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.
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