Anne Fritz
Response Paper: Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov, "Statement on Sound"

Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Alexandrov wish for “[ideas] contained in a film”(372) to be “[sped]Â…throughout the whole globe” rather than to “be imprisoned within national markets”(372).  According to Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Alexandrov, montage in the 1920s Soviet sense of juxtaposition is “the indisputable axiom upon which world cinema culture rests”(370).  It is not the mere use of image fragments that makes film so powerful, but rather the very juxtaposition of these fragments.  Fragments, either obviously related or apparently unrelated, only find their true intensity when placed alongside other fragments.  Film itself holds great force, great power, and great opportunities.  With the addition of sound, Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Alexandrov warn the reader of their Statement, cinema will have only increasing opportunities.  These opportunities, though, will force once again a question of purpose.  Can and will sound be used toward improvements in cinema, or will soundÂ’s provided opportunities be used for the “wrong purposes”(370)?

The three acknowledge that due to the technical capabilities available to them in the USSR, they will not be able to apply their ideas and beliefs on sound any time soon.  Thus, it is to those with the power to realize the “cherished dreams of a sound cinema”(370) that this statement is addressed.  After asserting their claim to “first [revealing] and [asserting]”(370) concepts of montage, Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Alexandrov pass their conception on along with an attempt at guidelines for the integration of sound into visual montage.

Sound will have the capability to either hurt or benefit Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Alexandrov’s conception of the “international nature of cinema”(371).  While they predict that sound will first be used in a natural manner, following exactly with viewed motions on screen, it is only once audiences grow particularly accustomed to sound that this natural manner will come to be destructive.  Montage, as they explain, relies on juxtaposition;  once fragments become embellished and drawn out with sound, it will be the independent fragments rather than their juxtapositions with one another that will propel films.  Fragments accompanied by sound will have an inertia all their own, causing montage, which is to provide inertia through its juxtaposition, to suffer. 

For sound to be effective for “cinema’s cultural avant-garde”(371), it must be seen as another part of montage.  Sound must become a tool of juxtaposition.  Through “sharp discord with the visual images”, the “contrapuntal method”(371), sound will elevate film to new levels, adding yet another layer to the possibilities of montage for challenging its audience’s perceptions.  Sound for Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov can either lull us to imaginative sleepiness or awaken our minds.  How is sound used to link or juxtapose images in M and the other films we have discussed this semester?  Does sound strike discords or resonances with the images we see?  How does it affect the juxtaposition of images?  How does sound alter the ways that we as audience perceive and conceptualize images and then put them to use once our viewing has finished?