it was the movie that brought Soviet cinema to the attention of the world the favorite movie of both Charlie Chaplin and Billy Wilder and it was considered so politically charged that it was banned in the UK until 1954 for fear it would cause a working-class revolution but it wasn't just the content of the Soviet propaganda film that made it so important it was the explosive experimental editing in 1925 battleship potemkin that would change the world of cinema hello and welcome to a hundred years of cinema we'll take a look at at least one film a year from 1915 onwards to track the evolution of film over the last century director Sergei Eisenstein was a pioneer film Theory particularly the theory of montage but to really understand Eisenstein impact on cinema we first need to understand the history of editing up until 1925 and the state of Soviet filmmaking after the Revolution in 1917 by 1925 filmmakers had already developed the basic film editing techniques required to tell a cohesive story the major idea both American and European filmmaking was continuity editing where a filmmaker tries to make the film match reality in a natural way creating an immersive experience for the viewer in a way that disguises the actual process of filmmaking filmmakers were using techniques like crossing on action with the director makes a cut to correspond with an action on the screen matching eye level cutting from someone's eyes to what they're looking at and cross-cutting cutting back and forth between two pieces of action happening at the same time these techniques help to build a realistic environment with easy to understand action over in Russia communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin was a big believer in the power of film he said for us of all the Arts cinema is the most important and after the Russian Revolution in 1917 one of the primary goals of the new government was to consolidate power and to spread information to do this Russian nationalized the production of films and created what would become known as the Moscow Film School after the Revolution film stock was in short supply so instead of feature films Soviet filmmakers focused on making short films for the purpose of propaganda and agitation called agitprop rather than producing ah films the students of the Moscow Film School focused on developing the theory of film they took imported films like intolerance and Birth of a Nation to study making hundreds of reddit's moving the order of frames shots and scenes into hundreds of possible combinations studying how the new orders changed the film's meaning and emotional impact from these experiments came one of the earliest theories of montage called the Kuleshov effect less Kuleshov tried to demonstrate how the meaning of shots could be altered by the shots surrounding them he took the same shot of an expressionless face and cut it with various other shots soup a coffin and a girl to try to see how the audience would perceive the meaning of the original shot when paired with the soup they saw hunger with the coffin face or sadness with the girl they saw lost developing on the Kuleshov effect Eisenstein developed his own theory of montage which contained three methods of montage metric rhythmic tonal / tonal and intellectual the first method of montage is the metric montage cutting after a set amount of time or frames regardless of what's happening in the shot it built a temple for the film Eisenstein used it that shows the conditions of sailors and asuras rule later director Darren Aronofsky would use metric editing in requiem for a dream to represent the immediacy of the effect that a drug has on a character's emotional state the second method is rhythmic montage putting on action and scene to create a sense of movement the rhythmic montage gives us one of the most iconic set pieces in all a similar the massacre on the Odessa steps Eisenstein cut rapidly with the marching of soldiers and people fleeing to build pace and visual continuity william fried can use the same technique to ramp up the tension in a car chase in his 1971 film the French Connection the third of fourth methods are tonal and / tonal a tonal montage uses two images with similar emotional or tonal themes to enhance the overall message when our hero of the rebellion vacuole in Chuck dies his body is laid to rest by the sea this is intercut with morning is on the Sun setting over a harbor to enhance the sense of mourning over a brave rebellion soldier over tonal is the combination of metric rhythmic and tonal montage to create an effect larger than the sum of his parts Hitchcock cuts from the shot of two lovers sat next to each other to a shot of a train going through a tunnel to represent sex the fifth and final montage is the intellectual montage the idea is to take two or more shots or sequences with meanings of their own and combine them to create a new meaning that wasn't present in either of the original shots shots of soldiers marching down steps symbolize an oppressive force juxtaposed with unarmed civilians fleeing shows the helplessness of the Russian people and gives new meaning of the Sarris forces brutality shots of a lion statue may not mean much on their own but when combined to make it seem like the lion is riding from sleep they represent the Russian people waking up and fighting against that government in Apocalypse Now Francis Ford Coppola uses an intellectual montage to juxtapose the death of Colonel Kurtz with a sacrificial killing of a cow the suggestion is the curse is as much a victim of war as anybody else a man who sacrificed his sanity and morality to an insane and immoral war capella also used an intellectual montage in The Godfather combining images of a baptism with the multiple assassinations of the enemies of the Corleone family symbolizing Michaels baptism into a new life of crime Coppola even included a nod to the battleship potemkin in the death of Moe Greene what Eisenstein created with his theories of montage and the battleship potemkin was a way to film the unfilmable for the first time he gave films depth and meaning allowing them to communicate more than just stories they could communicate ideas thanks for watching 100 years of cinema what do you think what's your favorite intellectual montage do you agree with my reading of Apocalypse Now on the Godfather let me know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe so we can travel through the next 100 years of film together