Soviet Montage

Soviet Montage is a filmmaking theory that emerged in 1920s Russia, built on the idea that the meaning of a film lives in the cut, not the shot. Filmmakers like Eisenstein, Kuleshov, Pudovkin, and Vertov argued that when you place two images next to each other, the audience creates a third meaning that doesn’t exist in either shot alone. Kuleshov proved this early on: the same shot of an actor’s neutral face, cut against a bowl of soup, a coffin, or a child, made audiences read hunger, grief, or tenderness into an expression that never changed. From there, the Soviet school pushed editing into increasingly abstract territory, using it to control emotion, rhythm, and eventually (in Eisenstein’s case) intellectual argument. It was the first time anyone treated editing as the fundamental creative act of cinema rather than just a way to assemble footage.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​