Theories of Montage by Sergey Eisenstein and Slavko Vorkapich

The art of montage in film history appeared in the years between 1900 and 1907. According to many film historians¡ montage was first used by American filmmaker Edwin S. Porter. However¡ montage theory and aesthetics of montage developed after the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 by the great filmmakers and theorists of the era such as Lev Kuleshov¡ and particularly Sergey Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin. Slavko Vorkapich¡ filmmaker¡ editor and cinema lecturer was another key theorist of montage in the history of cinema who worked on the theorization of montage at the same time¡ yet his contribution despite being significant is not regarded as highly as that of the Russian masters. The impact of his thoughts and work on American cinema in the 1920s and 1930s is undisputable. The notion of “Kine-aesthetics” and its value in cinema and the issue of interconnectedness and the chain of integration of shots in the art of montage¡ as opposed to Eisenstein’s cinematic views and the theory of “collision”¡ is notable. This article attempts to examine the ideas of these two theorists of montage and the similarities and divergences of their views.