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Empty threats: the collision of aesthetic, industrial, and revolutionary imperatives in montage

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Empty threats: the collision of aesthetic, industrial, and revolutionary imperatives in montage

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EMPTY THREATS:

THE COLLISION OF AESTHETIC, INDUSTRIAL, AND REVOLUTIONARY

IMPERATIVES IN MONTAGE

by

Ghia Godfree

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CINEMA-TELEVISION (CRITICAL STUDIES))

December 2013

Copyright 2013 Ghia Godfree

ii

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements iii

Introduction: Montage as Practice and Metaphor of Visuality 1
Chap. 1 Notes 18

Chapter 2. Colliding Forces in Film and Photo(montage)
Sustain a Soviet Revolution 20
Chap. 2 Notes 44

Chapter 3. Establishing The Parameters of American Montage:
Slavko Vorkapich and “Vorky Shots” 47
Chap. 3 Notes 82

Chapter 4. Infiltrating the Studio System:
Don Siegel at Warner Bros. 89
Chap. 4 Notes 132

Chapter 5. MTV Killed the Soviet Star:
Music Television and the Propagation of a Montage Aesthetic 142
Chap. 5 Notes 171

Conclusion: “Art Breaks” Meets “Salt Peanuts” 176
Chap. 6 Notes 182

Figures 183

Bibliography 198

iii

Acknowledgements
In the spirit of this project, it would be nice to be able to encapsulate my graduate school
experience into a tautly edited, poignant montage. It would serve as the transitional sequence
from the moment I entered USC’s School of Cinematic Arts until now, midnight the night before
I have to upload. I would gaze wistfully at the camera in an emotional recollection of the past
several years. Unfortunately, how do you condense an inordinate amount of living into such a
small amount of screen time? The Soviet version would mimic Eisenstein’s plate-breaking scene
except I would destroy a pear against a tree. The Vorkapich version would be an artistic tour de
force featuring lots of subjective shots of me procrastinating and then writing furiously. At some
point, I would fall asleep and awake as the fourth Fury, wreaking vengeance on all word
processors. The Siegel version would be a travel/sports montage mash-up with lots of trips to
New York and mother-daughter tennis wins interspersed throughout. The music video version
would either be directed by Hype Williams and look exactly like the beginning of Belly (sans
DMX but with the a cappella version of “Back to Life”) or it would be directed by Brian De
Palma (sans Tony Montana but with Manny Ribera and “Push It to the Limit”). The problem
with these versions is that only life fully lived can adequately express the seemingly
inconsequential moments, which defined and shaped this dissertation. It feels utterly impossible
to squeeze a large amount of gratitude into mere words but I think it is at least worth a try.
I am extremely fortunate to be immersed in two intellectual communities, USC and
Occidental College, both of which are made up of amazing, smart, interesting individuals who
have provided much needed support and advice throughout this process. I am profoundly
thankful for the members of my dissertation committee. First and foremost, I want to emphasize
that without the positive encouragement and excellent editing skills of Professor Ellen Seiter this
project would not be a reality. Professor Seiter continually offered enthusiastic and constructive
advice that kept me on track. Our regular consumption of the fried chicken sandwiches at R&D
helped as well. I was also exceedingly lucky enough to coerce Professor David James and
Professor Josh Kun to be on my dissertation committee. Professor James’ very presence demands
rigorous scholarship and his incisive examination of Slavko Vorkapich and the connection
between the Soviets and music video guided me throughout. Professor James also sets an
excellent example for how to show a fine disregard for authority (and not just by making every

iv

class watch L.A. Plays Itself). Professor Kun was instrumental in the final hour at convincing me
to embrace my argument. Professor Kun demonstrates daily how to beautifully merge academic
and creative writing.
Alongside my dissertation committee, there have been many other mentors, who have
steered me through the perilous waters of graduate school. This project germinated in classes and
in conversation with all of these intellectual spirit guides. Each of you (and especially Ellen,
David, and Josh) has been an inspiration for the way you research, think, write, and teach. I am
deeply indebted to all of you. Professor Anne Friedberg, who shared a love of all things Colbert
and showed me how to teach with abandon. Dr. Todd Boyd, who continues to inspire
introspection on the widest range of topics imaginable. Professor Priya Jaikumar, who grounds
her explanation of film theory in perfect examples (like Raja) and always lets Meha plan our
playtime. Professor Rick Jewell, who provides a model for how to research with an eye to the
smallest detail and teach with kindness. Professor Howard Rosenberg, whose commitment to
animal rights and love of television is a force to behold. Professor Derek Shearer, who makes
sure I’m aware of all European media, could mediate any peace process, and inspires intellectual
curiosity each and everyday. Commander Sue Toigo, who opens up her house to us as an
extension of home. Professor Anthony Chase, whose creations in the kitchen are universally
loved (except maybe cowboy steak) and whose even-keeled encouragement is always calming.
Professor Sofia Gruskin, who amazes me with her ability to take a break from saving the world
to share Buffy and Pierre and celebrate milestones. Professor Paul Nam, who shared with me the
beauty of thirty minutes of writing every day at a pivotal moment and whose galbi is rivaled only
by his Psy impersonation. Professor Laura Ferguson, who takes time out from saving the world
to wake up obscenely early on Sundays to play tennis and offer motivational speeches (but only
after coffee). Professor Mary Beth Heffernan, who offers cogent and penetrating advice
(especially about semiotics) as well as distilling a mean nocello. Professor Dale Wright and
Professor Martha Ronk, who always volunteer calm and measured belief in intellectual
endeavors. Professor Julia Himberg, whose levelheaded advice and unflagging support is greatly
appreciated. Professor Taylor Nygaard, who pushed me to define the terms of my argument and
shares a profound love of Veronica Mars. President Jonathon Veitch, whose intellectual
guidance brought shape to my project and whose competitive spirit is contagious. Vice Admiral
Sarah Veitch, whose warmth and genuine interest in the next step reminded me there’s life on the

v

other side. Commodore Eleanor Veitch, who introduced me to Jessie Christo and Evil Twinkle
and whose creativity and enthusiasm is an inspiration.
Huge thank you to the community of graduate students (and their significant others) who
have inspired, challenged, and supported me. Without all of you, USC would be a barren place.
Thank you to Garrett and Lindsay, Julia and April, Taylor and Coyote, Patty, Jen and Pip,
Suzanne and Luke, Dave and Kate, Brett and Michelle, Kwynn, Chris and Kate, Leah, Stephanie,
Jeremy, Casey, Alex, Paul, and Sophia. I am also grateful to Alicia Cornish, Christine Acham,
and Jade Agua, whose infectious laughter and positivity (even when staring at a mustard wall)
makes coming into the Critical Studies office a joy. I am particularly indebted to Ned Comstock
for his assistance with all things Slavko. Comstock’s encyclopedic knowledge of film is a
wonder to behold. Special thanks belong to Jonathon Auxier for navigating me through the
Warner Bros. archive with patience and a ready smile. Finally, I have to thank Dale Steiber for
her enthusiasm for my project and access to the Bill Henry room, the most serene space at Oxy.
There is also an extended family that has nurtured me with guidance, advice, support, and
love. To them, I am eternally grateful. Thank you to the Huntfrees for instilling a deep love of
film. Our debut feature, Mrs. Carlson’s Solar Express, will go down in history as the movie that
failed to reenergize Bob Todd’s career. Conversely, anyone who has seen the picture has never
felt the same about the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Love Bites demonstrated Grainne’s
genius in writing and casting (it’s all about the spicy carrots). Thank you to Jen Hunter and Ben
Mesirow, whose sojourns in SF ended at the perfect time for exploitation. Thank you to the
Goldings, who make Vegas our second home and are always up for forging good times (special
thanks to the Golding boys for introducing us to Terminator and Heartbreak Ridge on
Laserdisc). Thank you to Bob and Judy for dinners at the Beaujolais and your overwhelming
support. Thank you to Charles and Charlotte for the best Spring Breaks ever!! Thank you David,
Lyssa, and Axeen as well as Sarah and Ben Axeen-Katcher for countless invigorating meals of
red wine, pesto, bread, and espresso. Without your intellectual support, love, and friendship I
would not have made it through school. Hopefully, none of you read this too carefully as I’m
sure it’s riddled with grammatical errors.
To the amazingly creative, intelligent, strong, powerful women that I know – Grainne,
Diana, Hermon, Kara, Jessie, Alicia, Sarah, Deborah, Elizabeth, Libby, Seema, Amber, Angela,
Genie, Tori, Alexis, Anne, Emily, Jill, Agnes, Luwam, Samra – I am so lucky to know all of you.

vi

How each of you makes your mark on the world continues to impress and inspire me. Thank you
for your love and support. Sistaaahhhhs!!!!! Ignacio, all our wonderful trips together have helped
me stay sane. Thank you for your love and impatience this past year, it has motivated me to work
harder, better, faster, stronger. To MG, LL, and GG – loving you brings meaning to my life.
Dictionary Dude, your inquisitiveness, wit, intelligence, and panache are a constant source of
inspiration. You instilled in me a love of reading that has served me well. Thank you for your
unconditional love and always holding my hand. To the other half of the number one
mother/daughter tennis team in the country, thank you for providing me with an exemplary
model of what a talented, powerful, and honest artist should look like. Watching you create art in
the printroom, in the kitchen, and on the tennis court is a truly freeing experience. Thank you for
your unconditional love and persistence copy editing my dissertation. Grainne, your ability to
hone in on your dream and follow it with confidence is such an inspiration. You are an amazing
writer, sister, and friend. I look forward to many more trips to sets to see your words brought to
life.

1

Introduction:
Montage as Practice and Metaphor of Visuality
Good morning, daddy!
Ain’t you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?
1

Introduction
In “Dream Boogie,” from the poem suite Montage of a Dream Deferred, Langston
Hughes takes the reader on a tour of Harlem. Hughes deftly weaves a vibrant narrative informed
by be-bop, boogie-woogie, and jazz about the city and its inhabitants. In Montage of a Dream
Deferred, Hughes juxtaposes disparate images of children at play, lovers making and breaking
up, and the rhythm of the city throughout the day. The poem “Movies” highlights the cynicism
with which Hughes viewed Hollywood as he writes “(Hollywood laughs at me, black — so I
laugh back.)”
2
Despite labeling Hollywood “a crocodile art,” Hughes borrowed the cinematic
device of montage to cut quickly from one scene of Harlem life to the next. The brief glimpses of
Harlem afforded in poems including “Juke Box Love Song,” “New Yorkers,” “Not a Movie,”
“Dead In There,” and “Island,” all combine to present a lyrical picture of black life around 1951.
Montage provided Hughes with a structure for reflecting on mid-century black culture. The
parade of the Elks Club, the ballad of the landlord demanding rent, and the late night jam
sessions at Minton’s “(ancient altar of Thelonious),”
3
are all happening “between two rivers,
north of the park.”
4
However, Hughes interaction with montage wasn’t just formed in movie
palaces in New York; almost two decades earlier, Hughes was hired by the Soviet-German film
studio, Mezhrabpom, to write a film about the status of African-Americans in the United States.
5

Although the project fell through, in September 1932, Hughes spent four months traversing the
Soviet Union and eventually published a recollection of his travels, A Negro Looks at Soviet
Central Asia, which compared cotton farming of Soviet Central Asia to the American South. As
an Amerikanski Negrochanski tovarishi (American Negro comrade), Hughes spent a good deal of
time interacting with artists, musicians, and writers of Central Asia and presumably encountered
Soviet montage films such as Vsevolod Pudovkin’s The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm
Over Asia (1928) both made at Mezhrabpom studios. Familiar with montage in a Soviet and
American context, Hughes compresses the spaces of Harlem into one holistic depiction of a city
in opposition to the rest of the country.

