Presentation on Eisensteins Essay Montage of Attractions

The essay Montage of Attractions originally appeared in the Soviet journal Lef in May 1923
under the direction of Mayakovsky. The work itself was proposed to the Prolekult in favour
of a new direction of the theatre. This new direction was seen as a radically new one which
called for the abolition of the very institution of the theatre as such replacing it with a show
place for the achievements in the theatre or with an instrument for raising the standard of
training of the masses in their day-to-day life. (Montage of Attractions, pp. 77) So even at
this early stage in his career Eisenstein wants to distance himself from his tutor and mentor-
Meyerhold, who, nonetheless had a significant influence both on Eisensteins ideas and
practice as a film director and a theatre director. (For instance we see aspects of Commedia
dellarte in the colour scene of Eisensteins last work .)

The influential idea that Meyerhold transferred on to the young Eisentstein and his thinking
was that of organic unity. Organic unity understood in its basic sense is that when a work
shows evidence of a direct relationship between the part and the totality of the work in terms
of the thematic concepts that arise from that work in particular. So, for Meyerhold a work
would achieve this when each of the individual actors were like organs subservient to the
body of the work. In his work On Theatre (1913), Meyerhold outlined three fundamental
principles for the theatre of the future which would later heavily influence Eisenstein. The
three principles are as follows:

1. The role of the theatre director should be akin to a musical composer.

2. The recognition of the stage and the auditorium as a single organic whole and the
audience as an active participant in the theatrical performance.
3. The vital importance of movement in the theatre (based upon his theories of
biomechanics).

These three principles would have a large influence over Eisenstein, especially the latter two
as we will see in the Montage of Attractions. (Esienstein would later say that the second
principle was the key to unlocking the essence of the theatre.)

With his statement that the theatre should be aiming in the direction to be an instrument for
raising the standard of training of the masses in their day-to-day life, Eisenstein proposes a
new art form which fuses art and work, art and life, etc which is ideologically informed
allowing for the ideas to be expressed through the medium of film. (For Eisenstein, all art is
ideologically informed and shaped by virtue of being a part of the time that it comes into
being). So it is utilitarian in the sense that the agit-attraction of the image or the scene guides
the viewer to the desired state of mind- that being in line with the aim of building a better
society. i

He outlines two forms of theatre which are provisional. Firstly, the representational-
narrative genre of theatre which is revolutionary in content, but the form is still in the style of
the contemplative theatre la Stanislavski which allows for the audience to indulge in their
emotions- so this is still bourgeoisie for Eisenstein. The secondly, the agit-attraction theatre
which is the left-wing of the Prolekult- the dynamic and eccentric theatre which is based on
rhythm and movement- the form for which he used in his very own production of The
Wiseman. He writes that this work was the first work to use the technique of agit based upon
his concept of a Montage of Attractions.

The concept of Montage of Attractions has several features.

Firstly, The spectator himself constitutes the basic material of the theatre. (pp. 78) We can
see Meyerholds influence on Eisenstein here. The success of a production depends upon its
ability to affect the audience, and for Eisenstein, this will be both intellectual and
physiological. ii

Another feature of Montage of Attractions is that it is an aggressive aspect of the theatre. I

think that this passage merits being quoted in full as it leans towards the essence of what
Eisenstein is getting at in this piece of writing:

An Attraction (in relation to the theatre) is any aggressive aspect of the theatre; that is,
any element of the theatre that subjects the spectator to a sensual or psychological
impact, experimentally regulated and mathematically calculated to produce in him
certain emotional shocks which, when placed in their proper sequence within the
totality of the production, become the only means that enable the spectator to perceive
the ideological side of what is being demonstrated the ultimate ideological conclusion.
(The means of cognition through the living play of the passions apply specifically
to the theatre.) (pp. 78)

He then goes on to outline and describe in an elliptical manner the types of images that could
be employed to achieve such an effect on the viewer, such as gouging out eyes or cutting off
arms and legs on the stage. It is here that we can notice an aspect of the theatre which would
later be taken up and expanded on by the French theatre theorist Antonin Artaud- namely,
what would become the Theatre of Cruelty (Eisenstein actually cites the Grand Guignol
theatre which is discussed at length in The Theatre and its Double.)

Formally the Montage of Attractions is micro-logical. Yet, being fragmentary in nature it

nonetheless embodies the thematic whole. In the same way that Zamyatins fragmentary style
in We expresses thoughts in their pure, raw state; Eisensteins Montage of Attractions also
express this fragmentary nature. To think the fragment is to think outside of the system of
historical narrativization, and film has the capacity to do this. Yet, the fragment is not a mere
arbitrary part of the whole. Rather, the fragment (or in Eisensteins case the Attraction) is on
the micrological level, is concomitantly consistent within the thematic of the work at large.
This allows Eisenstein to go beyond the boundaries of representative narrative-genre laden in
theatre which opens up a space to practice a free yet mathematically controlled style where
the attraction reaches beyond its own internal space as a fragment.

