Eisenstein: Montage in Japanese Film

"The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram" Sergei Eisenstein


What stands out to me from Eisenstein's "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram" is the distinction between cinema and cinematography in Japanese film, and how that relates to Japanese language. Cinema includes the actors, the drama, and the capital investment. Cinematography is the montage, or the combination of two simple forms to create a concept, not the sum of two things. Cinema is the combination of shots that are depictive, single in meaning, neutral in content, into intellectual contexts and series. Basically, cinema starts are separate entities and earns meaning based on how the director arranges and combines the shots. In this process, we relinquish normalcy to understand the combination of units that takes place in the theater. However, so many other elements of filming like camera position, transitions, and expression contributes to our understanding of a movie, or add meaning to the single shot unit. I appreciate this way of interpreting film, fabricating the smallest units into the overall significance, like the system of hieroglyphics. I am anxious to see how Japanese cinema functions in comparison to what I know. As Eisenstein said earlier, the means of production determine the form. The structure of Japanese language determines how Japanese directors think, and how they piece shots together to make a movie that is different from other countries. Overall, really interesting article on film language.