2

By the time Montage of a Dream Deferred was published, montage in the American
industrial context had already been codified into an efficient narrative device. Montages were
fast-paced, impressionistic flashes tasked with condensing time and space. The interludes were
characterized by quick cuts and multiple exposures capable of conveying a panoramic effect.
This differed from the general definition of montage, which in French means to mount, to put
together. The French used montage to refer to editing in general, where montage denoted the
physical description of mounting images one after another or one on top of another.
Alternatively, Soviet filmmakers and theorists developed their specific idea of montage around
the intellectual effects of juxtaposing different images. Across film history, montage has taken
on different forms in different contexts. What remains the same across contexts is how important
montage is in terms of understanding visual culture. In my dissertation, I adopt a dossier
approach and focus on a few case studies to expose the continuities and disjuncture between
them. This structure is designed to echo montage itself, by placing disparate montage moments
next to each other. Ultimately, I argue montage is one of the most important visual forms for
how we understand the contemporary media landscape.
Part of the power of montage is derived from its ability to juxtapose incommensurate
images. Either through placing the images next to each other or through double exposure, which
forces one object to penetrate the other. To juxtapose is “to place or deal with close together for
contrasting effect.”
6
Stemming from the combination of the Latin word juxta meaning “next” and
the French word poser meaning “to place,” hence literally to place next to. That naughty little x
in the middle of juxtapose even evokes the placing of two contrasting ideas, words, or images on
top of or next to each other. As in montage, the placement of dissimilar ideas side by side
highlights the differences between them and brings out their aesthetic, narrative, and intellectual
possibilities. Like the poet collocating words to achieve the greatest possible effect, we must
attune ourselves to the power of juxtaposition. When Emily Dickinson writes “How public —
like a Frog” in “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” she juxtaposes “How public” with “like a Frog” to
throw into startling contrast her desire for spiritual privacy.
7
Dickinson constructs a speaker
content to contemplate life as a “nobody” and asks the reader to imagine how terrible life would
be as a “somebody” croaking all “the livelong June.” Dickinson’s poem strikes a chord because
its distinction between nobodies and somebodies is pertinent to the individuals discussed
throughout my dissertation. In the first chapter on Soviet Montage, I discuss the Soviet avant-

3

garde’s relationship to montage. Within this context, a certain amount of recognition had tragic
consequences, as even those who contributed most effectively to the Stalin Cult would
eventually be executed in Butovo prison.
8
The second and third chapters examine in detail how
the parameters of American montage were set within the American industrial context, which
revolves around “nobodies” entering the Hollywood star-making factory with the express
purpose of becoming “somebodies.” The final chapter considers how the success of music video
propagated a montage aesthetic beyond television and the consequences of the democratization
of montage through access to new media.
My study and understanding of montage’s distinct history as a form and style
demonstrates how montage informs apriori conditions of viewing. How do we parse what is
important to us when we are inundated with images? The increasingly visual nature of our
contemporary culture is made possible by the plethora of screens that surround us. Montage
reflects the way we view images today. The interplay of screens — movie theaters, televisions,
computers, ipads, mobile phones, and handheld devices — results in a discordant juxtaposition
of images that intrinsically mimics montage. How we consume media is a balance between push
and pull technologies and we are constantly faced with situations where both occur at the same
time. Think about the distracted viewer watching television, surfing the Internet, and checking
the phone possibly on one device simultaneously! Navigating the screens of personal devices and
televisions in the home as well as screens in public spaces such as airports, grocery stores,
restaurants, and bars affords glimpses of imagery often without context. Constantly catching
sight of multiple screens, even multiple open windows on your computer, can produce startlingly
discordant imagery. Our experience is analogous to montage. It is the quotidian experience of
observing images and making sense of them. At times, seemingly unrelated imagery sparks a
moment of clarity and coherence.

Spectral Connections Inform Montage’s Early History
In the prologue to Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus reconsiders the definition of history. Marcus
asks, “Is history simply a matter of events that leave behind those things that can be weighed and
measured - new institutions, new maps, new rulers, new winners and losers - or is it also the
result of moments that seem to leave nothing behind, nothing but the mystery of spectral
connections between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same

4

language?”
9
One of the spectral connections guiding Marcus is Elvis Costello’s excitement over
the Sex Pistols proclaiming “fuck” on television in 1976 and Walter Mehring’s poem “What is
DADAyama?,” both of which reference train platforms and blood pressure. For Marcus, “the
happenstance of specific words in common is an accident, but it might suggest a real affinity.”
10

In Lipstick Traces, Costello and Mehring link the Sex Pistols, dada, and the Situationist
International movement and represent two men “looking for words to make disruption
precious.”
11
Trains, spectral connections, and rebellion in film and television inform the
following pages as well. By juxtaposing disparate cultural moments, Marcus urges the reader to
contemplate historical affinities that occur across time and space. Like Marcus, I position
dissimilar cultural moments side by side to highlight the correspondences between them and our
contemporary media landscape. One similarity I examine is artists “creating images to make
disruption precious” through the use of montage as a form and style. Haunting each montage
moment is a flicker of transgression, which oscillates from a profound uneasiness with authority
to a sly disregard to the systems they were embedded within. Each chapter lays out montage as
intrinsically threatening. One of the threats embodied by montage is its ability to expose tensions
— between art and industry, meaning and style, narrative and spectacle. Montage always exists
within certain technological and production conditions, which determine, in part, how and why
montage is deployed.
Despite the prevalence of montage in film and television today, there was a time when the
aesthetic was conceived of and theorized as revolutionary. At its inception, montage was
associated with artists working to uphold the ideals of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Artists
used the radical form of montage to challenge the conventions of domestic and international
“bourgeoisie” cinema. Classical Hollywood was adept at cannibalizing the style of foreign
cinemas and the 1920s and 1930s saw the incorporation of elements from German
Expressionism and Soviet montage. Discussing montage as a style and form within the American
industrial system requires situating montage within the context of Soviet Russia after the October
Revolution. If montage was a superhero and we were tracing its genealogy, the Soviet situation
would form the basis of its origin story. Admittedly, Eisenstein formulated his sense of montage
out of the work of Charles Dickens and D.W. Griffith. In the unforgettable opening lines of A
Tale of Two Cities, Dickens writes “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
introducing his two themes of fate and death through parallelism, repetition used for rhetorical

5

effect. Throughout his work, Dickens used parallelism to contrast opposing themes. This
repetition of a grammatical structure for emphasis and to compare oppositional elements is akin
to the juxtaposition of disparate images within montage. Additionally, Dickens qualifies as the
patron saint of montage because it’s possible to draw a line from Dickens to D. W. Griffith to the
Soviets.
As in a comic book superhero myth, the origins of montage in Russia in the 1920s highlight a
captivating tale of individuals in pursuit of noble, artistic goals in a morally complicated time.
The Soviet artists were shaped by and committed to the new revolutionary state. For Soviet
filmmakers and theorists, montage covered a multiplicity of ideas beyond the simple act of
joining two strips of film. Primarily, they were invested in what happened intellectually,
conceptually, and emotionally when images were juxtaposed. In contrast to film as
entertainment, the Soviets saw film as a powerful method of mass propaganda. Soviet
filmmakers set out to convey social ideas through the emotionally effective use of film form. The
question they hoped to answer was how could film best spread the Revolutionary message.
Simultaneously, tensions arose between the individual as artist and the state propaganda
machine. As Soviet avant-garde artists experimented with form and the creation of a new visual
language, they came into conflict with the tightly controlled artistic production of Socialist
Realism.
An examination of Soviet montage helps distinguish montage in its American industrial
context. The role of art immediately after the Russian Revolution raises some interesting
analogies for the present condition of viewing media, albeit in a very different sociopolitical
context. Artists in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution embraced political iconography in
order to perpetuate the ideals of the Revolution. The goal was to reach a mass audience and the
best way to execute this was to transform everyday spaces. Suddenly, the city was
conceptualized as performer, stage, and audience. Soviet artists enthusiastically invented ways
for ensuring their ideological public art would be encountered by the populace. Political posters
in defense of the Bolshevik Revolution decorated the windows of the Russian Telegraph Agency
offices throughout the country. Posters pasted on walls captured the spirit of Futurist poet and
artist Vladimir Mayakovsky, who wrote, “Art must be everywhere — on the streets, in trams, in
factories, in workshops, in workers’ apartments.”
12
And not just a small dedicated group of
viewers seeking to understand their new world through avant-garde art but the mainstream, the

6

masses. Agitprop trains delivered film and posters to the countryside beyond the confines of the
city. The artist Gustav Klutsis imagined “agitational stands,”
13
which he conceived of as “pop-
up” avant-garde theater. “Klutsis believed that to install these constructions outdoors, to activate
their cinematic and verbal information, and to have them interact with people on the street would
produce a new model of street theater.”
14
Klutsis, like other artists at the time, hoped people
would come upon the interplay of text and image and engage with them at an intellectual level.
In these examples of Russian montage posters and films, what is analogous to contemporary
media is the accessibility of the images, their intended interactivity, and their mythic
propagandism. We live in a media-saturated society defined by these very same themes. Instead
of wrestling with the progression from Bolshevism to totalitarianism, the American condition is
firmly entrenched in capitalism.
Slavko Vorkapich and Don Siegel are compelling case studies because their time in the
studios dovetails with Hollywood’s Classical Period from 1929-1945. The trajectory of their two
careers underlines how montage fit into an industry wrestling with the arrival of sound film, the
enforcement of the Production Code, the Great Depression, and the repercussions of World War
II. During the Classical Period, genre emerged as a formative influence on the production and
consumption of film texts, but montage transcended genre. Vorkapich is responsible for shaping
Hollywood’s adoption of montage as an aesthetic and narrative device. Working at various
studios throughout the 1930s, Vorkapich established the parameters of American montage,
informed and influenced by the legacy of German Expressionism and Soviet montage. Even as
Vorkapich brought montage into the American industrial system of classical Hollywood, his
work was often viewed as a threat to be contained, absorbed, “narrativized.” As Vorkapich
established the parameters of montage, tensions arose. Tensions flared over power, personnel,
recognition, and style. Fundamentally, montage posed a threat to the narrative as it drew
attention to its process with a succession of rapid cuts. Walter Murch, the editor of Godfather II
(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) and Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), acknowledges
there is a great deal of work that goes into a cut in editing, even when its designed to go
unobserved. He writes, “A vast amount of preparation, really, to arrive at the innocuously brief
moment of decisive action: the cut – the moment of transition from one shot to the next –
something that, appropriately enough, should look almost self-evidently simple and effortless, if
it is even noticed at all.”
15
In contrast to transparent editing, montage cutting stands out as rapid-

7

fire and jarring despite classical Hollywood efforts to make montage interludes fit seamlessly
with the continuity editing of the surrounding narrative. The montage elevates the viewer out of
the diegesis and into the realm of the poetic, simultaneously suggesting the collaboration
inherent within filmmaking, while foregrounding the montage director as artist.
Vorkapich’s work throughout the 1930s at Paramount, RKO, and MGM made montage
forceful and visible as a form. As David E. James notes in The Most Typical Avant-Garde:
History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles, “it was as the creator of montage
sequences in Hollywood films that he became so celebrated during the 1930s that ‘Vorkapich’
became a common industry film script notation to indicate their presence.”
16
Usually,
“Vorkapich shot” in a script would designate a highly stylized sequence conveying the
condensed impression of an event. To classical Hollywood film historians, montages of the
1930s are synonymous with Vorkapich and within the canon of film studies; he is often credited
with introducing Hollywood to montage. Richard Maltby in Hollywood Cinema contends
Vorkapich’s montages “were as close as Hollywood came to a stylistic imitation of Eisenstein.”
17

Like Eisenstein, Vorkapich’s legacy is linked with the avant-garde and his montage work and
film, The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (1928), are anthologized on avant-garde
DVDs such as Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894 – 1941. Bruce Posner
on the Unseen Cinema compilation introduces clips of Vorkapich’s film work from 1928 to 1937
with, “Émigré Slavko Vorkapich landed in Hollywood awe-inspired by D.W. Griffith, Rex
Ingram, and Chaplin and proceeded to create a stellar montage-editing style which relied upon
hyper-kinetic visual stimulation. His groundbreaking work remains influential, and he is
acknowledged as America’s first dual practitioner and theoretician of motion pictures.”
18
As a B
player within Hollywood, the details of Vorkapich’s contributions have been somewhat
obscured. This is partly because Vorkapich preferred lecturing (later teaching at cross-town
rivals UCLA and USC) to writing, and because Vorkapich was considered an editor in an
environment that prized first producers and later directors as auteurs.
A reliance on auteurism as the measure of greatness is reflected in Posner’s description of
Vorkapich’s process in the commentary for Unseen Cinema. Posner declares, “Vorkapich had
complete creative freedom in writing, designing, directing and editing his montage sequences for
feature films, his work was often reduced to its bones in the released productions.”
19
This quote
implies Vorkapich, the auteur, was stifled by the working conditions of the studio system and

