The General Line : Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov
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Eisenstein’s The General Line [1929] is a series of intellectual montages consisting of stills which is more like a creative docufiction than feature narrative film. I think this one is a clean film following the principles and practices of Russian formalism in film.
Collage 1: Eisenstein
had an incredible artistic senses and skills to create a brief graphic
narrative just by sequencing motion profiles and stills images.
Collage 2: Melting candles, slavering cattle, waving flags and weeping devotees composed one of the intellectual montages in the film.
Collage 3: The rebellious woman formed a cooperative to earn
money and there was a conflict raised over profit distribution and followed a greedy
and violent consequences. This is a prototype of collective operation.
Collage 4:The woman in the slumber land dreaming of a herd of bovines at the beach and a god-like bovine appeared in the sky and poured milk on earth, this one so Dadaistic in nature. But it shifted immediately to the modern mechanic production system that reflects the industrialization in modern Russia. Could anyone other than Eisenstein [ as well Charlie] think of this montage to tell the story in the silent era?
Collage 5: The bare feet and the feet on
shoes are the elegant motifs in this sequence. More like the difference between
those have and those have not; more like the constant distance between the old
and the new.
Collage 6: This sequence consists of some pulsating myths that highlight the woman’s free fall and the balloon’s free flight and the cow’s appearance and the woman’s rising up with a mouthful of smile make a very measured and nerve tightening brief narrative- the style only Eisenstein have mastered in.
Two things that had made Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus [1928] very inimitable and grand. First the narrative style and second keeping the film silent in the advent of talkies. Another aspect that is very unusual and still mysterious to me as I have not finished my reading of Chaplin’s Autobiography. It is infamous that The Circus is the only Chaplin’s film which he didn’t mention in his autobiography. It should be researched well resourcefully whether it is that he went through the great turmoil in his private life during its production or it is that he faced an adversary in the professional settings and took the most risky decision not to go with the flow to uphold the aesthetic excellence and integrity of cinema. All the erstwhile feature films he followed the identical formula for dramatic structure of love triangle. In The Kid [1921], the woman was abandoned by the artist, Millet shot himself after being refused by Marie in The Woman of Paris [1923] and in his third fea...
As breezes flowing low By Palash Mahmud Photo Credit: Pixabay I sailin’ back through the same passage I standin’ up under the old bridges. What you know? Those chantin’ branches of dead trees Whispered your fadin’ name on edges As breezes flowin’ low. Those lost stingin’ summer days Those gone sneezin’ winter nights. Those fallin’ leaves turn’d ashes Those floatin’ clouds turn’d leashes. What a crime not to remind your name! What a shame not to recite your rhyme! Your name merged in my shades- Never mind. Your face unseen through my senses Never mind. As I went the passage you came so. How I know? We will not see either ever- When everything is feelin’ Who cares the not-seein’?
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