The Deleuzian Century V: Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Zvenigora (1928), Arsenal (1928) and Earth (1930)

An explosion on an empty field.

A woman stands immobile in a sparsely furnished room.

A title card: "There was a mother who had three sons."

Another explosion. Two dead soldiers on a rolling train. Empty, desolate trenches.

The same woman, still standing immobile in her comfortless room.

Smoke emerging from the trenches. Obscuring our view.

Another title card: "There was a war."

A woman stands on an empty field, next to a dilapidated hut.

A village street. Three women stand immobile in front of their poor houses. An amputee crosses the screen trailed by a small child.

Another street. A Young woman leans against a house. An old officer walks towards her. Stops. Examines her. Smiles. Touches her breasts. And then walks away.

A third title card: "The mother had three sons no more."

On a vast desolate field, an old woman throws seeds. Alone. And then falls to the ground.

If Alexander Dovzhenko is frequently called the poet among the Soviet formalists, it is precisely because of evocations like the one described above, found at the beginning of Arsenal. In a three minute sequence, the Ukrainian director manages to convey all the hopelessness, the senselessness, the dread, the bleakness, the horror of war without showing us a single gun shot or wound. Fragments are assembled, meaning is created. Dovzhenko is "obsessed with the relation between the parts, the unit and the whole" (Cinema 1, 58), writes Deleuze. Or as the French film critic Barthélemy Amengual puts it, Dovzhenko is capable of expressing himself "outside of time and space" thanks to fragmented montage.

Dovzhenko is out and out dialectician. The parts of his elliptical films are always expressions of the whole. Where the director doesn't create meaning within the scene, we creep towards a slow realization of a central idea, of a bigger meaning. In Zvenigora, a frequently hard to follow allegory, two stories run along each other, sometimes intersecting but remaining separate entities always. One is the story of a "Grandfather" who tries to protect a century old treasure, the other one is a confusing disquisition about war and industrialization. At the end, Dovzhenko joins both narratives in a sublime instance of a "qualitative bound" and we come to realize that what was at stake the whole time was Ukrainian national identity. The propagandist element is well there, except Dovzhenko takes a lot of detours to get there.

As Deleuze remarks, Dovzhenko, far more than Eisenstein, knows how to douse the parts and their unity into a new whole "that gives them incomparable depth and extensiveness within their own boundaries." (58) If Deleuze is interested in how the école soviétique combines the parts to express a new whole, Dovzhenko gives him a run for his money. Story is never narrated, it is constructed with disjointed elements. The whole is slowly assembled, the elements melt into the bigger picture. In short, there is a purpose, even if we don't always know what that purpose is.

Earth, on which the consensus seems to be that it's Dovzhenko's best although I found Arsenal  to be oftentimes more engaging, pushes the "qualitative bound" to its limit, I would dare to say. If Eisenstein concocted his milk separator sequence to turn a narrative page, Dovzhenko builds and builds anticipation but subtracts narration. When the tractor arrives to the village, separating its inhabitants into two fractions (pro or contra modernization) we get a long sequence in which the appearance of the machine produces incredible exhalation among the population and seems to be integral to the village's survival. It is almost a slow build from hope to triumph like in Old And New. But that build-up is never resolved.

Similarily, the film begins with an old man announcing that he is dying. But he still converses a bit with some villagers and eats an apple. We build and build and build towards his death, but once his life really does extinguish, we haven't had a narrative eureka. Dovzhenko just doesn't operate on those terms. The "qualitative bound" occurs once we as an audience make sense of all these elements, once unity emerges and the whole begins to transpire. Montage here is not used so much on a micro scale as with Eisenstein, but applied to the whole film text. The parts always point to the whole. It is Dovzhenko's genius that he approaches montage on his own terms.

The Deleuzian Century IV: Vsevolod Pudovkin's Mother (1926), The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm Over Asia (1928)

We have seen the dialectical spiral, we have seen the section d'or, we have seen the qualitative bound - all expressions of Sergei Eisenstein's masterful command of "dialectic montage" as described by Gilles Deleuze. But, reminds us the french philosopher, "everyone knows that dialectics are characterized by several different laws". (Cinema 1, 57) "If we can talk about an école soviétique, it is not because its auteurs resemble each other, but because they are all different, every one having a different affinity to the dialectic conception they share". (57)

Eisenstein has a didactic approach to historic process and uses "opposition montage" to stage said process without having to rely on individuals too much to advance the narration (with exception, of course, of Ivan The Terrible). Vsevolod Pudovkin, even more of an overt and unambiguous propagandist than Eisenstein, is very much involved in the business of selling us history as approved by the socialist dominions as well, but uses individuals as symbols, although we are still miles away from a Hollywoodesque hero-driven narrative.

