Film form & revolution

Bill Nicols Film form & revolution

Context • “Intelligentsia” the disaffected sector of educated Russians in the nineteenth century • A war with Japan in 1904 bolster support for Tsar Nicholas II’s regime, but it went badly • Hundred of workers died on that “Bloody Sunday” in January 1905 • Other uprisings occurred: soldiers stationed at Kronshtadt & sailors aboard the battle-ship Potemkin in the tsar’s Black Sea fleet mutinied, but these revolts were also contained • Set the stage for the successful Communist revolution of 1917

Context • Constructivist artists embraced new technologies while rejecting the “bourgeois” celebration of the individual hero • An image of a Nazi given the title “Blood & Iron” • Alexander Rodchenko wrote • Constructivists often saw themselves less as artists than as engineers, less as part of the former intelligentsia than as comrades with the workers & peasants who were to be the heart & soul of a new society. It was against this background that the work of Sergei Eisenstein emerged • In 1923, Eisenstein’s first essay, “Montage of Attractions” as models for the type of theater & film he wished to create

Context • Montage became a highly elaborated concept for Eisenstein • The juxtaposition of distinct elements generates new meanings absent from the individual components • But on the filmmaker’s ability to give to the assembly of fragments & pieces an interpretation that leads the audience to a new level of understanding • Montage bore resemblance to the artistic principle of collage

Context • Victor Shklovsky , the political potency of Formalism, “Art as Technique” • The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar” • Realism, Constructivism, Formalism • Eisenstein sought a similar, defamiliarizing effect in film, prompt the viewer to see the familiar in an altogether unfamiliar way • Galvanize the viewer to a new level of insight

Analysis • Battleship Potemkin, a classic story of heightened political consciousness set during the failed revolution of 1905 & organized around the actual mutiny of the crew of this one battleship • To change the possibilities for social existence means not individual determination • Vsevolod Pudovkin, Mother (1926), The End of St. Petersburg (1927), Storm Over Asia (1928), told tales of how an individual character achieved a heightened political consciousness • Eisenstein stressed the group • Eisenstein provided a model for a cinema of groups, crowds, & masses rather than individuals

Analysis • Each awakening broadens the political scope of the film • Strike also addresses the events of 1905, through the story of a strike among factory workers • The first awakening, the central characters of two sailors who play pivotal roles in Acts I & V • This lively discussion yields to shots of the ship’s crew asleep • The opening scenes also introduce another crucial concept of Eisenstein’s typage (tipazh in Russian). Individual actors were not chosen for their acting ability, instead they were chosen for how well they looked the part

Analysis • He chose not to depend on trained performers to engage the audience through their acting abilities • Eisenstein’s theory of montage represents a break with Aristotelian drama. Instead of achieving catharsis through the story of an individual character’s struggles, catharsis occurs through the effect of film form, montage itself • Vakulinchuk exclaims, “Will we be last to rise?” The image clearly peg the larger political meaning of revolt to the men rising from their slumber

Analysis • The exploitative nature of this episode is brought home when Eisenstein provides shots of the men buying supplementary rations from the ship’s commissary • Eisenstein films this inciting incident with the plate according to his concept of a montage of attractions • This opening salvo of rebellion propels the film into the second act, “Drama on the Quarterdeck.” • Eisenstein has rejected the traditional narrative pattern in which a hero embarks on a quest or responds to a challenge

Analysis • The crucial moment arrives: an order to fire on the shrouded sailors brings up the rifles of the ship’s militia. An officer commands, “Fire!” Vakulinchuk responds, “Brothers!” • Eisenstein concludes Act II with the death of Vakulinchuk, a victim of the ship’s officers before they are finally routed • The expansion begins with Vakulinchuk’s funeral tent on Odessa, the harbor to which the mutinous crew takes the Potemkin

Analysis • Eisenstein does not need to cut to “typical” workers or civil servants to give us points of identification. • He fashions the citizens of Odessa into a single character composed of many parts but all streaming toward the same site for the same purpose in shots • The city acted as one in opposition to an oppressive regime • The relation between the masses & a leader • Eisenstein embodies this transfer of responsibility in the speeches delivered at the funeral site • More speeches occur aboard the battleship as the citizens come out to the ship in their boats to express solidarity & deliver food

Analysis • Act IV contains the most famous episode • The military’s attack against the town’s citizens on the Odessa steps • The individual shots in this sequence are brief & powerful, like fragments from a nightmare • The montage of attractions amounts to “every element that can be verified & mathematically calculated to produce certain emotional shocks in a proper order within the totality – the only means by which it is possible to make the final ideological conclusion perceptible”

Analysis • The final act of Battleship Potemkin focuses on the third Y broadest political awakening • Matyushenko reappears as a galvanizing force • Eisenstein has shown the crew’s decision as a collective one • Matyushenko brings these questions to a focus • He issues the command “Signal them to join us.” Language, in the form of an appeal, breeches the ostensible gap between the sailors already in mutiny & the fleet’s sailors still caught up in habitual obedience • The single word “Brothers”

Conclusion • Served as a model for political filmmaking around the world • In 1934, declared that the style of Socialist Realism would be the only acceptable style. Such an official policy spelled the end of an extraordinary period of artistic experimentation & achievement in the Soviet Union • Until well after the death of Stalin, these artists remain central • An irony, by the very system of social & economic relations they sought to overturn • Through its rigorous application of the theories of typage & montage

