Montage (filmmaking)

A montage (/mɒnˈtɑːʒ/ mon-TAHZH) is a film editing technique in which a series of short shots are sequenced to condense space, time, and information.

[3] From the 1930s to the 1950s, montage sequences often combined numerous short shots with special optical effects (fades/dissolves, split screens, double and triple exposures), dance, and music.

The Soviet tradition, primarily distinguished by the writing and film work by S. M. Eisenstein is seen as intellectual, objectively analytical, and perhaps overly academic.

Its use survives to this day in the specially created "montage sequences" inserted into Hollywood films to suggest, in a blur of double exposures, the rise to fame of an opera singer or, in brief model shots, the destruction of an airplane, a city or a planet.

It plays with Italian theatre director Eugenio Barba's "space river" montage in which the spectators' attention is said to "[sail] on a tide of actions which their gaze [can never] fully encompass".

In a matter of moments, with images cascading across the screen, he was able to show Jeanette MacDonald's rise to fame as an opera star in Maytime (1937), the outbreak of the revolution in Viva Villa (1934), the famine and exodus in The Good Earth (1937), and the plague in Romeo and Juliet (1936).

[14]Siegel selected the montages he did for Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944), and Confessions of a Nazi Spy, as especially good ones.

[17] Although originating in sports films, the training montage has been used to demonstrate training in a variety of challenging endeavors such as flying a jet (Armageddon, 1998), fighting (Bloodsport,1988; The Mask of Zorro, 1998; Batman Begins, 2005; Edge of Tomorrow, 2014),[18] espionage (Spy Game, 2001), magic (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2007), and public speaking (The King's Speech, 2010).

[20] The music in these training montage scenes has garnered a cult following, with such artists as Robert Tepper, Stan Bush and Survivor appearing on several '80s soundtracks.

[21] Indie rock band The Mountain Goats released a single in 2021 entitled "Training Montage", an homage to the eponymous cinematic trope.