Dear Carl,
Here are a few recent examples of intellectual montage:
In Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, in the segment called "The Crows," Van Gogh
(played
by Martin Scorcese!) speaks of himself as working like a locomotive and there
are images intercut with images of a locomotive -- which has the effect
of both
ironically making his metaphor literal and of suggesting the imminent
industrial
changes that will transform the world he aims to paint (giving a real sense to
the urgency he describes himself feeling).
In Nicholas Roeg's Walkabout, there are two excellent examples: the aboriginal
boy is looking up at the thighs of the Australian girl (sorry I can't remember
the names) as she climbs a tree and this is intercut with images of a largely
naked aboriginal family exploring the car that they left behind -- the effect
is to highlight the differences in approaches to nudity and to the
body. Another comes when the boy on the walkabout is hunting for
kangaroos, and to
undercut the disgust or disapproval or even curious fascination that a Western
audience might feel, scenes of hunting are intercut with brutal and fast paced
shots of a butcher chopping meat.
Another example I've used to discuss this is towards the end of the
Godfather. As Michael Corleone participates in the ritual of baptism,
his men are
solidifying his power by killing off his rivals. On the one hand this is just
a matter of showing simultaneous events, since he planned it this way to be in
the church while it happened -- but on the other it suggests an affinity
between the baptism and the murders: Michael is being reborn, cleansed;
it also
has the ambiguity of either placing the murders in a sacred/ritual
context or of
rendering unholy the act of baptism because of its asscociation with murder,
suggesting an affinity between, say, the catholic church and the work of crime
families like the Corleones.
Best,
Nate Andersen
Associate Prof. of Philosophy
Eckerd College
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