The Montage of Attractions, by focussing on the effect it can have on the audience, destroys
the aesthetic (and anaesthetic) illusion that the spectacle can have on an audience (he writes
an attraction has nothing in common with a trick) in order to awaken the audience from
their dogmatic ideological slumber.
In dismantling the metaphysical barrier between spectacle and audience, Eisenstein aims at
changing the role art has in society- that being, for Art to have a direct influence on man and
society.

This radically new approach is for Eisenstein, a way of freeing the theatre from the logical
rigidity of mimetic theatre which merely portrays events without a critical slant. The space
that is freed up under this understanding of the theatre, is an interweaving of representational
segments- each part expressing the thematic whole. (In this way the drama is not limited by
what Deleuze baptizes the movement image, thus a space for the time-image opens up.
The time image understood unambiguously is that it doesnt adhere to the classical
understanding of time- i.e that it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end) It is in the
spac of the in-between that has an effect on the audience that interrupts the definitive and
inevitable identity of representational theatre in order to affect the audience. This approach
also allows for multiple interpretations of the work as the sole basis of the work does not lie
in the correct interpretation of the author, but in immanent effective attractions.

He finally declares that the film, the music hall and the circus shall be the new mediums to
realise this idea of a Montage of Attractions, and as an example, he cites his own production
of The Wiseman.

The Wiseman was a production of Eisensteins which was later adapted to film (Glumovs
Diary can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfnviZtM38Q). It employs the
theoretical elements that Eisenstein outlines in the essay. It is a farcical and parodist
adaptation of Ostrovskys 19th Century play which goes by the same name. (Some people at
the time thought this to be a politically dangerous move). It juxtaposes images in order to hav
a subversive effect. For example, attraction 13 reads:

13. A general dance. Business with a placard: Religion is the opiate of the masses. [When
he has finished his song, the mullah dances a lezghinka, in which he takes all of the parts.
The mullah picks up the plank on which he was sitting: On the back is the inscription:
Religion is the opiate of the masses. The mullah goes out holding the plank in his hand.]

We can see here that he is juxtaposing several images and motifs- Marxs famous statement
from The German Ideology, the dance from Caucasus named the lezghinka and a mullah.

It uses the characters from Ostrovskys play, but he changes the names. Thus:

Mamaev became Pavel Mamilyubov-Proliving (satyrizing Pavel Milyukov, Foreign Minister

in the Provisioanl Government), who emigrated at the time of the Revoluition); Kruititsky
was transformed into General Jofre, Marshal of France and commander-in-chief of French
forces until 1916; Mashenka turned into a woman stock broker, Mary Mac-Lac; Gorodulin
became Goredulin, a Fascist; Kurchaev expanded into trhee husars; Glumov was George the
clown at one and the same time; and the clown in the red wig, who first appeared in the
prologue. Two other womans parts Manyfa and Turusina were played by men, and all
the servants were played by one actor. Strictly circus charcters were also added such as the
uniformed attendants and the act in the ring. iii
Golutvin was also portrayed as an NEP-Man, so we can see how Eisenstein is being playful
with the material in order to suit the ideological ends that he aims to achieve.

In Eisensteins version of The Wiseman all metaphors become physical gestures expressed by
clowns, so for instance a feeling of joy would have been expressed in a somersault.

Logical dramatic technique is also undermined by humour- the attempted suicide towards the
end of the prologue is replaced by clowns parodying the act of trying to take ones own life-
attraction 22 reads: Clowns parody the heros attempt and cascade from the wire.

i
We have to be careful not to over emphasize this aspect of Eisensteins aesthetics as there is a political
context and a motivation behind proposing this essay to the Prolekult. Eisenstein sought to communicate the
idea of communism through a language of sensations. As Jacques Rancire puts it in his book Film Fables:
[I]deology is not the heart of the matter. This excess or ecstasy of the film that todays viewers object to in
The General Line, calling it a propaganda film, is essentially what Soviet propagandists also objected to when
they indicated the film as an exercise in formalist cinema, as completely antithetical to the representation of
living men. We want to convince ourselves and others that Eisensteins cinema suffers only from its
identification with the Soviet regime. But the problem goes much deeper [ ] The discomfort Eisenstein
creates today has less to do with communism than with the aesthetic project he identified with the
propagation of the communist idea. Unlike Brecht, Eisenstein never wanted to instruct or teach his audience
how to see and create a distance. Brecht set out to purge the theatrical representation of identification,
fascination, absorption. Eisenstein, instead, wanted to capture all of them and multiply their power. Rather
than saying that he put the young art of cinema at the service of communism, it would be more accurate to
say that he put communism through the test of cinema, through the test of the idea of art and modernity that
Eisenstein saw incarnated in the cinema: that of a language of ideas becoming a language a language of
sensations. (Rancire, J., (2006) Film Fables, (trans.) Battista, E., Berg: Oxford, New York, pp. 30-31.)
ii
It is interesting to note that later, in the 1930s, Eisenstein would begin to work with the neuropsychologists
Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Romanovich Luria. They engaged in research which tested the brain activity of the
audiences response to certain audio and visual stimuli in order to scientifically determine what affects this
could have on an audience.

iii
Eisenstein's "Wiseman", Daniel Gerould The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 18, No. 1, Popular Entertainments
(Mar., 1974), pp. 71-76, Published by: The MIT Press