The General Line : Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov
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...