We find the qualitative bounds employed by Eisenstein, but in a different context. As history is symbolized by people in Pudovkin's work, the qualitative bounds in his films, argues Deleuze, are mainly changes in conscience. Through carefully edited POV shots, that serve as a sort of puzzle for the characters and the audience alike, Pudovkin builds to a realization, to a change in consciousness that gives the scene a new meaning, a new quality, and that calls for action from the protagonists.

In Mother, for example, we have an early scene in which the titular mother observes her drunk husband glaring at a wall clock. With every POV shot from the mother, intercut with close-ups of her face, we come closer to the realization that the husband is considering how he can sell the clock's parts in order to pay for more booze. As soon as the mother realizes it herself, she jumps to action and tries to prevent him from doing so. Through simple shots of one character observing another, the scene changes its meaning completely. Just as the mechanics of the milk separator in Old And New served as a narrative tool transforming hope into triumph, piecing the elements together in Mother means realizing what the scene really is about.

The End of St. Petersburg, in my mind a superior offering than Mother in many aspects, pushes this concept a little further. Looser and more sweeping in its narrative, the chronicle of St. Petersburg's fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks during the Russian revolution is not presented solely as a linear advancement of history. Rather, Pudovkin gives us many different pieces to the story, highlighting different social malaises. Piecing them together gives us not only the full story, but a new outlook on things. Just as individual scenes can flip once all the different elements taken together make sense, history can be fully appreciated once the different relevant points of view have been presented. The question becomes, of course, what is perceived as relevant.

The qualitative bounds in The End of St. Petersburg, are there on the micro scale as well, and we get recurring motives that offset changes in consciousness (the clock, the vast open skies that represent hope and death at the same time, the black smoke) but even more so than in Mother, Pudovkin tries to trigger changes in consciousness in the audience and not only the fictional characters on the screen.

In Storm Over Asia, in my opinion the best movie of the three, Pudovkin exhibits his most refined use of montage yet. A sort of Russian Lawrence of Arabia (there is even a desert scene in which a point on the horizon reveals itself to be a rider on a horse as he advances towards the camera, predating about 35 years the similar iconic scene in David Lean's classic) we get a lot of prolonged scenes that show Mongolian customs, Buddhist religious ceremonies, and explosive battle sequences. In order to render them fully, Pudovkin shows us a succession of close-ups that convey the atmosphere of each scene as experienced by the protagonists. He calls on all our senses. We see the faces of the people present, their clothes, sources of noise or music, fire, decors, the list goes on and on.

These signifiers are clearly meant for the audience. Pudovkin doesn't render one protagonist's point of view but gives us a god-like overview slowly revealed through intricate montage. With each new bit of visual information, our understanding of the scene is enhanced, altered, completed. The qualitative bound occurs in the audience's mind when the full extent of a scene is realized. Some associative montage is to be found in Storm Over Asia as well, but these sequences are stylistic flourishes and not a necessity to convey a certain plot point. In that regard, Pudovkin is decidedly uneisensteinian, so to speak.

Both are interested in awakening a certain state of consciousness in the audience. Both use montage to do so. But where Eisenstein combines point A with point B to create a heightened point C, Pudovkin slowly pushes his audience towards the realization of what point A, B and C are in the first place. It is also interesting to consider how chronologic narration is employed to wholly different ends. It's not like Pudovkin is less of a realist than Eisenstein. But where the director of Battleship Potemkin uses linear narration to show progress and consequences, Pudovkin combines disjointed elements to produce new meaning that, in turn, advances the story.

The Deleuzian Century III: Sergei Eisenstein's Strike! (1925), October (1927) and Old and New (1929)

In Sergei Eisenstein's cinema, writes french philosopher Gilles Deleuze, we not only find "an organic link between two moments but a qualitative bound where the new moment gains additional power." (Cinema 1, 52). Where Griffith and the école américaine had two story points running along each other without really influencing each other, Eisenstein used point B as a result of point A, constructing narratives that explained as well as told stories. Story advancement wasn't a necessity but the logical result of specific plot points that set up new story movement, et cetera.