Film Analysis

James Naremore The magician & the Mass media

Context • The work of the young Orson Welles • Proto-Fascist demagogues • After the whispered “Rosebud,” is “Don’t believe everything you hear on the radio.” • Against one of America’s most wealthy media moguls • Mrs. Kane sits at the right foreground, her face the very image of stern puritanical sacrifice • The mise-en-scène under fairly rigid control

Analysis • Two snow sleds • The first is named “Rosebud” & is given to Kane by his mother • The second is a Christmas present from Kane’s guardian, Thatcher • Which is called “Crusader”, is presented fully to the camera • The title character has not only two sleds but t & two friends • In its last moment, the film shifts from intelectual irony to dramatic irony, from apparent skepticism to apparent revelation

Analysis • Voyeurism inherent in the medium, Y each leaves Kane an enigma • In the first shot, we see a “No Trespassing” sign that the camera promptly ignores • All the while encountering a bizarre montage: monkeys in a cage, gondolas in a stream, a golf course • As voyeuristic as anything in a Hitchcock movie • Like Kane’s own newspapers, the camera is an “inquirer,” are like teasing affronts to our curiosity • Aligning himself first with the progressives & then with the Fascists

Analysis • As a mythical character like Noah or Kubla Khan • Everybody is involved in a dubious pursuit • It’s a film about complexity, not about relativity • Once again the search for “Rosebud” seems tawdry • She never heard of Rosebud • With a mild shock or a witty image at the beginning & a joke or an ironic twist at the end

Analysis • In a charmingly exuberant & altogether antirealistic montage, he constantly turns to face the camera, muttering in disgust as the young Kane grows up, founds a newspaper, & then attacks Wall Street • Capital, it seems, is always in charge of Kane’s life • The inquirer offices • He always places personal loyalty above principle • Bernstein’s reminiscences are chiefly about adventure & male camaraderie

Analysis • As the doggedly loyal Bernstein • Hinting that his involvement with Kane has sexual implications • Where Kane unsuccessfully tries to interest Leland in a woman, but even without that scene he seems to have no active sex life • It is Leland, not Emily Kane, who behaves like a jilted lover

Analysis • The comic toothache scene is Susan Alexander’s apartment • The closing line of Susan’s song concerns the theme of power; it comes from The Barber of Seville, & roughly translates “I have sworn it, I will conquer.” • Large-scale effects with a modest budget • Painted, Expressionistic image suggesting Kane’s delusions of grandeur & the crowd’s lack of individuality. Everything is dominated by Kane’s ego: the initial “K” he wears as a stickpin, the huge blowup of his jowly face on a poster, & the incessant ”I” in his public speech • Occasionally we see Kane’s supporters isolated in contrasting close-ups; but his political rival stands high above the action, dominating the frame like a sinister power

Analysis • Just at the moment when Kane’s political ambitions are wrecked, the film shifts into its examination of his sexual life • His tyranny is his treatment of Susan • An absurd plagiarism case against Welles & Mankiewicz • She represents for Kane a “cross-section of the American public.” when Kane meets her she is a working girl, undereducated & relatively innocent, & his relationship with her is comparable to his relationship with the masses who read his papers • “you talk about the people as though you owned them,” Leland says. Kane’s treatment of Susan illustrates the truth of his charge • Susan is reduced from a pleasant, attractive girl to a near suicide

Analysis • Begin the arduous, comically inappropriate series of music lessons • She attempts to quit the opera, but Kane orders her to continue because “I don’t propose to have myself made ridiculous.” In a scene remarkable for the way it shows the pain of both people, his shadow falls over her face – just as he will later tower over her in the “party” scene, when a woman’s ambiguous scream is heard distantly on the sound track • Personal concerns, how the public & the personal are interrelated

Analysis • Throughout, Kane is presented with a mixture of awe, satiric invective, & sympathy • The surreal picnic, with a stream of black cars driving morosely down a beach toward a swampy encampment, where a jazz band plays • Both shots are impressive uses of optical printing. In response, Kane blindly destroys her room & remembers his childhood loss • Thompson becomes a slightly troubled onlooker • Here it might be noted that Welles was uneasy about the whole snow-sled idea

Analysis • A child-man, he spends all his energies rebelling against anyone who asserts quthority over his will • Imprisoned by his childhood ego, Kane treats everything as a toy: first the sled, then the newspaper, then the Spanish-American War • Ultimately settling on the “No Trespassing” sign outside the gate. We are back where we began. Even the film’s title has been a contradiction in terms

Conclusion • Richard Nixon, the “Hotel Xanadu” • In translating Hearst into a creature of fiction, he & Mankiewicz borrowed freely from the lives of other American capitalists (among them Samuel Insull & John McCormack). They salted the story with references to Welles’s own biography, & at several junctures they departed from well-known facts about Hearst • The Hearst press, this in contrast to the Hearst-Davies relationship • Most of these changes tend to create sympathy for Kane • By showing Kane as a tragicomic failure

Conclusion • Kane clearly does satirize Hearst’s public life • Kane’s manipulative interest in the Spanish-American War • In the election scenes it depicts the corruption of machine politics with the force of a great editorial cartoon • The film is explicit in its denunciation, showing his supposed democratic aspirations as in reality a desire for power. We even see him on a balcony conferring with Hitler • Kane suggests that the process of discovery is more important than any pat conclusion • Watching a movie rather than reality itself

Conclusion • Because of the power he wielded in Hollywood • The paradox is that Welles had no desire to wreck the motion-picture industry. Kane was held to a relatively modest A-picture budget • Industry bosses perceived Welles as an “artist” & a left-wing ideologue who might bring trouble • He would never again be allowed such freedom at a major studio

Film form & revolution