eisenstein

in david mamet's book, "on directing film," he says that the only thing he really knows about film is eisenstein's "theory of montage," - that the juxtaposition of images that creates a good story. or, as mamet says, tell the story in the cut, not in the shot.

i have to confess that i am not entirely sure exactly how this is supposed to work. one of mamet's examples was a pair of shots: (1) birds fly up and away from the treeline, (2) a deer raises it's head, that convey the idea of 'alertness.'

shot 1 by itself wouldn't really work, neither would shot 2.

but film is more than a string of ideas conveyed by the collision of two separate shots. there is music, dialogue, editing, rhythm, plot, etc etc. mamet shrugs off the responsibility by admitting that as he's only directed two features, he has no idea how anything else works, just that shots should be simple, and uninflected (or unemotional), that the story will lie in the cut, in the empty and instantaneous space between.