October and Old And New, both sometimes horribly overt propaganda films that certainly have to allow the question why Eisenstein is heralded a great stylistic innovator while Leni Riefenstahl, arguably not a lesser filmmaker, is shunned today, exemplify perfectly how this "organic link" between two plot points can be elevated to a "qualitatieve bound". What Deleuze means with "qualitative bound" is process. If point B results from point A, how do we get there? As in one of Louis C.K.'s stand-up routines where his daughter asks him what 6 plus 6 equals, and, upon receiving the correct answer, demands to know how because she has to show the work ("draw a picture of me telling you that it's 12!", C.K. exclaims), Deleuze wants to go deeper into the "organic link" between two moments and see how it works.

If one looks at films from the bird's eye view, almost all of them express a certain "process". In Hollywood tradition, the hero has to overcome or solve a problem and, in the process of doing so, changes in a fundamental way. Hollywood films process their protagonists, if you will. In Eisenstein's work, however, story results from process, as opposed to being the process. Consider the milk separator sequence in Old And New, given by Deleuze as the prime example: "we witness the passage from one moment to the other, from distrust and hope to triumph, from the empty pipe to the first drop, a passage that excellerates the more we approach this moment's new quality, the triumphant drop: it's a qualitative bound." (54)

It's a narrative device Eisenstein uses a lot. A new situation arises and the director finds visual means to show us how. If the milk separator represents hope (and resentment) for the milk cooperative in the film, its launch transforms the hope (point A) into triumph (point B). The intricate shots of the device's mechanics and how the farmers present at its first try-out bridge the gap between hope and triumph, providing visual proof of a change in nature of the situation. Eisenstein charges an otherwise inanimate object with a specific meaning. Bringing the machine into service changes the meaning - the story turns a page.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Eisenstein often discards personification for a more anonymous approach that enables him to represent historic movements more accurately. Historic movements are all about process. They don't just arise out of thin air, they are born through different machinations and are themselves a process of change. In that regard, Eisenstein's style clearly mirrors his narrative choices.

October, a stylistically brilliant but otherwise very uneven offering, is the perfect example. Almost everything here is process and we don't get to know any characters even obliquely, as we did in Battleship Potemkin. The famous uprising sequence at the beginning of the film that climaxes with a soldier opening fire on the protesters in a bold use of - literally - quick-fire cutting, uses the same method as in the milk-separator sequence. On a title card we learn that after 5 month of "bourgeoisie government" there is still "no bread, no peace, no land". Another title card announces the "people's wrath". They shout: "down with the provisional government!" Meetings are held, strategies discussed, people gather - again, it is hope that Eisenstein stages here. Hope for political change. It is not a drop of cream the "Bolsheviks" hope for but a new government. The soldier opening fire on the people crushes this hope but not after a good five minutes of building up to that ultimately anticlimactic  moment. Again, it is not the story of individuals who brace themselves for political upheaval that matters here, but the mechanics of how the protests translate to a wholly new situation: a "qualitative bound".

But, again, Eisenstein uses this technique on a smaller scale as well. His "associative montage" combines two otherwise unrelated images to create a new meaning. Deleuze: "a qualitative change doesn't only mean a change in content on the screen, but also a formal change. The image has to acquire a new potency, attain a superior power" (54). Deleuze cites Eisenstein's use of close-ups that represent "absolute change" (54) and the visual passage in Old And New from milk flowing to water spurting (passage from slickness to sparkles) to fire works (introducing colors), each step elevating the image to a new quality.

But we can go further and include Eisenstein's use of juxtaposition, of "associative montage". The iconic final sequence in Strike! is a perfect example of how Eisenstein creates new meaning and elevates a sequence to a new level by association. The workers who instigate the titular strike are being chased by the authorities and they run for their lives. Many are beaten to death, someone falls from a balcony to his death, and they finally try to escape over an open field, where fire is opened on them. Eisenstein intercuts this intense sequence with very graphic images of cows being slaughtered. The message is clear, and by combining two otherwise unrelated images, Eisenstein has created new meaning, has created a "qualitative bound".

The Deleuzian Century II: Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Let's start with a few more words about parallel montage and Eisenstein's reservations towards it, taken from the master director's book Film Form. First, an interesting deconstruction of Griffith's all-American idea of montage, seen from an ideological standpoint: "But montage thinking is inseparable from the general content of thinking as a whole. The structure that is reflected in the concept of Griffith montage is the structure of bourgeois society. And he actually resembles Dickens's 'side of streaky, well-cured bacon'; in actuality (…), he is woven of irreconcilably alternating layers of 'white' and 'red' - rich and poor. (…) and this society, perceived only as a contrast between the haves and the have-nots, is reflected in the consciousness of Griffith no deeper than the image of an intricate race between parallel lines." (Film Form, 234)

Eisenstein's viewpoint however: "For us, the microcosm of montage had to be understood as a unity, which in the inner stress of contradictions is halved, in order to be re-assembled in a new unity on a new plane, qualitatively higher, its imagery newly perceived." (236)  What Deleuze calls une grande spirale (L'image-mouvement, 51) that expresses a genesis, a scientific progression "finds its internal logic in the section d'or (literally "golden section") which splits the lot into two unequal but opposable entities." (51) With section d'or, Deleuze means the mathematic Golden ratio. Incidentally, Section d'Or was also a group of French cubist painters active at the beginning of the 1910's, centered around the Duchamp brothers.

