montage

montage, in motion pictures, the editing technique of assembling separate pieces of thematically related film and putting them together into a sequence. With montage, portions of motion pictures can be carefully built up piece by piece by the director, film editor, and visual and sound technicians, who cut and fit each part with the others.

Visual montage may combine shots to tell a story chronologically or may juxtapose images to produce an impression or to illustrate an association of ideas. An example of the latter occurs in Strike (1924), by the Russian director Sergey Eisenstein, when the scene of workers being cut down by cavalry is followed by a shot of cattle being slaughtered.

Montage may also be applied to the combination of sounds for artistic expression. Dialogue, music, and sound effects may be combined in complex patterns, as in Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929), in which the word knife is repeated in the thoughts of a frightened girl who believes she has committed murder.

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Montage technique developed early in cinema, primarily through the work of the American directors Edwin S. Porter (1870–1941) and D.W. Griffith (1875–1948). It is, however, most commonly associated with the Russian editing techniques, particularly as introduced to American audiences through the montage sequences of Slavko Verkapich in films in the 1930s. See also photomontage.