He proposed the concepts of "vaudeville montage" and "rational montage" and put these theories into practice in his most famous film, "Battleship Potemkin."
"Vaudeville montage", a group of seemingly unrelated shots are joined together to produce special effects.
"Rational montage" refers to the relationship established between pictures to achieve specific abstract ideas, thereby triggering the audience's rational thinking and judgment.
Juggling:
Scene: Massacre on the Odessa Steps
Description: Tsarist Russian troops marched neatly from the steps and fired at unarmed civilians. The audience saw detailed scenes of bullets fired, people screaming in terror, trampling to escape, and baby strollers rolling down the steps.
Features and functions:
The fast editing creates a strong visual impact: the cold and mechanical actions of the soldiers contrast with the panic of the civilians fleeing.
Each shot is emotionally explosive (such as a tearful mother, a fallen civilian), stimulating the audience's senses.
Intent: Directly arouse the emotions of the audience, making them feel the urgency of the event and the shock of violence.
The vaudeville montage here uses sensory stimulation and conflicting visual images to make the audience feel horror, anger and sympathy, forming a strong psychological appeal.
Rational: In an early scene, the sailors discover that their food (pieces of meat) is infested with maggots and that the officers force them to eat it. Shots of rotting pieces of meat alternate with shots of officers giving orders, hinting at the decay of the tsarist system. The camera then shifts to the sailors uniting to reject the carrion, a metaphor for the awakening of rebellion against the tsarist system.
Features and functions:
The metaphorical nature of the shot: the carrion symbolizes the decay and irreversible decline of the tsarist system.
The sailors' actions of solidarity are endowed with profound social significance through editing, foreshadowing the inevitability of revolution.
Intent: Through symbolic lenses and logical relationships, the audience is guided to think rationally about the decadence of tsarist rule and the inevitability of revolutionary justice.