In Eisenstein's agreed upon masterpiece Battleship Potemkin the section d'or, of course, corresponds to the moment after the uprising on the ship when we leave the water for the land. At that point, writes Deleuze, the movement reverses, meaning that the prosecutors become the prosecuted, so to speak. If until then Battleship Potemkin told the story of the little people rising up against the powers that be, the Odessa Steps sequence inverts this movement and we get a full-blown representation of cruelty from the rulers against the oppressed.

Contemporary screenplay theoreticians would object that this section d'or is nothing more than what's commonly known in Hollywood as the "mid-point" of a screenplay. The moment when the story kicks into high-gear and gathers steam because a new information is revealed that changes the parameters of the plot. Hell, the entire Battleship story loosely follows the typical Hollywood three act structure: the workers' indignation over the rotten meat is the "inciting incident", the revolt aboard the Potemkin the "Act 2 break", Vakulinchuk's death the "mid-point", and the ship's getaway the "act 3 break".

The difference is that for most anglo-saxon cinema, forward-motion of a story is necessary because the hero is always on some sort of quest. Take James Bond for example. Strictly speaking, none of these movies make much sense from a plot point of view. Things happen because Bond acts on them, but logic or organic growth are two variables that almost never come into play. There is a lot of complacence, a lot of formula. Every James Bond movie has to have its under-water chase, it's thrilling skiing chase and its gadget-filled luxury cars. But there is no real need for that in terms of story.

Eisenstein, however, builds stories organically, lets the laws of cause and effect play out. If the recruits of the Potemkin revolt, it's because they are not treated with enough consideration by their superiors. If Valuchenko is killed, it is because of that revolt. If the people of Odessa rebel, it is because of Valuchenko's death. If the ruling power employs deathly force against the people of Odessa, it is because of their rebellion. If the Potemkin tries to flee, it is because of said deathly force. The difference is that we have no individual quest here, no specific goal, no pre-conceived journey. As described in last week's post, Eisenstein is interested in process, not ego.

But Deleuze doesn't stop at the big cesura that is the Potemkin's landing. Built into these two opposing sequences are a multitude of smaller sections d'or that constitute individual cells, symptoms of the greater condition of Eisenstein's montage. We are talking about one man standing up in front of the many (on a story level: the ship's captain raving against the recruits; on an editing level: the innumerable white caps of the recruits filmed from a bird's eyes view intercut with the plain uniform of the ship's captain), the dichotomy between light and shadow, forward against backward motion, rhythmic cutting against tranquil assemblage. Deleuze describes it in mathematical terms: if one starts from an origine O, element A is to B what element B is to C (52). Or in Eisenstein's own words, describing the Odessa steps sequence: "The final pull of tension is supplied by the transfer from the rhythm of the descending feet to another rhythm - a new kind of downward movement - the next intensity level of the same activity - the baby carriage rolling down the steps. The carriage functions as a directly progressing accelerator of the advancing feet. The stepping descent passes into a rolling descent." (74) More concisely, we're talking about "movement as change." (76) And that is, very ruffly, in accord with Deleuze's concept of the movement-image.

The Deleuzian Century I: Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan The Terrible Part I and Part II

I am going through another Deleuze phase. And this time, I am trying to decipher his writings on film. The french philosopher, certainly one of the most important Western thinkers of the last century, has left us with two incredibly dense tomes: Cinema 1: Movement-Image (which I am currently reading) and Cinema 2: Time-Image. In the quite useful handbook Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts, one can find this summary of his thinking on film: "For Deleuze, the cinematic apparatus functions as a translator of the movements of images and consciousness of perception within temporal modalities of worlds (real, imagined, past, present and future)." (144)

He describes movement as a "translation in space" (18, French edition) and defines cinema as a "system that reproduces movement appending it to arbitrary moments" (15). The most interesting passages in Cinema 1 are the ones where he directly applies his philosophical concepts to specific films. In the book's third chapter Montage, Deleuze identifies four different stylistic approaches to montage: the "organic approach" of the école américaine, the "dialectic approach" of the école soviétique, the "quantitative approach" of the école française d'avant guerre, and the "intensive approach" of the école expressioniste allemande (47).

