Montage and New Wave Film Essay

The disparitys between soviet montage and cut new wave cinema are interesting and many. Both genres of pip on seek to create contrast between adjacent shots via discontinuity redact, but sharp differences in their editing styles allow this contrast to produce very diametrical results. In French new wave editing is used to twain draw the audience in, and push them away, it draws the audiences attention and inspires abhorrence.Soviet montage on the other hand uses editing not as a method of controlling the audiences think, but as a way to create ideas. An analysis of the editing in the Godards Breathless and Eisensteins Battleship Potemkin will highlight these different effects. In Breathless, the first use of editing to keep the audiences attention is in the snap where Micheal shoots the cop. In this scene G risibleard makes use of editing to twist and distort time.The audience hears the cop tell Micheal Stop, or ill kill you in a calm voice at near the same time that Mic heal cocks the gun. Immediately thereafter we leap out cut to Micheal press release the gun and jump cut again to the police office fall to the ground as he is shot. From a narrative point of ascertain it is understood that these events do not take place so mingy to each other. The events happen in much too quick a succession to mimic reality. The jump cuts elapse time in an odd uncomfortable manner.It can be argued that this is jarring, and distasteful, but it is exactly this jarring and distaste that makes this scene so fascinating. Rushing through the event which is clearly the inciting follow out of the film (flying in the face of CHC) yields a certain fascination with this scene that typical CHC could not hope to match. An effect similar to the one set forth above is present in the scene where Micheal and Patricia track down Micheals money in the taxi. This exemplifies the use of new wave editing to focus the audiences attention on the visual.In this scene, the visual di fference between shots is minimal. If one were to imagine it without the jump cuts it would be ample and big but the prolific use of jump cuts counters this would-be-dullness. Once again the jump cuts elapse time and quickens the charge per unit of the scene syntheticly. The audience hears Micheal barking orders at the set about in succession that is hurried that he speaks in the story, and they understand that this artificial fast precisely because of the jump cuts and he obviousness in which they are presented. In this way Goddard is able to present a potentially long and dull car ride in the story much faster in the plot.Unlike the previously discussed scene, this scene does not quicken the pace past the point of comfort, it is intentionally fast paced and helps to excite the audience. First lets take the Odessa Steps scene from Battleship Potemkin. This scene feels almost as if it is a CHC film. Shots are spliced together smoothly and invisibly. The audience is never jarre d by