8

firmly places him within the tradition of an American avant-garde at odds with Hollywood.
James, however, situates Vorkapich in the larger context of other artists working in the
interstices of the industry. Vorkapich was operating outside of the industry when he made The
Life and Death of 9413 with Robert Florey and Gregg Toland, however; all three hoped to use
the film as a “calling-card” within the industry. Once Vorkapich started working within the
studios, he remained marginalized, fighting for credit for his work. Vorkapich’s highly stylized
sequences epitomize the exhilaration of modernist filmic experimenting, yet they often sit
uneasily with the larger realistic narrative. For example, the interludes for What Price
Hollywood? (George Cukor, 1932) revisit the theme of callous fame elucidated in The Life and
Death of 9413 — A Hollywood Extra as they outline Mary Evans (Constance Bennett’s) rise and
fall from stardom. The combination of celestial superimposition and abstract patterns in
Vorkapich’s interludes exemplifies his efforts to insert avant-garde techniques into the prose of
film narrative. During his time in the studios, Vorkapich established the parameters of American
montage in an industrial setting and even ushered in a short period where montage directors were
tenuously accepted as part of the production process. However, Vorkapich’s work, by virtue of
its difference in a studio system that prized transparent editing, was doomed to controversy.
One reason Vorkapich appreciated montage was because, through the juxtaposition of
incommensurate ideas, he could transcend the literal meanings of two shots to create poetic
images. Vorkapich preached this to Don Siegel in 1939 at a prophetic meeting on the MGM lot
as Vorkapich neared the end of his career within Hollywood. The two men serve as
counterpoints to each other as the different trajectories of their careers highlight how montage
was finally absorbed into the production process. While Vorkapich’s montages drew attention to
themselves, Siegel’s were designed to fit seamlessly with the narrative surrounding them.
Coincidentally, Vorkapich and Siegel left Europe, Vorkapich from Paris and Siegel from
London, to make their way by ship to the United States. Both men ascribe a mythic quality to
their journeys, which saw them working their way across the Atlantic Ocean in lieu of buying a
ticket. Vorkapich boarded the Il’de France in August 1920 and accepted the job of a waiter
turned deck cleaner.
20
His arrival in New York in 1920 with a scant thirteen dollars in his
pockets was a clean break from Europe and he went so far as to write in his diary, “All threads of
bad luck have been torn.”
21
Notwithstanding a complete lack of musical proficiency, Siegel
crossed the Atlantic as a drummer on an ocean liner. Siegel landed in Los Angeles in 1934,

9

penniless, but with a family connection to Warner Bros. that would serve him well. In contrast to
Vorkapich’s association with the American avant-garde, Siegel represents a figure more firmly
entrenched in Hollywood’s studio system. His films, including Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954),
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Flaming Star (1960), The Killers (1964), Dirty Harry
(1971) and Charley Varrick (1973), are all quintessential American popular culture. Although
Siegel eventually made a name for himself as a director, his early career at Warner Bros. was
defined by his ascension through the ranks of the Special Effects Department culminating in
Warner Bros. first Montage Director. Although Hollywood embraced Vorkapich for a time, his
“foreignness” stood out against the jingoism of the buildup to World War II. In contrast, Siegel’s
time in England only added a sheen of aristocracy to his “Americanness.” Siegel loved ping-
pong and tennis and his competitive spirit fostered a desire to distinguish himself from his peers
in Special Effects, but he also understood how to be a team player and pay his dues. Whereas
Vorkapich butted heads with the system, Siegel accepted the constraints in order to leverage
himself as a capable and efficient director.
Siegel’s desire to be a director of “Class A” photoplays informed his choices as he
worked his way up from an assistant in the stock shot film library to a First Assistant Director in
the Special Effects Department. When Byron “Bun” Haskin, the head of the Special Effects
Department, suggested Siegel meet with the legendary Vorkapich to learn how to make a
montage, Siegel seized the opportunity. Siegel was ambitious and quickly recognized montage
would afford him more power on the lot. In his autobiography, Siegel described his meeting with
“Vorky,” who clearly made an impression. Siegel writes, “Slavko Vorkapich looked like a
montage slightly tilted.”
22
Siegel recounts Vorkapich’s description of a montage and its
importance to the viewer,
Montage literally means the placing of one picture on to another. Eisenstein used it as a
form of editing: taut, precise, sometimes a matter of frames. Generally, it gets over a
lapse of time. But when one considers that montage is the single section of film that gives
the audience credit for creative intelligence, the importance of montage transcends the
mundane film as a whole. The use of symbolism stirs the imagination of the viewer. One
can show the invisible or intangible by means of visible impressions. The whole film can
be made more vivid and given more pace by the proper use of montage technique.
23

10

Siegel viewed the meeting with Vorkapich as prophetic because it opened his eyes to the
possibilities of montage. In Siegel’s recollection, Vorkapich’s advice covers active viewership,
tempo, rhythm, symbolism, and enhanced visual capacities achievable through montage. Siegel
returned elated to Warner Bros. laden with lined paper for sketching out montage sequences
“borrowed” from Vorkapich.
24
As a director of montages, Siegel would achieve success in
editing and shooting short sequences, work with top actors and actresses, and garner the notice of
studio head, Jack Warner. In contrast to the film’s editor, whose chief responsibility was the first
complete assembly of the film, Siegel directed and cut together montages unsure of how the
interludes would be integrated into the film. The extent to which the producer, director, or studio
head was involved in the editing process varied depending on the film in question. Invested in
emphasizing the contributions of the montage department within the studio, Siegel successfully
leveraged montage to achieve the formation of a montage department under his control and
eventually, his dream of directing.
Following Hollywood’s adoption during the 1920s of a Fordist model of industrialization
predicated on a specialization of labor, there was a tightening in the division between creative
and technical workers. Both Vorkapich and Siegel blurred these boundaries. Whereas Vorkapich
operated primarily as a one-man show, Siegel used montage as a pretext for the development of a
dedicated department under his supervision. Vorkapich’s montage work represents the aesthetics
of German Expressionism and Soviet montage while Siegel’s work draws on Vorkapich but tries
to fit seamlessly with the surrounding narrative. Siegel saw in montage an opportunity for more
responsibility and power within the studio system. Ambitious and self-assured, Siegel carved out
a niche at Warner Bros. conscientious of how producing consistently professional work on a
shoestring budget would enable his transition from Special Effects to directing Class A
photoplays. Siegel thrived at Warner Bros. because he strove to match the style of the film’s
director. Ironically, Siegel gained recognition and attention because of his desire to fit in with the
picture as a whole! Even so, his montages don’t always fit seamlessly into the finished product.
The interludes for Knute Rockne (Lloyd Bacon, 1940), for example, creatively captured the
excitement and athletic prowess of the Notre Dame football team with quick edits that stand
apart from the pace of the film. Before the reliance on instant replays and instantaneous cutting
in sport broadcasting, Siegel’s sporting montages in Knute Rockne and Gentleman Jim (Raul

11

Walsh, 1942) are distinctive for their lithe energy. Through the depiction of multiple points of
view, they capture the intensity of football and boxing.
While Vorkapich’s interludes are most often associated with the avant-garde, today,
Siegel’s montage work is overshadowed by his directorial efforts, which continue to make their
mark on popular culture. On July 21, 2012, Cinespia featured Invasion of the Body Snatchers at
the Hollywood Forever Cemetery sparking the debate over whether Kevin McCarthy screaming
“You’re next” is more frightening than escaping the Hollywood Forever parking lot. In
retrospect, the brief interaction between Vorkapich and Siegel encapsulates a collision of the
avant-garde with the studio system. Vorkapich established the stylistic and symbolic virtues of
montage but fell out of favor with Hollywood. In contrast, Siegel antagonized the gatekeepers
into letting him direct and continued to draw on the techniques of montage to enhance his work.
While Vorkapich theorized montage’s importance in establishing filmic specificity, Siegel’s
evolving role at Warner Bros. establishes montage use in the industrial setting as an efficient
stylistic and narrative device. The industrial context that defines classical Hollywood, its
specialization and departmentalization of labor, offered Siegel a space to flourish in his own
department and represents the inclusion of montage as a separate department. Contrary to
invisible editing, montage’s disjunctive cuts could disorient the viewer. Vorkapich and Siegel
were kept in check by the threat of ending up on the cutting room floor. Jack Oakie alludes to the
myth of careers destroyed with one snip of the editor’s scissors when he advises, “Boys, never
cut a cutter.” For these two montage specialists, seeing their work abbreviated or excised was a
real possibility. Ultimately, if they assembled a sequence that was too radical, it ran the risk of
exclusion from the film at the hands of the editor or producer in charge of the final assembly.
Slavko Vorkapich’s “Battle of Vitoria” sequence from The Firefly (1937), for example, appears
in the film in an abridged version. Vorkapich’s work and theory, in its embrace of avant-garde
traditions, helped distinguish him internationally as the seminal auteur of classical Hollywood
montage.
However, Don Siegel’s experience working on montages from 1936 to 1945 provides a
framework for highlighting how quickly the montage department became an indispensable
aspect of the Warner Bros. production process. In classical Hollywood cinema, “the burgeoning
studio system swelled with specialists and departments for each facet of moviemaking.”
25
At the
three big studios, churning out fifty-two pictures a year, work was done around the clock and

12

“editors were subdivided into A and B editors (for A and B feature films), with assistants,
apprentices, and separate departments for sound, music, and montage sequences.”
26
Assigning
authorship to a montage sequence is a complex matter. Stylistically, the montages are
distinguished from the surrounding film; yet it is hard to know where one person’s contributions
begin or end. This is partly attributable to the goal of invisible editing strived for in most
classical Hollywood films, thus, editing is less tangible than the impact made by other
departments. Additionally, the daily mechanisms of the montage departments at MGM and
Warner Bros. have been partially obscured by history. Without focusing on Inter-Office
Communications, production records, and Warner Club Newsletters, the accomplishments of the
Warner Bros. montage department would fall through the cracks. Delving into Siegel’s montage
work necessitates its juxtaposition with the sociopolitical milieu at Warner Bros. in the late
1930s and early 1940s. In Edward Dmytryk’s anecdotal On Film Editing: An Introduction to the
Art of Film Construction, the director outlines the principles of film editing and devotes a chapter
to montage. In “Where It All Began – The Montage,” Dmytryk describes the two basic types of
montage as Hollywood montage and European montage. Of the two machines used for editing
during the classical era, a Moviola or a flatbed, the Moviola was favored by Hollywood,
although Dmytryk preferred a combination of the two.
27
For Dmytryk, European montage found
its greatest expression in the work of the Russian filmmakers of the 1920s who used “straight
cuts to develop story, situation, and character.”
28
He sees this style of montage as exemplified by
the Odessa steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925).
In contrast, the Hollywood montage is “almost invariably a transition. It too is composed
of a number of silent cuts, often in a series of dissolves, and always musically underscored, but
there its similarity to its foreign cousin ends. It is, in truth, simply a more complicated, and often
more pretentious, version of a straight dissolve.”
29
In describing Hollywood montages as
transitions, Dmytryk is talking about elapses in time and space. For example, time passing as the
seasons change, depicted through shots of a tree in winter, spring, summer and fall. Or,
traversing across the nation, which is encompassed in successive shots of monuments of the East
Coast giving way to vistas of the West Coast. These are instances where the montage is
constructed primarily through dissolves and embodies Dmytryk’s suggestion, “In complex
clusters, such as the Hollywood montage, the dissolve is the filmmaker’s ‘time machine,’
transporting the viewer instantly backward or forward in time or location at his will.”
30
Like Dr.

13

Who with his telephone booth TARDIS, Vorkapich and Siegel transcended time and space in
many of the montages they created for the studios. In addition to the Hollywood montage as time
machine, Vorkapich and Siegel, recognized the powerful way montage could convey the
subconscious. Incorporating the aesthetics of Surrealism and German Expressionism, Hollywood
montages brought to life Freud’s analysis of the unconscious. Dmytryk points out how
Hollywood montages were used “as a means of exposing a character’s unspoken thoughts or to
pictorialize his subconscious experiences, as in dreams or nightmares. Such montages are really
moving collages, and their effectiveness depends in great part on the creativeness and dramatic
skill of the editor.”
31
Drawing on the legacy of Surrealism, both Vorkapich and Siegel’s montage
work often explores the unconscious life of the characters.

