Montage of Attractions and More

The essay ‘Montage of Attractions’ originally appeared in the Soviet journal Lef in May 1923
under the direction of Mayakovsky. The work itself was proposed to the Prolekult in favour of a
new direction of the theatre. This new direction was seen as a radically new one which called for
“the abolition of the very institution of the theatre as such replacing it with a show place for the
achievements in the theatre or with an instrument for raising the standard of training of the
masses in their day-to-day life.” (Montage of Attractions, pp. 77) So even at this early stage in his
career Eisenstein wants to distance himself from his tutor and mentor- Meyerhold, who,
nonetheless had a significant influence both on Eisenstein’s ideas and practice as a film director
and a theatre director. (For instance we see aspects of Commedia dell’arte in the colour scene of
Eisenstein’s last work Иван Грозный.)
The influential idea that Meyerhold transferred on to the young Eisentstein and his thinking was
that of organic unity. Organic unity understood in its basic sense is that when a work shows
evidence of a direct relationship between the part and the totality of the work in terms of the
thematic concepts that arise from that work in particular. So, for Meyerhold a work would
achieve this when each of the individual actors were like organs subservient to the body of the
work. In his work On Theatre (1913), Meyerhold outlined three fundamental principles for the
theatre of the future which would later heavily influence Eisenstein. The three principles are as
follows:
1. The role of the theatre director should be akin to a musical composer.
2. The recognition of the stage and the auditorium as a single organic whole and the audience as
an active participant in the theatrical performance.
3. The vital importance of movement in the theatre (based upon his theories of biomechanics).

These three principles would have a large influence over Eisenstein, especially the latter two as
we will see in the ‘Montage of Attractions’. (Esienstein would later say that the second principle
was the key to unlocking the essence of the theatre.)
With his statement that the theatre should be aiming in the direction to be an “instrument for
raising the standard of training of the masses in their day-to-day life”, Eisenstein proposes a new
art form which fuses art and work, art and life, etc which is ideologically informed allowing for
the ideas to be expressed through the medium of film. (For Eisenstein, all art is ideologically
informed and shaped by virtue of being a part of the time that it comes into being). So it is
utilitarian in the sense that the agit-attraction of the image or the scene guides the viewer to the
desired state of mind- that being in line with the aim of building a better society. i
He outlines two forms of theatre which are “provisional.” Firstly, the representational-narrative
genre of theatre which is revolutionary in content, but the form is still in the style of the
contemplative theatre à la Stanislavski which allows for the audience to indulge in their
emotions- so this is still bourgeoisie for Eisenstein. The secondly, the agit-attraction theatre
which is the left-wing of the Prolekult- the dynamic and eccentric theatre which is based on
rhythm and movement- the form for which he used in his very own production of The Wiseman.
He writes that this work was the first work to use the technique of agit based upon his concept of
a Montage of Attractions.
The concept of Montage of Attractions has several features….
Firstly, “The spectator himself constitutes the basic material of the theatre.” (pp. 78) We can see
Meyerhold’s influence on Eisenstein here. The success of a production depends upon its ability to
affect the audience, and for Eisenstein, this will be both intellectual and physiological. ii
Another feature of Montage of Attractions is that it is an aggressive aspect of the theatre. I think
that this passage merits being quoted in full as it leans towards the essence of what Eisenstein is
getting at in this piece of writing:
An Attraction (in relation to the theatre) is any aggressive aspect of the theatre; that is, any
element of the theatre that subjects the spectator to a sensual or psychological impact,
experimentally regulated and mathematically calculated to produce in him certain
emotional shocks which, when placed in their proper sequence within the totality of the
production, become the only means that enable the spectator to perceive the ideological side
of what is being demonstrated – the ultimate ideological conclusion. (The means of
cognition –“ through the living play of the passions” – apply specifically to the theatre.) (pp.
78)
He then goes on to outline and describe in an elliptical manner the types of images that could be
employed to achieve such an effect on the viewer, such as “gouging out eyes or cutting off arms
and legs on the stage”. It is here that we can notice an aspect of the theatre which would later be
taken up and expanded on by the French theatre theorist Antonin Artaud- namely, what would
become the Theatre of Cruelty (Eisenstein actually cites the Grand Guignol theatre which is
discussed at length in The Theatre and its Double.)
Formally the Montage of Attractions is “micro-logical”. Yet, being fragmentary in nature it
nonetheless embodies the thematic whole. In the same way that Zamyatin’s fragmentary style in
We expresses thoughts in their pure, raw state; Eisenstein’s Montage of Attractions also express
this fragmentary nature. To think the fragment is to think outside of the system of historical
narrativization, and film has the capacity to do this. Yet, the fragment is not a mere arbitrary part
of the whole. Rather, the fragment (or in Eisenstein’s case the Attraction) is on the micrological
level, is concomitantly consistent within the thematic of the work at large. This allows Eisenstein
to go beyond the boundaries of representative narrative-genre laden in theatre which opens up a
space to practice a free yet “mathematically” controlled style where the attraction reaches beyond
its own internal space as a fragment.
The Montage of Attractions, by focussing on the effect it can have on the audience, destroys the
aesthetic (and anaesthetic) illusion that the spectacle can have on an audience (he writes “an
attraction has nothing in common with a trick”) in order to awaken the audience from their
dogmatic ideological slumber.
In dismantling the metaphysical barrier between spectacle and audience, Eisenstein aims at
changing the role art has in society- that being, for Art to have a direct influence on man and
society.
This radically new approach is for Eisenstein, a way of freeing the theatre from the logical
rigidity of mimetic theatre which merely portrays events without a critical slant. The space that
is freed up under this understanding of the theatre, is an interweaving of representational
segments- each part expressing the thematic whole. (In this way the drama is not limited by
what Deleuze baptizes the “movement image”, thus a space for the “time-image” opens up. The
time image understood unambiguously is that it doesn’t adhere to the classical understanding of
time- i.e that it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end) It is in the spac of the in-between
that has an effect on the audience that interrupts the “definitive and inevitable” identity of
representational theatre in order to affect the audience. This approach also allows for multiple
interpretations of the work as the sole basis of the work does not lie in “the correct
interpretation of the author”, but in immanent effective attractions.