Lotman and Eisenstein

The article about Yuri Lotman and the Semiotics of Cinema was interesting. The idea of shots in a film relating to words in a sentence makes a lot of sense. If someone moves around words in a sentence it will have a new meaning, or it might not even make sense anymore. The same is true for film, where shots are specifically placed and moving them around could alter the perceived meaning of the whole movie.
The first thing I thought of when reading this was the movie Memento. The scenes are not placed in chronological order, but the movie still works and is very interesting. The same holds true for some of Quentin Tarantino's movies like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. If another director or editor were to rearranged the scenes in these movies, the ideas and meanings would change.
Another interesting aspect in this article was the idea that each of us brings different outside information to a film. We each bring different levels of intellect, humor, maturity, culture, etc.
I've often felt about this after I've watched an enjoyable film, and one of the persons that watched it with me says "I didn't get it." Usually when that happens I try to explain what happened, but the truth is this person didn't get it because they are different than me in a lot of ways. A lot of movies can be interpreted as funny by some people and stupid by others. I've found that the disparity in opinion usually has a lot to do with the level of maturity in the people who watched the movie.
The idea of people bringing different information to a film relates to why some films are seen as "artistic" or "cult films." Some people understand them and some people don't.

The Eisenstein article on Film Form: Essays in Film Theory was all about montages. It focused on Eisenstein's disagreement on what a montage really is. Eisenstein saw a montage as a collision, and that from the collision of factors there arises a concept.
I can see where Eisenstein was going with his opinion on montages, but I think I like Pudovkin's idea better. He believed a montage was more like a linkage of pieces that expound an idea.
I think Eistenstein's collision montage would be good for certain types of movies and not for others. A collision of different styles of lighting, length, or music can be very effective in showing emotions in a film.
I've never seen Rashomon but the story's idea is really interesting. One thing happened and four people have different accounts of what happened. This goes back to the idea of everyone bringing different information to a movie from the first article. We all see reality a little differently than everyone else, depending on who we are and how we live.