Accessible, Interactive, Mythic Describes Montage’s Later History
Vorkapich and Siegel’s experiences within the studios are echoed in the career
trajectories of music video auteurs of the 1980s and 1990s. Although these men and women were
working outside of the studios, they saw the possibilities for career enhancement inherent in
music video montage. Siegel’s ambitious, rebellious attitude made it possible for him to
transcend the studio hierarchy. Similarly, the enterprising men and women involved in producing
music videos recognized an opportunity to establish a reputation for themselves first outside of
the confines of the industry and later within. Many of the individuals, besides the musicians
themselves, who first got involved with music videos, were fresh out of film or art school and
eager to try their hand at directing and editing. The final chapter of my dissertation examines
how music television freed montage from the constraints of a larger diegesis and promulgated
the form on television and beyond. Elaborated in this chapter are several canonical moments in
the evolution of music television as analyzed through the lens of iconic music video montages of
the past thirty years. While montage in the classical era was often corseted by the realist
narrative, music videos foregrounded montage for montage’s sake. Music television was the
perfect medium to appropriate and unleash montage. Like other channels struggling to find a
niche in the nascent cable universe, MTV wanted to captivate distracted viewers. Specifically,
MTV’s earliest broadcasts were a continuous flow of short, kinetic, visually arresting sequences
set to music designed to attract twelve to thirty-four year olds.
32
MTV even opened its broadcast
with a montage of appropriated public domain footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing

14

superimposed with MTV’s changing logo on the flag. The montage encapsulated the channel
claim to rebelliousness and occupation of unchartered television territory.
In retrospect, the success of music television seems preordained. However, an analysis of
the debate over the nature and economic viability of music television suggests the medium’s
subsequent success was far from inevitable. For example, without the proliferation of personal
recording devices and cable, the form would not have developed as it did. In examining the
relations between montage, pop music, and television, I privilege certain case studies because
they occurred during periods of technological innovation, market restructuring, and challenges to
traditional representational practices. By investigating a number of discrete moments associated
with the public’s most formative experiences with televisual montage, it is possible to highlight
how the consequences of the interactions resonated beyond the culture industries. Just two
months after launching MTV in 1981, the executives imitated radio station listener contests and
promoted a write-in contest called One-Night Stand with Journey.
33
Even beyond the Journey
contest, MTV’s appeal was designed to be interactive and brand the channel as rebellious and
irreverent. The goal was to make the channel attractive to a youth demographic and to this end,
MTV regularly featured New Wave bands and other new acts that radio stations oriented around
rock albums avoided. Within music television, montage as an aesthetic defined musicians’
audiovisual presence and opened up theoretical questions about subjectivity and power, active
versus passive viewership, postmodernism, spectacle, and stardom. Displaying a prescient cable
strategy predicated on award shows, MTV’s launch of its annual Video Music Awards in 1984
emphasized music video auteurs. Like the Ouroboros, MTV bestowed Moonmen and
simultaneously auteur status on musicians and directors who were featured on MTV, thus
reinforcing the channel’s astronomical eminence. Oftentimes, these music video auteurs, both
musicians and directors, blurred the rigid boundaries surrounding race, gender, and sexuality.
Music videos increased the musician’s aura through densely packed imagery, which was fast-
paced, colorful, exuberant, and edgy. The musicians, who had always seemed so far away, as just
voices on the radio, were suddenly, intimately present in the viewer’s home in all their
audiovisual glory.
What initially felt like a teenage rebellion had to struggle from its inception against co-
optation by business interests. The collision of art and commerce has been relevant since the
debut of MTV and its early programming choices, which merged music video and art video in an

15

unruly fashion. For example, performance artist Laurie Anderson’s O Superman, with its stylized
close-ups and silhouetted puppet hands set to Anderson’s voice distorted by a vocoder, was
played in between more mainstream videos.
34
As the decade wore on, only a very fine line
divided the branding and selling of pop star and product. Until this line was completely
obliterated by Lady Gaga and Beyoncé in the Jonas Akerlund directed Telephone. This
grandiose, confused nine-minute advertisement includes a myriad of product placement (Virgin
Mobile, HP Envy 15 Beats laptop, Monster headphones, Polaroid, and the “Plenty of Fish”
dating website) with a variety of product shout-outs (Diet Coke can curlers, Chanel, Wonder
Bread, and Miracle Whip). As the basis of MTV’s domination in the 1980s and 1990s, music
videos were connected with youth rebelliousness but mobilized in the service of selling products
to audiences and audiences to advertisers globally. Thus, music video montages underscore the
tension between artistic production and capitalism. The two are not mutually exclusive; often the
most ingenious mechanics merge with vibrant creativity and emanate from a collective effort
inside a factory with a disunified artistic vision. Music television has always had corporate ties;
however, the best music videos retained some of the revolutionary elements of past audiovisual
experiments in their demonstration of the vitality, playfulness, and visceral nature of youth
culture. This culture could not be ignored and MTV came to represent the convergence of music,
technology, digital culture, and cultural pastiche. One of the main reasons viewers are drawn to
music video montages is because of their distillation of imagery. The quick succession of images
captured viewer attention by forcing them to make sense of the gaps between images. This
density of imagery was thrilling and supported repeat viewings. Music television, by
popularizing montages extricated from a surrounding narrative, disseminated a montage aesthetic
beyond television.

Conclusion
Writing in American Cinematographer in 1972, Slavko Vorkapich discussed his
frustration with writing about the visual medium of film. He remarked, “Books on poetry can
quote, books on painting can show reproductions, books on music can illustrate with musical
notation, but we have no cinematic notation that we could feed into our private computers.”
35

While Vorkapich envisioned a day when Super 8 reels of illustrative clips would accompany
every book on film, his dream of “cinematic notation” accessible online has arrived. Traditional

16

media outlets are completely intertwined with the computer and hand-held devices. Today’s
mechanisms of consumption encompass film, television, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, and Google.
Previously established “push technologies” of television and film are married to newer “pull
technologies,” where the audience searches for content online. User selected online viewing and
DVR technology supports time-shifted consumption of media. At the forefront of this shift were
music videos, which have shifted from content “pushed” to the viewer by music television to
clips “pulled” by the user from Internet sites like YouTube, VEVO, Vimeo, and Stereogum. As
evidenced by Psy’s Gangnam Style and Ylvis’ The Fox (What Does the Fox say?), music videos
are often at the epicenter of viral Internet memes. Along with content, advertisements are
deployed across digital and traditional platforms. Traversing contemporary media culture, the
viewer is inundated with imagery designed to maximize exposure and interactivity, including
inescapable advertisements waging an all-out audiovisual assault across multiple platforms. In an
increasingly conglomerated media landscape, buying, spending, and accumulating is framed as
an economic imperative to viewers imagined as consumer-citizens.
The consumer-citizens of today are no different than the audiences of Hollywood’s
Classical Period. Just as the montages between 1929 and 1945 provided a lens for understanding
visual culture, the proliferation of “cinematic notation” across a variety of media screens today
makes it imperative to discuss montage. Vorkapich, who saw himself as called upon to express
in a short sequence an idea, event, or mood as graphically and excitingly as possible, hoped to
correct the misconception of montages as merely “footage saving devices.”
36
Vorkapich
preached to Siegel how montage informed filmmaking in its entirety because, “Like a good
Montage sequence, a picture should have: Rhythm, Tempo, Movement, visual change and
imagery.”
37
He insisted audiences responded to all these elements in early Westerns, slapstick
comedies, and spectacle films thus, these audiences were “montage subconscious.”
38
During the
1930s, montage operated as a modernist intervention into the realist narratives of classical
Hollywood cinema. The montages conflicted stylistically with the surrounding narratives and,
while superfluous, they could just as easily dispense with the rest of the film. Vorkapich’s
transitional sequences for The Conquerors (William A. Wellman, 1932) efficiently convey the
reversals of the Standish family and their banking empire. Vorkapich encapsulated decades of
economic change metaphorically through the depiction of mountains of money, stacks of
toppling coins, and other visual cues. Just as montage condensed time and space into a few

17

seconds of screen time, new technologies of travel and communication were shrinking a sense of
the world. Eventually, new media technologies and the ease with which media crossed global
boundaries resonated in montage’s later renaissance as a postmodern malleable form exploding
onto television and the Internet. Rather than restrict montage with a corset pulled taut by a film’s
larger narrative, cable television and the Internet freed the interludes, making montage the focus
rather than a transitional device. The result was the music video montage, a perfect form for
emphasizing tensions around race, sexuality, and class while obliterating the boundaries between
advertising and art.
Similar to the way Russian artists transformed their physical spaces with art and
propaganda, an explosion of screens, and windows embedded within screens, changes the way
we encounter art and advertising. Comparable to the Soviets, who designed montage editing to
elicit an intellectual response, the interplay of various screens engenders an intellectual response
as well. Examining montage across decades and through various case studies, I contend that an
archaic form that took shape in the 1920s and 1930s remains the most important tool in
understanding our contemporary visual culture. Montage is both an artistic practice and a
metaphor for understanding our interactions with media, which forces viewers to synthesize
fragments of information, oftentimes wildly unconnected, to make sense of the world around
them. This process of synthesis is akin to reading Montage of a Dream Deferred and
constructing a picture of the vitality and strength suffusing the inhabitants of mid-century
Harlem. As Langston Hughes describes in “Night Funeral In Harlem,” the fragments sometimes
coalesce to reveal the collision of the prosaic and the sacred in everyday life. Juxtaposing the
practical, financial side of a funeral, the money needed for the hearse, coffin, preacher, and
flowers, against the inviolable grief for the boy who died, Hughes writes,
“That boy that they was mournin’
Was so dear, so dear
To them folks that brought the flowers,
To that girl who paid the preacher man—
It was all their tears that made
That poor boy’s
Funeral grand.”
39

18

This poem elevates the reader out of the diegesis and into the realm of the sublime. As a form,
montage exposes tensions and raises questions about how those tensions are resolved. In order to
fully grasp the contemporary media landscape, I believe we have to delve into the ways we are
still “montage subconscious” and wrestle with how montage is our artistic way of life.

1
Langston Hughes, “Dream Boogie,” Langston Hughes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999),
169.
2
Hughes, “Movies,” Langston Hughes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 182.
3
Hughes, “Neon Signs,” Langston Hughes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 184.
4
Hughes, “Island,” Langston Hughes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 243.
5
David Chioni Moore, “Langston Hughes in Central Asia,” Steppe: A Central Asian Panorama,
Issue 2 (Summer 2007), accessed September 29, 2013, http://steppemagazine.com/articles
/langston-hughes-in-central-asia. See Figures for a photo of Langston Hughes in Soviet Central
Asia.
6
Oxford English Dictionary, 2
nd
ed., s.v. “juxtapose.”
7
Helen Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology, (New York, Bedford
Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 191-92.
8
David King, Russian Revolutionary Posters: From Civil War to Socialist Realism, From
Bolshevism to the end of Stalin (London: Tate Publishing, 2012). Gustav Klutsis was charged
with belonging to a fascist Latvian group and arrested, tortured, and shot along with sixty-three
other Latvian artists and intellectuals killed on the same day.
9
Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1989), 4.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Vladimir Mayakovsky, “Shrine or Factory?” in Soviet Commercial Design of the Twenties, ed.
trans. Mikhail Anikst (New York: Abbeville Press, 1987), 15.
13
Margarita Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina: Photography and Montage After
Constructivism (New York: International Center of Photography, 2009), 21. See Figures for one
of Gustav Klutsis’ agitational stands.
14
Ibid., 20.
15
Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing (Los Angeles: Silman-
James Press, 2001) 4.
16
David James. The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in
Los Angeles (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 72.
17
Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, 2
nd
ed. (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 498.
18
Bruce Posner, “Commentaries,” Disc 3, Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film
1894-1941 (Los Angeles, CA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2005) DVD.
19
Ibid.

