Semiotics of Cinema and Montage Theory

Lotman writes that everything that the viewer notices within a film has meaning, Berger adds that what the viewer does not notice results in the pleasure gained from repeated viewings of films and the uncovering of previously missed details. When interpreting a film, Lotman writes, a viewer have different levels of “preparation” based on their background information; culture, education, social and economic class, etc. Based upon this level of “preparation”, different viewers “skim off” the layers of the film that they understand, resulting in different interpretations of the film. Berger also adds that skimming also occurs when uncovering things missed in initial viewings during subsequent repeated viewing and that factors such as age and emotional and intellectual development tie into preparation and determine how much a viewer understands a film.

The concept of “skimming” layers of understanding within the viewing of a film in an interesting one, as well as one I can quite easily relate to. The age example given by Berger within this chapter, wherein he states how children can enjoyed films too adult or complicated for them by skimming off what the understand, calls to mind various early ‘90s comedies such as Dumb and Dumber and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective that I saw at a young age. Although I greatly enjoyed the slap-stick comedy of the films at the time, I didn’t really understand the plots or much of the verbal humor until I rewatched these films at an older age. During these repeated viewings I understood more as well as noticed details that made sense of my childhood memories of these films.

In regards to Eisenstein’s montage, I’m a little confused. Eisenstein’s montage is described as a collision of shots with different characteristics, yet when I think of what I understand to be a montage and the examples of it that I have seen in film then Kuleshov’s theory of a linear sequence of shots makes more sense. The examples of montage that I have seen in film are used to portray a passage of time, such as a training regime or the construction of a building or vehicle. The former is the most popular example and the first thing that comes to mind is the training montage in Rocky IV, which featuring alternating scenes of Rocky and Drago preparing for the fight. These scenes are linear and linked, even lining up at certain points and I can’t seem to recall any “collision”, unless one wants to take into account the contrast between Drago’s high tech training equipment and Rocky’s simple outdoor training. Even then I feel that the contrasts helped tie the montage together by highlighting the main conflict that the montage is leading up to.