pratt_spring08: The Historicity of the Avant-Garde: Piranesi and Eisenstein

In contrast to the typical Hollywood linear montage, the introduction of a film editing method that relies on the overlay and “collapse” of independent film sequences or shots is very specific to the Soviet filmmaker of the 1920s, Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein’s theory of montage infringes the classic uninterrupted sequenced system, which structured the cinema prior to its invention.

This new method of organization utilizes inconsistencies between spatial and temporal compositions, assembled together in an identical frame, and therefore generating a conflicting and complex composition. Such compositions are intended to evoke an irrational, incoherent, and irregular overlay of order and chaos as well as a strong clash of themes involving volume, scale, motion, rhythm, and time.

The essay focuses on the work of Piranesi and describes the Carceri through an analytical technique that breaks apart the elements of the composition Eisenstien calls the technique “ecstatic transfiguration.” As a result Eisenstien interprets the forms as being in a state of “potential movement,” as stated by Tufari on the subject. Eisenstien notes that there is a “false equilibrium” in Piranesi’s compositions. An it is precisely that false equilibrium that accounts for the compositions potential movement. It is a phenomenon the Russian Formalist called “semantic distortion.” The essay by Tufari on Eisenstien’s text describes this as a violent alteration that changes the mutual relationship that once mutually bound all the entities within the composition.

“Run Lola Run”, “Animatrix”, and “42^nd Street” evoke a similar ideology of chaos, incoherence and clash of independent events assembled in a single frame, and engendering a wide variety of multifaceted scenes. In “Run Lola Run”, the scenes selected illustrate a composition of “events” relying on a disturbance of speed and rhythm (hit and run scenes), and moments of accelerated versus paused time (picture scene at collisions). “Animatrix,” exemplifies Eisenstein’s editing method more graphically. The animated film allows for film maker to create a composition of elements in different states of motion. This allows the film maker to guide the viewers eye through a futuristic landscape in a constantly shifting it’s pacing through the frame. The film also involves an assemblage of contradictory perspectives of the New York City skyline and a chaotic composition of dimensional scale and volumes. Finally, Eisenstein’s theory of the interrupted “180 degree rule” is found in “42^nd Street,” where the camera angles are now what constitute the composition as well as the fixed versus in-motion frames established to create such a discontinuity in the overall picture.

42nd Street

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