19

20
Slavko Vorkapich, Slavko Vorkapich: O Pravom Filmu = On True Cinema, trans. Marko
Babac (Beograd: Fakultet dramskih umetnosti, 1998), 19.
21
Ibid.
22
Don Siegel, A Don Siegel Film: An Autobiography (New York: Faber & Faber, 1996), 56.
23
Ibid., 57.
24
Ibid., 56. In his autobiography, Don Siegel uses the word “stole” to describe his appropriation
of lined paper from Slavko Vorkapich.
25
Gabriella Oldham, First Cut: Conversations with Film Editors (Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1992), 3.
26
Ibid.
27
Edward Dmytryk, On Film Editing: An Introduction to the Art of Film Construction (London:
Focal Press, 1984), 20. Dmytryk writes, “cutters who use the flatbed are more inclined to cut
straight across, which leads to a ‘stop and start’ technique and sloppiness… However, in the final
stages of editing, especially when a and b tracks are used for sound overlaps, as well as for sound
and music editing, the flatbed is unbeatable.”
28
Ibid., 135.
29
Ibid.,135.
30
Ibid., 84.
31
Ibid., 136.
32
Tom McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution (Philadelphia: Running Press Book
Publishers, 1996), 72.
33
Ibid., 72. Viewers wrote in and the winner was flown to New York to attend a Journey concert
and visit with the band backstage.
34
Laurie Anderson’s video was made in opposition to what she thought about most music videos
on MTV: “Much of it is just boys playing guitar on the roof, boys playing guitar in the shower.”
35
Slavko Vorkapich, “A Fresh Look At the Dynamics of Film-Making,” The American Society
of Cinematographers (February 1972). Reprinted in The Motion Picture Division of the UCLA
Theatre Arts Department flyer for “The Visual Nature of the Film Medium,” Ten Lecture-
Seminars by Slavko Vorkapich. Box 1, “Biographical Information,” David Shepard Collection,
School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
36
Slavko Vorkapich, “The Meaning and Value of Montage” (21 September 1938). “Slavko
Vorkapich Articles,” Box 1, David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
Langston Hughes, “Night Funeral in Harlem,” Langston Hughes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1999), 225-27.

20

Chapter 2.
Colliding Forces in Film and Photo(montage) Sustain a Soviet Revolution

Introduction
Beyond serving as a starting point for a discussion of montage, the Soviet situation after
the ousting of the Russian monarchy in 1917 reveals how artists played a central role in
revolutionary circumstances. Faced with the reality of revolution and change, artists were called
on to support ideologically the victories experienced by the state politically and militarily.
Embedded within a State sanctioned industry, artists struggled with supply shortages and striking
a balance between appeasing cultural guardians of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
reaching a mass audience, and upholding the revolutionary imperative artistically. Experimenting
with photography and film, two populist mediums, artists fostered new aesthetic and
propagandistic impulses. An analysis of several photomontages and films exposes the rising
tensions between ideology and aesthetics in the political and industrial context of the Soviet
nation-state between 1917 and 1939.
1
Two images, along with the larger questions they raise,
serve as catalysts for this discussion, Gustav Klutsis’ photomontage, Electrification of the Entire
Country from 1920 and a still from Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera from 1929.
Although primarily attributed to men, each piece was conceived in collaboration with their
wives, the female artists Valentina Kulagina and Yelizaveta Svilova, respectively. Viewed
together, these images, one an example of Soviet photomontage and the other an example of
cinematographic Soviet Montage, portray a number of striking aesthetic similarities. Both are
invested in perpetuating the ideals of the Russian Revolution. Both images accomplish this
visually by exemplifying the social upheaval confronting Russians by radically transforming the
viewer’s sense of scale. In Klutsis’ photomontage, a giant Lenin strides forward, while in
Vertov’s film, a gigantic film camera towers over its human operator. But what do the images
convey about how art reflects and responds to revolutionary change? What kind of subject
positions do they sustain in a moment of cultural upheaval? Not only do they represent the
harnessing of populist mediums to political ends, they were also created under the watchful eye
of a government that inspected their “usefulness” to the revolutionary imperative and eventually
found them lacking.
2

The October Revolution of 1917 marks the formation of the Proletkult institution (the
Proletarian Cultural and Enlightenment Organizations) and serves as one bookend for an

21

investigation of the relationship between Soviet artists and the new government. With the
Bolshevik’s successful coup d’état, which wrested control of the country away from the Tsarist
regime, the nation-state was thrust into the industrialized society of the twentieth century. The
founding of the Proletkult was the manifestation of a government invested in art’s inclusion of
revolutionary ideologies. Despite a gradual tightening of state censorship from 1917 to 1932,
which culminated in Joseph Stalin’s decree espousing Socialist Realism, this period was
accompanied by the flourishing of aesthetically innovative photomontages and films. In
particular, Klutsis’ photomontages conveyed educational themes in visually exciting new ways,
and Soviet Montage films were praised for their distinction from the Hollywood and European
productions that dominated global commercial distribution at the time. An examination of
various photomontages by Klutsis in conjunction with Soviet Montage filmmakers Dziga Vertov,
Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Alexander Dovzhenko, and Alexander Pudovkin effectively
illustrates how each artist embodied the aesthetic, theoretical and ideological collisions at work
in the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This is not designed to erase the
differences between artistic mediums, but to place their phenomenal artistic work adjacent
visually to discern the similarities engendered within the nascent state.
In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, much of the country, and especially cultural
industries like the cinema, was in a state of disarray. Constrained by the strapped economy,
young filmmakers were forced to develop progressive ideological and technological approaches
to film while waiting for access to extravagantly expensive film stock. Printmaking, however,
was the perfect medium for avant-garde artists who embraced the Revolution and wanted to
portray its goals. Eddie Wolfram in History of Collage: An Anthology of Collage, Assemblage
and Event Structures portrays artists “decorating streets and public squares, proclaiming and
celebrating the Revolution, harnessing their visual skills to the propaganda machine of the
Bolshevik ideology.” The style of this ‘Agit-Prop’ art was determined by the Rosta, the Russian
wire service, which recognized the expediency of spreading news, information, and
revolutionary ideology through posters and street display.
3
Russian towns resembled three-
dimensional collages decorated with numerous propagandistic photomontages pasted up by
passionate artists.
One of these artists, Gustav Klutsis, was also a former member of Vladimir Il’ich Lenin’s
personal military guard. Politicized as a young man after his brother was arrested and exiled by

22

the Tsarists, Klutsis joined the Latvian Rifles and participated in the storming of the Winter
Palace in Saint Petersburg. As an artist, Klutsis tried to convey the Bolsheviks’ political goals
through the construction of iconic images designed for a mass audience. Margarita Tupitsyn
discusses the abstract painting Dynamic City in Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina:
Photography and Montage After Constructivism, the superb accompaniment to the International
Center of Photography’s exhibition on Klutsis and Kulagina. Tupitsyn describes, “Made on a
wooden board rather than on canvas, Dynamic City uses subdued coloring that results in
semitransparent planes, which project at various angles from a central flat circular shape, to form
a very rational, even cerebral, image of an abstract urban space. This very tangible work is not
merely an aesthetic exercise but a multidimensional conceptual model of the future communist
city.”
4
In his first Dynamic City, Klutsis envisions the urban and its transformation under
Communism. The second iteration of his piece Dynamic City, made in 1919, participates in what
art historian Yve-Alain Bois expresses as a “radical reversibility,” in that the four photographs of
construction workers disrupt “the spectator’s certainty and the usual viewing position.”
5
The
construction workers all face different directions and are arranged at various points around the
nonobjective space of a circle overlaid with geometric shapes. Interested in how photographs
would contrast with the gouache and cut-paper, Klutsis collaged photographs onto the paper’s
surface. The four photographs encourage the viewer to consider the image from all sides,
destabilizing a privileged viewpoint and instilling a sense of spatial reversibility. While The
Dynamic City is graphically vigorous, urging the masses to examine a situation from multiple
points of view would ultimately be discouraged under Stalin.
Between 1919 and 1922, Klutsis referenced architectural forms in his three-dimensional
constructions. These constructions were often made from wood and industrial materials, which
underlined their place as functional art. Klutsis’ ideological aesthetic is discernible in the gelatin
silver print Electrification of the Entire Country (1920). In this image, Lenin strides purposefully
in front of a model of constructivist architecture, holding metal scaffolding as he himself towers
over the small workers below. The reference to constructivist architecture and the three-
dimensional scaffolding suggests the influence of an artist like Vladimir Tatlin on Klutsis, while
this piece as a whole demonstrates the importance of Lenin as both an icon and a conceptual
influence on Klutsis. In 1924 Boris Eikhenbaum, in the magazine LEF, exalted Lenin’s use of
practical language and “for introducing aspects of the everyday, including crude words and

23

expressions into his writings.”
6
By utilizing everyday language, Lenin’s agitational writings were
overtly directed at the masses. Electrification of the Entire Country represents a similar impulse
as Klutsis moves away from complete abstraction and towards the implementation of
recognizable sociopolitical photographic representations. The poster, which was designed to
celebrate Lenin’s electrification plan at the Eighth Congress of Soviets on December 29, 1920,
emphasizes Lenin’s desire to transform Russia into a successful industrialized society.
7
Klutsis
abandons the radical reversibility of the second Dynamic City in favor of a more discernible
ideological content. He distorts the scale of the various photographs and drawings, making the
heroic Lenin the focal point visually in order to emphasize his importance as a leader politically.
As Tupitsyn points out, “Lenin here relies on the proletariat, who escort him into this utterly
modern space.”
8
The accoutrements of technology and architecture allude to the promise of
modernization invoked by the Bolshevik government. One year later, in 1921, Lenin would
implement his ambitious New Economic Policy (NEP) to alleviate the hardships facing the
countryside by providing peasants with access to the free market. Klutsis envisioned a new way
to motivate the proletariat with his diagrams for “agitational stands” in 1922. Beyond the stands,
which simply merged image and text, Klutsis recognized the potential of the cinematic image for
a successful productivist project. Upending the tradition of screening films in a darkened theater,
Klutsis designed a Screen-Tribune-Kiosk
9
with a screen mounted atop the structure intended for
assembly outdoors. Rather than project experimental films within a conventional theater, Klutsis
hoped to present cinema outside, thus breaking the static relationship between the screen and the
viewer. As in the two versions of Dynamic City, Klutsis experiments with space and disorients
the viewer’s experience of traversing the street as they encounter Screen-Tribune-Kiosk from
multiple vantage points.
Klutsis’ radical vision for consuming cinema
10
would have been perfect for the release of
Man with a Movie Camera: a Record on Celluloid in Three Reels by Dziga Vertov in 1929. The
film evokes the radical reversibility discernible in Klutsis’ The Dynamic City in various scenes
and furthers this notion of the “dynamic city” by presenting a symphony to the great cities of
Russia composited from scenes of Moscow, Kiev and Odessa. Vertov, working in conjunction
with his wife Elizaveta Svilova, pioneered some of the techniques of Soviet montage. In Man
with a Movie Camera, Vertov self-reflexively films his brother, Mikhail Kaufman, as a
documentarian shooting scenes for a film about the everyday life of the city. Vertov references

24

the artifice of filmmaking by juxtaposing both the cameraman capturing daily activities as well
as those activities themselves. In these instances, Vertov refers obliquely to himself.
Svilova captures the essence of a “dynamic city” with scenes made active through the use
of split screen and superimposition. The energetic pace of city life is effectively doubled when
Svilova, who was Vertov’s editor as well as his wife, takes a shot of a street full of pedestrians
and splices it together at a Dutch angle. The shot’s horizon line is tilted at an angle to the bottom
of the frame and the left and right halves of the frame are canted towards each other. This joining
of the same shot creates an optical illusion, which generates the feeling that the street is being
viewed through a kaleidoscope. Numerous shots of buildings and street scenes feature a shot of
the cameraman superimposed on top. At the end of the film, Svilova superimposes two shots of a
building, but this time she implements the canted angle film trick for ideological purposes. The
building is the Bolshoi Theater, a symbol of high art in Russia, which Vertov and Svilova
successfully implode within the diegesis of the film. This recalls one of Klutsis’ photomontages
for Children and Lenin, which “depicts a fragment of the country estate in Gorki where Lenin
spent most of his time after he was shot and became sick. But the artists have placed the smiling
leader on top of the roof, overturning the reality of Lenin’s incapacity in the years just before his
death” (Tupitsyn 20). Both Klutsis and Vertov assume a viewer familiar enough with specific
architectural spaces to comprehend the socio-political statements within their work. As in
Klutsis’ photomontages, Vertov is utilizing these moments to disrupt “the spectator’s certainty
and the usual viewing position” (Bois 174). At the same time, this disruption highlights the
film’s prescient subtext of cinema as a medium of manipulation.
Vertov alludes to the cameraman’s ability to influence film footage in the opening
sequence of Man with a Movie Camera. Similar to Electrification of the Entire Country, this
scene plays with a sense of scale; however, unlike Klutsis’ photomontage, the size of the human
camera operator is miniscule in comparison to the machine of the camera. The shot is dominated
by a large camera situated in the bottom three-quarters of the screen while the top quarter
features a cameraman who hurries into the frame with his camera and tripod and positions it
directly on top of the larger camera. The way he strides purposefully forward carrying his camera
resonates with the iconic image of Lenin bringing forth scaffolding and, symbolically,
technological progress. What is striking about Vertov’s film is how he constructs the camera as
iconic more so than any one political figure. Although Vertov does focus on images of Lenin

