#bordwell

If beliefs are relative to a culture, then belief in relativism must be relative to our culture

[E]diting is only the most evident case of the principle by which depictions coalesce into an artistic image. Cinema has 'micro-montage' at the level of frames, 'montage proper' in editing and framing, and 'macro-montage' in joining scenes and parts into an entire film [...]. It is now the process whereby various lines, without losing their individuality, dynamically interact to create an organic entity. (184)

The individual shot, or 'montage piece,' exists as what Eisenstein calls 'a partial depiction of the single overall theme which in equal degree pervades all the sequences'. (179)

There is [...] a tendency in Eisenstein's late montage theory to avoid the ABA alternation characteristic of editing in classical narrative cinema. [H]is editing units create shot clusters that present the same person or action from slightly different views (A1, A2, A3); the film will then pass on to another unit (B1, B2, B3). Portions of space are plumbed successively, each module expanded to heighten perceptual nuances and intensify expressive qualities. (149)

Both Engels and Lenin took the biological 'cell' as the model of dialectical change, since its splitting produces a new unity. Eisenstein therefore speaks of the shot as a 'montage cell' [...]. The analogy is somewhat obscure, but it appears to rest on two points of resemblance. First, as the shot accumulates quantitative tensions, such as that of figure and background or light and dark, it cannot resolve them internally and thus 'divides' into another shot. [...] In this respect, the juxtaposition of conflicting shots is a 'leap into a new quality' in Engels' sense: an impression or concept not present in the individual images. (129)

[Montage] is figurative because the meaning is not denoted in either sign; it emerges through juxtaposition. (126)