A controlled versus an uncontrolled narrative perspective Early German v. Early Russian Filmmaking

The primary difference between the early Russian films of the firsthalf of the 20th century, and those films that exemplify the artistic ethosof the German Expressionist movement is that of the significance given tonarrative and to expressing a singular and coherent ideology for theviewer. While Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" has a clear narrative andideological gloss, German Expressionistic films such as "The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari" encourage viewers to accompany the director through a series ofimages that take him or her on an internal, expressive journey within himor herself, creating subjective associations within the unconscious that The way this effect is accomplished is through, in the case of Russianfilmmakers such as Eisenstein, through what is termed an "associativeprocess" of narrative interaction with the audience. In other words, thenarrative and descriptive sequences of the film are manipulated over thecourse of the film to invest particular images and aspects of the film withgreat importance. The viewer remembers these images as important narrativemarkers, and also invests such images with an associative ideological


Rather, the viewer is overwhelmed with copiousquantities of shapes, objects, and lines, but all of a similar nature, thusgiving meaning to and emphasizing an audience's response. For instance, in "Battleship Potemkin," the audience's experience ofdifferent members of the crew washing dishes, and cleaning the ship, allwith circular motions, give a sense of continual, labored business. From the verybeginning a sense of officers vs. sword iscreated, the Marxist class reading of the relationship of the individualson the Potemkin is eerily representative of the supposedly incongruousrelationship between official religious leaders and the independent Maid ofOrleans in the other film. Within the Russian cinema there is also a tendency to force theviewer's gaze upon one image, creating through this process a kind ofsocialization or impressments into a singularity of vision. This film of Eisenstein isquite linear in its story and its ideological building of action, climax,and focus. This structured also translates into the relationships of theindividuals on the ship, in terms of their class dynamic. Caligari" famously takes place subjectively within the mindof a madman, and the perspectives of the film are incongruous with theviewer's fashion of apprehending reality outside of the filmed narrative,rather than creating a seamless sense of reality. It structured around five episodes, introduced by titles: Menand Maggots, Drama on the Quarterdeck, An Appeal from the Dead, The OdessaSteps, and finally cumulating with the Meeting the Squadron. It should bestressed that this does not mean that German films are without ideologicalintent, such as "Metropolis" horrific vision of a mechanized future, andeven "Caligari," one might say, contains an ideological argument about thesubjectivity of madness and the perspective of who is sane or not sanewithin the societal construction of the madhouse versus the supposedly saneoutside world. Even when a fast-paced editing process takes the viewer fromthe apparently unrelated image of a bedroom of a pregnant woman about togive birth, to a beach, to the inside of a mine, there is a sense of anideological narrative or singular focus being imposed in this choice ofimagery, rather than the viewer being allowed to judge on his or her own. But the German cinematic eye of expressionism does notbombardment of the awareness of the viewer, creating a narrow range ofimpressions from the camera's eye as a guiding apparatus. Thecomposition of scenes and the apprehension of scenes all at once creates asingularity of emotion and intent regarding the action, as opposed to asustained scene where the viewer is able to consider the image and come tohis or her own conclusion regarding the events that are transpiring, as ina miens-en-scene or middle of the scene approach, as was to become sopopular in postmodernist and post-structuralism critiques and filmanalysis. Much as in "The Passion of Joan ofArc," where a clear ideological juxtaposition of the cross vs. Of course theoverwhelming circularity of the 'business' montages on the "Potemkin," forinstance, are not necessarily true to life, but the impressions theseimages create are an attempt at a realistic portrayal of class dynamics, asopposed to the stark surrealistic vision of expressionism in "Caligari,"which seems calculated, in its emphasis upon dreams, to dispense with aviewer's security that what he or she is witnessing is real.