25

when documenting the Lenin Workers Club in Odessa, the shots of men playing chess and
checkers within this scene draws attention away from Lenin and towards the malleability of film.
By editing the scene so the film runs backwards, it appears the checkers and chess pieces are
careening around the board out of their own volition. Thus, the dynamism within this scene is
created through the application of trick cinematography. Because of Vertov’s decision to animate
the inanimate game pieces, the scene is energized through manipulation, which, in turn, depicts
the Lenin Workers Club as a vital and exciting place. The transference of exuberance to the
Lenin Workers Club is accomplished by Vertov’s expressive use of camera machinery and
Svetlova’s editing.
David Abelevich Kaufman, who adopted the pseudonym Dziga Vertov, onomatopoeic for
“whizzing top,” began his career in newsreels, reporting from the front lines of the civil war,
screening his work on Agit-trains and becoming the director of newsreels for Narkompros (the
People’s Commissariat of Education) in 1917. Throughout his career, Vertov developed a
cinema concerned with presenting “life caught unawares.”
11
“Montage was less a single
technique than the entire production process: choosing a subject, shooting footage, and
assembling the film all involved selection and combination of ‘cine-facts’.”
12
The editing serves
“as a form of framing, highlighting, starring, and above all… revealing the visible,” where the
visible are these “cine-facts.”
13
Vertov’s notion of the “cine-fact” demonstrates his belief in “the
social utility of documentary film.”
14
Even the text at the start of the film reinforces this belief; it
reads, “Film Presents an Experiment in the Presentation of Visible Events/A Page in the Diary of
a Cameraman/Language of Cinema based on the total Separation from the language of Theater
and Literature.” Through a series of expository sequences of a utopian city and its inhabitants
slowly waking and engaging in various activities such as work in an industrial plant and relaxing
by the seaside, Vertov demonstrates his notion of “life caught unawares” as the basis of
revolutionary cinema.
He achieves this by embedding an ideological subtext within the film. He chooses the
subject of industry to highlight the importance of the economic base and who controls it, and
then shoots footage of factories, machines, mines, smokestacks and dams. For Vertov, the
camera as kino-eye, which sees more perfectly than the human eye, must show movement to
capture the poetry of machines and engender revolutionary viewers. “In revealing the machine’s
soul, in causing the worker to love his workbench, the peasant his tractor, the engineer his engine

26

– we introduce creative joy into all mechanical labor, we bring people into closer kinship with
machines, we foster new people” (Vertov 8). Politically, the shots of industrial development
within the film are an explicit criticism of the NEP and an argument for the First Five-Year Plan,
which emphasized rapid industrialization and the curtailing of free enterprise. Vertov depicts the
overwhelming size and scale of a factory by showing the cameraman dwarfed by flames and
smoke during their visit. At the same time, Vertov is suggesting the identity and power of Russia
is defined by their industrial potential, which is greater than one man. The sparks, flames and
steam in the factory form a light background against which the men silhouetted in front are bold,
graphic shapes. This provides another link to Klutsis’ photomontages where graphic cutout
shapes often dominate a white background. When the cameraman is lifted above the giant dam,
the intercut shots of water rushing symbolize the flow of industrial production. When Vertov
focuses on the smokestacks, he also shows the worker stoking the fire, thus forging the
connection between industry and labor. These scenes and many others depict manual labor as
comprised of fast-paced action. Even female telephone-line operators and cigarette-box
constructers are part of the new industrial project as their rapid, repetitive switching of phone
lines and forming of cigarette packets echoes the manual labor in the mines and factories.
However, Vertov never loses sight of the aesthetics of Montage. Many of his shots within
the film represent a doubling whereby the action in the image, like a group of people in a moving
car, is simultaneously presented as the act of capturing the image by the cameraman shooting
from an adjacent car. At times Vertov further highlights this doubling, as when the women in the
car mimic the turning motion of the cameraman. This section further criticizes the NEP, where
they are shown as wealthy and with servants. Man with a Movie Camera is structured as “the
projection of a film whose subject is the construction and viewing of it,” hence what is real and
what is image is both different and comparable.”
15
Through the use of montage, shots collide
with other shots and the finished film is not only different from its documentary footage but also
“capable of seeing beyond it to something that for Vertov was more real and true than any
conventional (natural) view.”
16
Even in Vertov’s Kino-Pravda (Cinema Truth) films, which were
assembled entirely “out of photographic documents set in dynamic and rhythmic sequences,”
Vertov is creating propaganda, “glorifying the deeds of the new Soviet Union.”
17
Kino-Pravda’s
goal was to awaken the consciousness of the masses and unite their collective will to one goal –
the fight for Communism. Vertov’s formation of the Kino-Eye Group in 1922 and his emphatic

27

assertions that same year about the kino-eye in “WE: Variant of a Manifesto” further reflect his
desire to educate the masses through dynamic film compositions. He writes, “Hurrah for
dynamic geometry, the race of points, lines, planes, volumes.”
18
Conceptually, Vertov’s “WE”
manifesto resonates within Klutsis’ photomontages. Vertov, in defining his notion of “dynamic
geometry” and “dynamic sketch,” states, “Our path is from a dawdling citizen via the poetry of a
machine to a perfect electric man. A new man, freed from weight and clumsiness, with the exact
and light movements of a machine, will become a useful object of filming.”
19
Klutsis’
photomontages also embody the impression of “dynamic geometry,” especially through his
consistent use of strong diagonals like in the Herald of Labor illustration. The many instances of
extreme angles depicting objects below or objects above in Klutsis’ work are mirrored in
Vertov’s extreme angle camera shots gazing up and down.
Man with a Movie Camera perfectly characterizes Vertov’s theorizing in that it stresses
the stylized compositions, special effects, and experimentation with montage techniques possible
in film. Trains and buses stream out of their stations, creating conflicting lines of action during
the “Locomotion” sequence; streetcars flow through crowded city streets and yet, the human
element is always present. The life of the city is inseparable from the lives of the people filling
Vertov’s frame. In one propagandistic exposition, the series of close-ups on static machines
changes to a series of close-ups on kinetic machines once the human element is present. Vertov
even superimposes a close-up on a woman’s face with a shot of a lively machine. Without the
workers the machines are inert, but with them the shot is geometry in motion as different
mechanistic shapes turn, move, and whirl in a celebration of industrial production. Vertov also
attempts to situate Man with a Movie Camera within the concept of revolutionary production
through the construction of a parallel editing sequence, which contrasts the ideal, productive
Russian with the wasteful, bourgeois citizen. He juxtaposes severe close-ups of a woman’s
beauty regimen with shots of a peasant woman constructing a house. The primping provides a
stark contrast to the woman dabbing plaster onto an exterior wall. Later in this sequence, Vertov
intercuts a man shaving with a man sharpening an axe and a woman filing her nails with a shot
of Svilova filing film frames.
Vertov also utilizes parallel editing to emphasize the notion of film as intrinsically
connected to rhythmic movement. He depicts a horse galloping in one scene and children
smiling in the other, but then he freezes the frame so the shots resemble still photographs. These

28

stills are linked to the editing process when Vertov illustrates them as film negatives against a
light table, with Svilova examining and splicing negatives as she assemblies the film. By
interspersing shots of the editor at work with the stills of the horse and children, Vertov self-
referentially highlights the production of the film. Eventually, the two strands of action unite and
the viewer is presented with the same stills animated so that the horse gallops and the children
laugh and react to a magician. The stills, then, disrupt the rhythm of the film by stopping the
pace and forcing the viewer to contemplate the differences between photography and film. This
stoppage acts in the exact opposite way from the film’s finale, where rapid cutting creates shots
of shorter and shorter length. The editor works frantically, the cameraman is superimposed over
a crowd of people (which echoes the first shot of the film and recalls Klutsis’ penchant for
playing with scale and repetition), and the cuts are hurried. The increasing momentum
culminates in Vertov’s visualization of the kino-eye – a human eye superimposed over the
camera lens.
Vertov imbues his writing about film with a performative sensibility. Conveying a sense
of immediacy in “WE: Variant of a Manifesto” from 1922, Vertov emphatically calls for the
education of the masses through dynamic film compositions. “We call ourselves kinoks,” he
writes, as he plays with language, creating a neologism by playing “on the words kino (‘cinema’
or ‘film’) and oko, the latter an obsolescent and poetic word meaning ‘eye.’”
20
For Vertov, to
have an eye for film meant creating a Soviet cinema invested in movement. “We are cleansing
kinochestvo of foreign matter – of music, literature, and theater; we seek our own rhythm, one
lifted from nowhere else, and we find it in the movements of things,” exclaims Vertov as he
underscores his definition of revolutionary film.
21
A definition that brings to mind Jean Epstein’s
concept of photogénie especially when Vertov writes, “In revealing the machine’s soul, in
causing the worker to love his workbench, the peasant his tractor, the engineer his engine –
we introduce creative joy into all mechanical labor,
we bring people into closer kinship with machines,
we foster new people.”
22

The poetic prose of Vertov’s manifesto is inexorably linked to the sociopolitical situation
he faced as director of newsreels for Narkompros (the People’s Commissariat of Education). The
ideological subtext is apparent within Man with a Movie Camera. He chooses the subject of
industry to highlight the importance of the economic base. Scenes of manual labor are composed

29

of fast-paced action. Even female telephone line-operators and cigarette box constructers are part
of the new industrial project as their rapid, repetitive switching of phone lines and forming of
cigarette packets echoes the manual labor in the mines and factories. For Vertov, the camera as
kino-eye must show movement to capture the poetry of machines and engender revolutionary
viewers. Vertov depicts the overwhelming size and scale of a factory by showing the cameraman
dwarfed by flames and smoke during his visit. Simultaneously, he forges the connection between
industry and labor, suggesting the identity and power of the Soviet Union is defined by its
industrial potential, which is greater than one man. The sparks, flames, and steam in the factory
form a bright background against which the silhouetted men are bold, graphic shapes. Visually
this image recalls Klutsis’ photomontages where graphic cutout shapes stand out against a white
background, and it provides a visual link to the aesthetics of Eisenstein.
In contrast to Vertov’s rousing pronoun choice, Eisenstein’s “Montage of Attractions, An
Essay” adopts the tone of one professional artist writing for another. Both, however, are charged
with a sense of social responsibility, as Eisenstein underscores when he writes, “The basic
materials of the theater arise from the spectator himself – and from our guiding of the spectator
into a desired direction (or a desired mood), which is the main task of every functional theater
(agit, poster, health education, etc.).”
23
The essay points to a direction in Eisenstein’s work that
would not be realized until he started making films; however, it also suggests the power of art to
influence the spectator’s reactions. The essay originally appeared in the political magazine Lef in
1923 to promote Eisenstein’s production of Enough Simplicity in Every Wise Man.
24
While
Lenin’s NEP promoted private enterprise; it was a move away from the mass-oriented spirit of
the Revolution. “With this shift, formal innovations conceived for public space began to be
scaled down to suit the intimate formats of book and magazine design.”
25
The magazine Lef,
founded in 1923 by the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, established a broader venue for the
publication of avant-garde art.
26
NEP was also seen as procapitalist, sparking debate amongst the
leaders of the Party. Upon the death of Lenin in 1924, the less compromising elements within the
government quickly reined in all NEP activities.
The rise of Stalin forced avant-garde artists to question their role as revolutionaries
tasked with constructing political iconography. The Party under Stalin demanded iconographic
specificity; forcing artists to further embrace more figurative than abstract images. However,
Lenin’s death was the death of an icon and called for an immediate response. Klutsis dedicated

