeville performances, that is, everything is synthesized from the standpoint of some final theme effect. This is. In his film creation, Eisenstein believes that movies can directly convey ideas to the audience through attractive lens arrangement. He believes that there is no need to have a complete literary script as the basis, and he also denies the performance of professional actors. He used the theory of "juggling montage" in his creation, but in fact only "Battleship potemkin" was successful, and all other works failed to varying degrees.

The classic passage of Odessa Steps Massacre fully shows the exquisite skills of young Soviet film directors. Eisenstein decomposes and dislocates a series of action scenes, such as the running of the common people, the approaching of the czar's army, the sliding of the stroller, and the mother holding the dead child to meet the czar's army, which forms several outstanding features of this passage: First, it highlights the theme of the film with visual rhythm modeling factors, creates the artistic conception of the film, and forms the impact of the visual senses of the film. Secondly, strengthen the visual image of the film in the form of montage visual structure and expand the spatial effect of the film. Thirdly, the repeated continuous action from multiple angles makes the time of the film abstract, which leads to the delay of the performance of the film. In this passage, Eisenstein made a unique thinking and creative expression on the concept of time and space in film narration, combining objective phenomena with subjective consciousness, fully demonstrating the vitality of objects and profoundly reflecting the internal process of various phenomena. As the end of this paragraph, the lens of three stone lions shot by photographer Keith was poetically edited by Eisenstein as a metaphor of thoughts and feelings, which was very successful here. But in the performance of this paragraph, Eisenstein's montage concept is also one-sided. Because the core of his montage theory emphasizes "conflict" and the connection between two shots is not the sum of two numbers, but the product of two numbers, so in order to achieve this goal, he does not ignore the spatial expression inside a single shot, and makes the picture inside his single shot become a single information plane. But "Battleship potemkin" is undoubtedly a masterpiece of silent film, leaving immortal and brilliant achievements in the world film history.

Intellectual montage (also known as "rational film") was put forward by Eisenstein in the late 1920s. He advocates that in the film, the audience can transform a certain visual image into a rational understanding through the internal modeling arrangement of the picture. For example, the three stone lions in Battleship potemkin and the statue in Alexander III in October fell from the base. It symbolizes the collapse of tsarist autocracy; When the interim government embarked on the old road of the tsarist system, the statue of Alexander III was re-erected on the pedestal (upside down) to show the counter-attack of the reactionary forces. These are typical examples of the application of "intellectual montage". Here, the lens becomes some kind of symbol or hieroglyphic, and the combination of the two produces some kind of concept, thus replacing the artistic image. Eisenstein believes that the purpose of film art is not to vividly express reality, but to express concepts. In theory, Eisenstein is used to expand the possibilities of movies as a means to understand reality. But in his creation, he is divorced from the material of real life. Eisenstein's theory exaggerates the role of montage and is rejected by film theorists and peers, even though his style is quite different from his own realistic works.

Pudovkin also regards montage as the basis of film art creation. Pudovkin founded "Associative Montage", which is full of poetic and lyrical factors. "Associative montage" juxtaposes videos with no material connection but very close theme. This technique can only be used in some parts of the film, but not to unify all the shots. Pudovkin's theory emphasizes the narrative of movies, that is, highlighting the importance of details through the lens, reproducing plots and events through the decomposition and combination of plots and events, making montage a continuation of plot fragments, thus strengthening the narrative power of movies; These theories supported the melodrama model of the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1930s and 1940s to some extent, so they were regarded by avant-garde artists in the 20th century as a continuation of the narrative structure of Griffith's films, and even regarded by Eisenstein as bringing montage, a new film modeling method, into the traditional category of reappearance aesthetics, which was a retrogression on the road of modernism aesthetics.

Pudovkin relies more on the images of natural landscapes than other contemporary directors, such as trees, rivers, mud, storms and so on. Pudovkin's unique style is fully reflected in his most important work "Mother": when revolutionary Barville imagined a moment of being released from prison, pudovkin switched the camera from his smiling face to a mountain stream where the snow and ice melted, and crystal water gurgled out of the winter confinement ... pudovkin also used a series of similar cameras to express the homesickness of Barville's friends-fields, horses, farming, touching the soil with both hands ... which deviated from the narrative ontology. In order to avoid monotony and repetition, pudovkin also attaches great importance to the organic combination of expressive montage and narrative elements in his films. Before the end of the film, the marchers merged into a mighty stream of people and marched along a big river. At this point, the camera switches to the scene where neva river rushes forward with ice floes, symbolizing the overwhelming revolutionary force. The season in the film is spring, and the places people pass by are also along the coast of neva river. Events and vehicles are in the same space, which constitutes the same objective reality and has a strong symbolic role. In the film, pudovkin alternately uses these two montage techniques and other film means, which fully embodies his realistic aesthetic view.