Editing and Meaning: Balazs and Fabe

Balazs:
Bela Balazs describes editing as the "crowning job" of film-making. To Balazs, editing brings together all the disparate parts of the film and creates a coherent whole. Balazs believes that only by editing the various pieces together, can a the meaning of a shot be clearly analyzed. He compares this to interpreting a patch of color in a painting. Without knowing the larger context of that patch of color within the entire work of art, Balazs states that it would be difficult to understand its meaning. For Balazs, the process of editing is not to cut things but to assemble them together into a whole work of art.

Fabe:
Fabe describes how Sergei Eisenstein rejected the conventional notions that editing should create a smooth continuity. Eisenstein is much more interested in the psychology that editing together a sequence of seemingly conflicting elements would have on the viewer. Fabe points out that his famous Odessa Staircase sequence is full of visual conflicts. The opposition of lines between the panicked people and the actual stairs, the contrast between the tight orderly formation of the Tsar's soldiers and the hysterical masses chaotically running down are all key examples of how Eisenstein edits together contrasts to form his meaning. On top of this, Fabe points out how he also enjoys alternating between wide angles and close ups. Eisenstein seems to take Balazs's ideas to their maximum limit. He heavily relies on editing to achieve his message, so much so that any of the shots he strings together seem to have very little independent meaning on their own and only work within the larger context of the entire staircase sequence.

Fabe also notes how Sergei Eisenstein rejects realism to achieve the desired effects of his montage. She points out how the shots of the mother carrying her child to the Tsar's soldiers, a key moment in the Odessa Staircase sequence, completely contradicts itself. Eisenstein uses light and shadows to create a rich visual metaphor by having the mother both walk into a shadow and cast one as she ascends the stairs. Fabe notes that in order for this to be possible, the sun would have to completely change positions in the sky over the course of a few seconds. However, Eisenstein apprently is unconcerned about this lack of reality in order to achieve his revolutionary message of dynamic conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In a final irony, Fabe states how some film critics believe the Battleship Potemkin to be a crowning achievement of Soviet "realism" in its portrayal of historical conflict when in reality Eisenstein made absolutely no attempt to pass of his art of montage as realism.