30

himself to creating photomontages about Lenin for Lef. These two series, Young Guard and
Herald of Labor, gained a popular foothold shortly after the Revolution by reaching a larger
audience. The Young Guard issue entitled “To Lenin” contains various photomontages vividly
depicting Lenin. Both Klutsis and Sergei Sen’kin, who also worked on the issue, included red,
black, and white shapes inspired by constructivist themes from artists such as El Lissitzky and
his Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge. However, Klutsis and Sen’kin, in their work, merged
this legacy of constructivism with political typography and iconography. In essence, their
photomontages “explicitly combined the propagandistic state agenda with the formalist
achievements of the avant-garde.”
27
In Klutsis’ RKP, the image of Lenin atop an agitational
grandstand is encircled by four tiny versions of Lenin. Surrounding the red diamond shape are
documentary photographs that depict demonstrating workers and members of the Communist
party. This image reflects another of Lenin’s oratorical devices, namely, his use of repetition and
parenthesis. The formalist critic Eikhenbaum noted Lenin’s use of repetition and parenthesis
“creates breaks and harmonies in rhythm and intonation… that energize the speech.”
28
Klutsis
echoes Lenin’s rhetoric by repeating the photographs but changing the scale of Lenin each time.
The small photographs divert the viewer’s attention from the central composition like Lenin’s
parenthetical comments redirected the listener. The repetition in the Herald of Labor illustration,
which reads, “The Rise of Labor Productivity Will Reinforce the Union Between Workers and
Peasants,” shows Klutsis’ use of repetition to destroy the flow of continuous composition. By
drawing attention to the disembodied hands bordering the image, Klutsis effectively highlights
the clasped hands of a worker and a peasant visually and symbolically. These photomontages
from Young Guard and Herald of Labor demonstrate the prominent use of political slogans in
visual representation.
One of the strangest series of photomontages created by Klutsis and Sen’kin is for the
book Children and Lenin by Il’ia Lin. Although these images also convey a desire to agitate the
audience to a political consciousness, they attempt this through depicting Lenin with Russian
children. In many of these images, Lenin is a benevolent father figure amidst adoring children.
However, the repetition of smiling children contrasts surreally with Lenin lying in state. Floating
above Lenin’s dead body is the disembodied head of a bawling baby. While there is no overt
narrative to the photomontage, the unhappy young children convey a feeling of utter depression
and loss. This dramatic image is followed by another amazing photomontage from Children and

31

Lenin depicting two Lenin heads connected by a diagonal racetrack populated by children
engaged in various sports. The image is accompanied by Lin’s text, “Cheerful, strong, on the
road of science and knowledge, running faster at the behest of Il’ich – toward communism.”
29

This image again characterizes Lenin as a father figure, but adds athletic achievement as a
metaphor for the realization of Communist ideals despite the absence of a corporeal Lenin. In
The Cinema as a Graphic Art, Vladimir Nilsen writes, “The greatest expression of dynamism is
achieved in those forms of diagonal composition of the movement in which the static
background is composed along the contrary diagonal.”
30
In Children and Lenin, the diagonal
movement within the frame conflicts with the vertical and horizontal axes of the frame.
The practice of placing images together in collage brings to mind Lev Kuleshov’s
description of the process of composition within film. In Film Technique, Vsevolod Pudovkin
describes how Kuleshov introduced him to the meaning of montage: “Kuleshov maintained that
the material in film work consists of pieces of film, and that the composition method is their
joining together in a particular creatively discovered order.”
31
Although Pudovkin and Eisenstein
later qualified Kuleshov’s definition of montage as simplistic, he was one of the first to theorize
the peculiar nature of film as an art. Another innovation credited to Kuleshov was the discovery
of what he called “creative geography.” Creative geography was Kuleshov’s term for a narrative
created from shots made at different times and in different locations. Besides being an elegant
principle applicable to film production, creative geography brings to mind Einstein’s theories of
relativity; specifically, it recalls the concept of space-time, which states space and time should be
considered together and in relation to each other. In 1920, Kuleshov performed an experiment
where he assembled scenes of a young man and woman walking towards each other, the young
man pointing, a large white building with a flight of steps, and the couple’s ascension of the
stairs. When Kuleshov projected the aforementioned scenes to an audience, the spectators
experienced the sequence as uninterrupted action, when in fact each of the scenes was shot in
different places! While the spectator perceived the sequence as a whole, the shots were taken at
radically different times and locations, including a shot of the White House. Pudovkin wrote of
Kuleshov’s experiment, “By the process of junction of pieces of celluloid appeared a new filmic
space without existence in reality.”
32
For Pudovkin, the creation of filmic space, as opposed to
spaces that existed in real life, was unique to film form and conceived in editing.

32

Both Pudovkin and Eisenstein were students of Kuleshov. “Unable to find enough
filmstock to fuel their projects, they turned to reediting films already made, and in the process
discovered a number of truths about the technique of film montage.”
33
One analogy Pudovkin
relied upon was between film and poetry, writing “To the film director each shot of the finished
film serves the same purpose as the word to the poet. Hesitating, selecting, rejecting, and taking
up again, he stands before the separate takes, and only by conscious artistic composition at this
stage are gradually pieced together the phrases of editing, the incidents and sequences, from
which emerges, step by step, the finished creation, the film.”
34
Only in relation to other shots
could a single shot be effective. For example, in The End of St. Petersburg (1927), Pudovkin
decided to represent war through the visualization of a “terrific explosion.”
35
He buried dynamite
underground and filmed the resulting blast, but he was unhappy with the “slow, lifeless
movement.”
36
Undeterred, Pudovkin edited an explosion together out of clouds of smoke, flashes
of a magnesium flare, and images of a river. In this sequence Pudovkin embarks on conscious
artistic composition in order to bring the visceral scene of the explosion to life. Also in The End
of St. Petersburg, Pudovkin demonstrated his use of associative editing. Early in their careers,
Kuleshov and Pudovkin created an experiment where they intercut images of an actor with
images of a dish of food, a dead man, and a beautiful woman. In each instance, the affect of
association made it appear as if the man’s expression as he looked at the three images had
changed. Kuleshov’s experiments with “creative geography” and montage-of-attraction illustrate
how separate shots linked together through editing evoked geographic and emotional truths
which in reality did not exist. In The End of St. Petersburg, Pudovkin intercut the shot of a titan
of industry on the phone with a statue of Peter the Great. Although this scene depends on prior
knowledge of the statue, Pudovkin thought it successful: “I claim that the resultant composition
is effective with a reality quite other than that produced by the posing of an actor, which nearly
always smacks of Theatre.”
37
In this quote, Pudovkin rewards himself with high praise – he
strongly desired to uncouple the medium from the theater. One way Pudovkin hoped to
accomplish this was in the realization of filmic acting. Pudovkin describes the problem he faced
in the scene from Mother (1926) where the Son receives word he will be set free the next day:
The problem was the expression, filmically, of his joy. The photographing of a face
lighting up with joy would have been flat and void of effect. I show, therefore, the
nervous play of his hands and a big close-up of the lower half of his face, the corners of

33

the smile. These shots I cut in with other and varied material – shots of a brook, swollen
with the rapid flow of spring, of the play of sunlight broken on the water, birds splashing
in the village pond, and finally a laughing child. By the junction of these components our
expression of ‘prisoner’s joy’ takes shape.
38

In this sequence, Pudovkin achieves filmic acting by intercutting the actor’s expression of joy
with scenes evocative of happiness.
For Pudovkin, symbolic images inspire intense emotions in the viewer. At the end of
Mother (1926), Pudovkin uses rhetorical montage to visually link the surging strikers advancing
to meet the cavalry with an ice floe breaking itself against the parapet of a bridge. It’s possible to
read the conceptual line within the association as symbolizing the inevitable destruction of the
strikers. However, the strikers are also a force of nature that cannot be stopped, like the ice floes.
Thus Pudovkin manipulates the material he has shot and printed on celluloid to convey not only
the tragic demise of Mother and Son, but also the inevitability of the Revolution. In Film
Technique and Film Acting, Pudovkin writes, “The elements of reality are fixed on these pieces;
by combining them in his selected sequence, shortening and lengthening them according to his
desire, the director builds up his own ‘filmic’ time and ‘filmic’ space. He does not adapt reality,
but uses it for the creation of a new reality, and the most characteristic and important aspect of
this process is that, in it, laws of space and time invariable and inescapable in work with actuality
become tractable and obedient. The film assembles from them a new reality proper only to
itself.”
39
Pudovkin was concerned with how film affects the observer, and he recognized
montage’s ability to transcend space and time. Through the selection and arrangement of
narrative details Pudovkin could guide the viewer’s attention and associations.
The desire to form a new reality onscreen through the use of associative and parallel
editing is also apparent in the films of Eisenstein, who, “as the prime theorist and practitioner of
Soviet Montage,” shared many similarities and also some fundamental differences with his
fellow filmmakers.
40
While Pudovkin theorized about linkage, Eisenstein adhered to a definition
of montage as collision. “Whereas Pudovkin had seen the techniques of montage as an aid to
narrative, Eisenstein reconstructed montage in opposition to straight narrative. If shot A and shot
B were to form an entirely new idea, C, then the audience had to become directly involved. It
was necessary that they work to understand the inherent meaning of the montage.”
41
The
implementation of parallel editing is visible in the work of both Vertov and Eisenstein; however,

34

whereas Vertov rejected Hollywood film as “cine-nicotine,” a drug that “dulled the viewer’s
awareness of social and political reality,” Eisenstein appreciated and drew upon editing
techniques from classical Hollywood cinema, including crosscutting, eyeline-match, and analytic
editing.
42
Specifically, D.W. Griffith, who innovated various properties of film language,
including camera mobility, inspired Eisenstein, various shot lengths (full, medium, close-up),
lighting for dramatic effect, and intercutting to develop narrative complexity. Eisenstein
extended Griffith’s intercutting of parallel action, where there is a break in the narrative and the
story shifts from one group of characters to another, into his own conception of montage. While
Vertov hoped to supplant Hollywood films with Russian Kinopravda, Eisenstein, as David
Bordwell has proposed, recognized he could “revise devices in ways that exploit possibilities
minimized by American filmmakers. Thus the match on action, normally overlapped only a little
in the Hollywood continuity system, becomes the prolonged overlapping we associate with
Eisenstein’s silent style. Eisenstein ‘refunctionalizes’ the received devices in order to fulfill a
new task: the creation of a perceptually, emotionally, and cognitively engaging ‘agitprop’
cinema.”
43
In the final sequence of his first feature Strike, for example, Eisenstein obliterates
conventional continuity to create a conceptual link between events. Eisenstein intercuts the
slaughter of a bull with the massacre of a crowd. The idea enjoining these two events must be
discovered mentally by the viewer’s awareness of a link between the two scenes of the spilling of
blood.
This “refunctionalizing” of devices to produce an emotionally engaging cinema is also
apparent in Battleship Potemkin, commissioned by the government in 1925 to celebrate the
twentieth anniversary of the 1905 uprising in the town of Odessa. Unlike the parallel editing of
Griffith where each shot is joined to the next in a consecutive, developmental logic, Eisenstein
transformed montage by making every shot subject to non-diegetic interventions, effectively
destroying the unity of the scene. Eisenstein fetishized canted angles in his paean to the
revolution of Soviet sailors rebelling against terrible conditions. However, by dividing montage
into fragments, every shot is free “to associate both within the motifs of the fiction and outside
the fiction to ideas.”
44

In his erudite essay Potemkin, Stanley Kauffman cogently explains why he considers
Eisenstein’s films visionary. The chicken and the egg argument as applied to Soviet Russia in the
1920s raises the question which came first, a new revolutionary state or a group of revolutionary