So let's follow his train of thought and reconsider some classics of world cinema through the deleuzian lens using some of his concepts, starting with Sergei Eisenstein's two-parter Ivan The Terrible.

With Eisenstein, "the oppositional montage replaces the parallel montage under the dialectical law of one unity that splits to form a new elevated unity", writes Deleuze (52). In other words, Eisenstein, contrary to D.W. Griffith, recognizes that the different elements of a story are not given axioms but result from opposition. "Griffith ignores that the rich and the poor are not intrinsic individual phenomena but result from one common cause: social exploitation" (50). The forward momentum of Eisenstein's stories, according to Deleuze, depends on two opposing elements that add up to a new plot point. "Opposition defines the progression of the dialectical unity from its initial situation to its final situation" (52).

Story is spiraling from a beginning to an end, always propelled by opposition. That in itself is nothing new to people who study screenwriting theory, but Deleuze finds an interesting angle: this story spiral, undulating thanks to opposition, expresses "genesis, growth and development" (51) on a social level, not a personal one. Story jumps from one level to the next thanks to a social dialectic that combines two situations to express and explain a new setting. Such an approach is a pretty good way to represent history in cinematic terms, and it's certainly not a coincidence that Eisenstein's most successful films deal with historical movements that slowly transformed society over time.

In Ivan The Terrible Part I, a terrific film, maybe my favorite Eisenstein, one doesn't have to look any further than the very first scene to find a practical example of all this theoretical babble. Ivan crowns himself under the watchful eyes of his cousin who opposes the crowning because she wants to see her own son on the throne, and the parents of his fiance who favor his political ascension. Different dignitaries comment the proceedings: his ambition to unify Russia will never be accepted by the other European emperors. On the other hand, if he is strong enough, he can impose his will on all the doubters.

The dialectical spiral begins to spin when the boyars who feel bereft of the throne openly defy him, Karzan declares war on Moscow, and his closest ally betrays him when Ivan seemingly succumbs to a fatal illness. The main through-line here is Ivan's quest to unify Russia. The film is then divided in several elongated sequences that all result from what came before. Every sequence channels opposition so as to shape a new setting from which Eisenstein spins yet new conflict, etc. The plot advancement that traces Ivan's development from an overly confident and ambitious political leader to a man forced to exile and tormented by doubt, all of which is defined by his opposition to the boyars, never relies on personal conflict between the characters. It is social conflict that is at stake here, and Ivan goes from attempts at political compromise with his enemies in Part I to "their social and physical extermination" (53) in Part II.

Indeed, Ivan Part I and Part II can themselves be seen as dialectic entities that push forth the character Ivan's narrative. At the end of Part II, Ivan sits on the throne and proclaims that his "hands are free", meaning that the boyars have been defeated and with them any movement against his plan to unify Russia. Part I shows us how Ivan goes about it on a geopolitical and imperialist level. Part II focuses on spiritual and social issues. But to achieve his goal, Ivan must get all his ducks in a row - politically, as well as spiritually. In that, Part I and Part II are opposing forces that help the spiral turn further.

Even Sergei Prokofiev's edifying score plays along. Dramatic scenes are frequently accompanied by upbeat music, whereas lighter moments are burdened with solemn orchestration. Rather than go for the obvious, the underlying meaning of a scene emanates from the opposition of action as seen on screen and the accompanying score. Where both don't match in a traditional sense, there is tension. And tension means dramatic momentum.

Of course, Eisenstein's film is a lot more complex than this write-up makes it seem. It is interesting enough though that Deleuze finds philosophical terms to express what are essentially screenwriting techniques that use protagonist/antagonist tropes to stage conflict that must be overcome by the hero. Hollywood has, of course, vulgarized this storytelling device, and, for the most part, usurped any wider social and/or political considerations. The difference is mainly that Hollywood is obsessed with the potent hero who alone steers the fate of the narrative, while Eisenstein is less interested in individuals than in social movements that are anonymous and can't be grasped through individual destinies. Ivan The Terrible stands as an oddity in Eisenstein's filmography in that regard. Wholly focused on one man's deeds, the director abandoned the detached narration of October or Strike!.  But more than characters, the individuals in Ivan are stand-ins for social movements, caricatures, tropes that express an idea, not a psychology.