Film Language

Eisenstein had a way of describing montage and the way meaning is conveyed that I had never thought of before. In linguistics we talk about the arbitrariness of words, but what Eisenstein is trying to say is that language isn't ALWAYS without direct meaning. For example, hieroglyphics and Chinese characters are meant to somewhat look like the word they are conveying. For example, a mouth and a child means "screaming." Movies convey meaning in the same way. Without a character saying out loud "I'm scared," the movie can convey this by a closeup on shaking hands, bulging eyes, and lip biting. This is montage. And its powerful. If we show a blank face and cut to a happy situation we describe the person as happy and if we cut to a scene of a funeral instead, it means that the person is upset. Movies have so much power, we forget while we watch that they aren't real which is scary because we are so easily manipulated.