Moving Explosions: Metaphors of Emotion in Sergei Eisenstein's Writings

Abstract

In one of his most famous categorizations, Sergei Eisenstein creates a hierarchy of cinematic means from the simplest physiological stimuli (in metric montage) to a primitive emotional appeal (rhythmic montage) to the pinnacle of cinematic achievement: intellectual montage. (W 186-194) In this arrangement, one type of montage forms the basis for the next higher form. One can only rise to the heights of intellectual montage by standing on the shoulders of emotion, rhythm, and meter. Thus emotion is a helpful tool fully congruent with a cinematic appeal to humanity's highest faculties (the cognitive).