Eisenstein on the Audiovisual: The Montage of Music, Image and Sound in Cinema

253 Pages·18.145 MB·English

by  Robert Robertson

Robert Robertson is a composer and filmmaker. He has an MFA in Film
Production from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Montreal. His
music/films include Oserake and the River that Walks, Doors of the Spirits
and I’m Back, and he has composed the operas The Kingdom, The Cathars,
and Enoedickes. He has been influenced by Eisenstein’s ideas since 1977,
and this book is the result of his doctoral research at King’s College
London, UK.
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EISENSTEIN ON
THE AUDIOVISUAL
The Montage of Music, Image and
Sound in Cinema

Robert Robertson

TAURIS ACADEMIC STUDIES
an imprint of
I.B.Tauris Publishers
LONDON • NEW YORK
Published in 2009 by Tauris Academic Studies,
An imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © Robert Robertson, 2009
The right of Robert Robertson to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any
part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
the publisher.
International Library of Cultural Studies 5
ISBN 978 1 84511 839 6
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
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Library of Congress Catalog card: available
Printed and bound in India by Thomson Press.
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TO CLAUDETTE

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xi
Preface xiii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Audiovisual Counterpoint 13
Chapter 2 Organic Unity 47
Chapter 3 Nonindifferent Nature 80
Chapter 4 Synaesthesia 140

Notes 202
Bibliography 226
A note on the versions of Eisenstein’s films consulted 231
Index 233

List of Illustrations
1. Schematic diagram of a fugue. 14
2. Score for an imaginary episode in a play, to illustrate
Meyerhold’s ideas on temporal proportion in theatre. 56
3. Eisenstein’s polyphonic chart of the sequence
‘Ivan at the Coffin of Anastasia’. 74
4. Sebastian’s remains are paralleled with a nearby
maguey cactus. 90
5. Two of Mayakovsky’s drawings of Mexico, from his
notebooks, 1925. 107
6. An example of visual three-part counterpoint: a shot
from the Maguey episode from Que viva Mexico! 108
7. Pencil drawing by Eisenstein of an execution by
firing squad. 109
8. A montage within the shot from the Fiesta episode
from Que viva Mexico! 110
9. Montage within the shot: masked figures against a
whirling Day of the Dead funfair. 111
10. ‘The profile of the Mayan girl with the entire pyramid
of Chichen-Itzá.’ 112
11. The landowner and the Pekinese dog: montage
within the shot. 113
12. A peon framed by a baroque Maguey cactus. 114
13. A merging of peon with landscape. 115
14. The maguey cactus is extended into the sky by a cloud. 116
15. Shot of an ‘all-over’ composition as the peons enter a
cactus grove. 117
16. Eisenstein’s drawing from his Crucifixion of the Matador
series. 120
17. Eisenstein’s drawing and collage of a Mexican corrida. 126
18. A design for ‘The Promised Land’ scene from
Mayakovsky’s play, Mystery-Bouffe, 1919. 127
19. Diagram of a stimulus response continuum. 154
x EISENSTEIN ON THE AUDIOVISUAL
20. Eisenstein’s diagram of his audiovisual analysis of the
sequence before ‘The Battle on the Ice’ from Alexander
Nevsky (1938). 172
21. Eisenstein’s diagram of the movement of his hand
outlining the ‘graph of the eye’s movement’. 175
22. Diagram showing an audiovisual accent after a visible cut. 176
23. Eisenstein’s diagram of the movement into depth from
Shots VI to VII. 178