35

artists? Kauffman posits the state made geniuses of at least three filmmakers — Vsevolod
Pudovkin, Alexander Dovzhenko, and Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein.
45
While Kauffman
acknowledges the artistic frustrations that ultimately defined Eisenstein’s career, he also argues
“absolutely congruent with his bursting film energies was his fervor for the Communist
Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet state.”
46
To this end Eisenstein was invested in
creating a new kind of vision. Many filmmakers could tell the story of a ship’s crew taking a
stand against tyranny; Eisenstein captured the ideological insurrection on the Battleship
Potemkin in an aesthetically revolutionary way. Kauffman sees the film as indicative of the
influence of the Communist Manifesto on Eisenstein. Just as Marx and Engels believed man’s
consciousness “changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence,”
Eisenstein hoped to depict history, as it had never been shown before. Eisenstein portrays the
mutiny aboard the Potemkin and the townspeople’s sympathetic protest as it devolves into brutal
repression by the Tsar’s Cossacks. The impetus for the slaughter on the Odessa steps is the
mutiny over rations and the cruelty of the officers aboard the ship Potemkin. An officer shoots
Vakulinchuk, the leader of the mutiny, and his body “is fished out of the sea and lovingly taken
up into the arms of his shipmates.”
47
This act of lovingly picking up a body is repeated later
during the slaughter on the Odessa steps when a mother lifts her dead son. The scene resonates
because it uses the power of association to generate meaning, and these associations are distant
both in time and space. Like Klutsis’ photomontages and Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera,
the repetition of images allows them to resonate in their collision with other similar images.
Vakulinchuk and the dead boy are symbolically children of the Revolution; they gave their lives
in the 1905 revolt to stand as a testament to the October 1917 Revolution. Although Battleship
Potemkin is more akin to narrative filmmaking than the work of Vertov, it still reverberates with
a socio-political message.
The famous Odessa steps sequence shows Eisenstein’s ability to “refunctionalize” the
close-up by using it to extend time and intensify the viewer’s emotional involvement with the
film. For Eisenstein, the close-up is a powerful tool for conveying emotion, and cinema is made
vivacious and intense through its use. In Battleship Potemkin, the viewer’s eye is drawn to the
carefully framed wheels of the baby carriage teetering precariously at the top of the stairs. It is an
overwhelming emotional indicator and the audience concentrates, transfixed on the fate of that
carriage. The wheels, as they shift towards the precipice and then away, are unexpectedly

36

elevated to the utmost dramatic importance. In “From Theory of the Film: The Close-Up,” Bela
Balaz writes, “The greatest landslide is only the aggregate of the movements of single particles.
A multitude of close-ups can show us the very instant in which the general is transformed into
the particular” (314). Eisenstein constantly converts the general into the particular within the
Odessa steps sequence through the inclusion of close-ups, which narrow the focus from the
horrific general scene to the truly depraved particular storylines. The rifles are
anthropomorphized in their close-up. They are menacing and aggressive and steadfast in their
resolve to shoot all who stand in their way. Historical accuracy is an integral aspect of the
emotional weight of the film, and Eisenstein heightens the impact of his dramatized history by
crosscutting from the microphysiognomy of the old woman’s face to the terrible slaughter on the
Odessa steps. Her facial expression speaks volumes although she does not literally speak a word.
Isolated from its surroundings, this close-up focuses the audience’s attention on details. By
interweaving between three storylines, Eisenstein personalizes the ideological narrative in order
to intensify the emotional experience. The audience is emotionally tense as the Cossacks attack
three women and two children, innocents in need of protection. Although the audience’s
sympathy is aligned with the townspeople gathered on the Odessa Steps, psychologically the
audience is even more affected when the general tragedy becomes personal. Eisenstein creates a
psychological association between these intertwined scenes, reinforcing three times over the
notion of tragic, unnecessary slaughter. The individual storylines featuring women and children
heighten the viewer’s emotional experience with the film.
The Odessa steps sequence, as well as the movement of the sailboats across the screen,
links Eisenstein aesthetically to Klutsis and Vertov through its construction of graphic lines of
movement. This series of shots, like many of Eisenstein’s “rapid montage sequences, is built on
contrasting geometric patterns and dynamic diagonals.”
48
As the Cossacks march down the steps
from the upper left hand corner of the frame to the lower right hand corner, the mother of the
dead boy carries her son diagonally towards them up the steps. Thus Battleship Potemkin
contrasts with Klutsis’ unifying use of the diagonal. Instead, it presents dialectic between shots
that is emotionally evocative and carries political truths to the masses. For Eisenstein, the shot is
the basic unit of intellectual montage and, hence, filmmaking; alone and linked with other shots,
it is capable of dictating the audience’s emotions. Cinema is potentially revolutionary because it
can influence the masses to support political change. Another approach Eisenstein utilizes to

37

better evince change is through his casting of particular “types.” Actors were chosen not for a
complex individualized performance but because Eisenstein felt they fit their roles, they looked
right. This “typage” approach to casting suggests his early career in experimental theater and can
be seen in Klutsis’ photomontages, which depict character “types” designed to appeal to the
masses.
Klutsis was drawn to the technique of montaging photographs because it reminded him of
film composition. As in photomontage, “combining a multitude of frames into an integrated
work”
49
was a precept of film. Solidifying this connection were the covers Klutsis created for the
magazine Kino-Front. In 1926, Klutsis designed a series of potential covers for Kino-Front,
which included stills from Vertov’s One-Sixth of the World and Forward, Soviet! as well as
Eisenstein’s General Line, and Kuleshov’s By the Law. Klutsis’ use of these stills demonstrates
his interest in the theories of Soviet filmmakers. Since Kino-Front did not identify the films from
which the stills were drawn, Klutsis’ covers would pose a challenge to viewers who could only
discern the film by attending the theater. Margarita Tupitsyn writes that by embedding actual
filmstrips into his designs, “Klutsis suggested that filmmaking was not only an aesthetic
endeavor but also one endowed with physical experiences. The physical encompassed both the
management of equipment as well as a constant interaction with the people, objects, and sights
being filmed.” As Tupitsyn points out, this is exactly what Vertov accomplishes when he places
the cameraman in industrial sites. Furthermore, it recalls Eisenstein’s belief in “typage.” One can
imagine Eisenstein scouring his environs looking for exemplary faces capable of evoking
sympathy or revulsion in close-up. Rather than only professional actors, Battleship Potemkin is
populated by a furnace man to play the ship’s corrupt doctor and a gardener as the ship’s
unsympathetic priest. The impetus behind choosing these men for these roles was Eisenstein’s
belief that their striking faces could convey almost everything the viewer needed to know at first
glance.
In approaching Soviet montage as a transformation in filmmaking techniques,
Eisenstein recognized that “transformations of reigning norms often draw upon earlier devices,
often minor or subordinated ones” (“Eisenstein” 15). One of the ways in which Eisenstein
demonstrates an altered approach to filmmaking is through his reliance on the axial cut, also
known as the concertina cut. “This is a cut in or back straight along the lens axis” and it “became
a minor stylistic convention of Soviet montage cinema” (“Eisenstein” 16). In 1926, axial cuts

38

were mentioned in S. Timoshenko’s book on editing, which “labels axial cut-ins ‘concentration
cuts’ and the axial cut-backs ‘expansion cuts’” (“Eisenstein” 16). In 1929, Eisenstein’s essay
“Beyond the Shot” illustrates how Japanese artists use the frame to create a composition based in
reality, and also “presents a diagrammatic equivalent of axial cutting” (“Eisenstein” 16).
Eisenstein writes about a view of a lilac bush from his window as a child, “The branch was a
typical Japanese foreground… And so I was aware of the beauties of foreground composition
before I saw Hokusai or was entranced by Edgar Degas” (“Eisenstein” 18). The drawing of the
cherry blossom branch plays with the scale of the various embedded frames, “yielding ‘larger’ or
‘smaller’ views of the object. More important, the angle of viewing does not change,” all the
framings are located “on the same axis perpendicular to the object” (“Eisenstein” 16-7).
Eisenstein uses the concertina cut in Battleship Potemkin when Vakulinchuk rallies the sailors to
rebel. A sequence of shots jumps towards and away from the viewer as well as shifting left and
right, and yet each shot respects “a unitary axis linking picture and perceiver” (Bordwell 17).
Therefore, this cluster of shots linked by axial cuts constitutes a “montage-unit.” The concertina
cut is also visible in Man with a Movie Camera when the film suddenly cuts in on the father of
fascism shooting game. From one shot to the next, the cuts jump towards the target as the girls
take aim. Once they shoot the bottles, an edit makes it appear as if the bottles disappeared from
the box.
Alexander Dovzhenko also utilized the concertina cut to create striking montage units.
Dovzhenko was raised in the Ukraine, joined the Red Army during the civil war, and later served
as a diplomatic administrator in Berlin in the early 1920s.
50
Dovzhenko gained attention with his
1928 film Zvenigora, which thrust him into the limelight because of its distinctive, lyrical use of
the medium. His next film, Arsenal (1929), a powerful painterly film, recounts a Ukrainian folk
tale about the battle for Kiev during the Civil War. This battle is renowned for its six-day siege
where Bolsheviks defended Kiev’s munitions factory from the Tsarist “Whites.” The film
emphasizes the commitment of ordinary people in its treatment of the main character, but was
met with criticism over the lack of glorified Party leadership present. Instead, Dovzhenko chose
to build his story around a demobilized soldier, Timosh, who wants to become a plant worker.
Timosh is denied a job, insulted, called a deserter, and subsequently becomes a revolutionary.
The concertina cut is implemented by Dovzhenko to intensify moments of high tension in the
film. When the train conductor refuses to start the train to return the Ukrainian home, he is in a

39

medium close-up, which jumps forward three times to end up in an extreme close-up.
Dovzhenko also employs the concertina cut during the scene where the striking Bolshevik
worker stares straight-ahead, waiting to be shot. The most powerful concertina cut, however, is
the last scene of the film, in which the protagonist is symbolically impervious to bullets. The film
cuts in from the point-of-view of the audience and the “Whites” attempting to kill the
revolutionary. His invincibility suggests the inevitable success of the Revolution.
Arsenal also demonstrates the normalization of a second device within Soviet montage
films, namely, wide-angle depth composition. Wide-angle depth composition allowed
filmmakers to integrate various elements into one mise-en-scene, thus increasing tension by
filling the frame, creating a monumental effect, and producing grotesque distortions by altering
the viewer’s relation to the image. In Arsenal, for example, a shot of a farmer and his horse is set
against the wide-open space of the field he must sow. This wide-angle shot reinforces the
absence of a generation of young men, lost to the war. The old man and the horse are made
diminutive by the expansive shot. When Dovzhenko equates the farmer beating his horse to a
mother beating her children through parallel editing, the scene symbolically resonates with the
missing young men. The pain and tragedy of loss is also conveyed through a wide-angle
composition of a winter skyline. The silhouetted crows symbolize despair and death right before
the two sons return their brother’s dead body to their mother. Another arresting shot from
Arsenal captures an officer and a soldier backlit by a light sky, the officer’s gun leveled directly
at the soldier. The contrast between light and dark is reminiscent of the graphic cutouts of
Klutsis’ photomontages. In addition, Dovzhenko’s implementation of movement within the
frame recalls Klutsis and Vertov. In many ways, then, Arsenal emphasizes the shared aesthetics
visible in the work of Klutsis, Vertov, and Eisenstein. Dovzhenko shoots a train with canted
angles to create strong diagonal lines of movement. As the train proceeds from the lower left-
hand corner of the frame diagonally to the upper right-hand corner, the camera demonstrates a
radical spatial reversibility by jumping wildly from looking down on the train to looking up
towards it. Right before the train crashes, Dovzhenko focuses the audience’s attention on an
accordion player and his friend. When the train crashes, the tremendous loss of life is
exemplified by the symbolic destruction of the accordion, thus making a general sense of tragedy
specific and personal. The notion of radical reversibility is also discernible in the depiction of the
same shot from multiple angles; Dovzhenko makes a static sculpture dynamic through several

40

shots from different perspectives. In contrast to Vertov’s optimistic parallel editing to depict the
waking of the city, Arsenal portrays the strike by focusing on the machines as they stop turning.
Besides Arsenal, exaggerated foregrounds and steep perspectives are also used to great
effect in Man With a Movie Camera, Battleship Potemkin, October: Ten Days That Shook the
World (Eisenstein, 1928), and several of Klutsis’ photomontages, including a series for the front-
page of the newspaper Pravda.
51
While Joseph Stalin’s decree espousing Socialist Realism
marks the official rejection of avant-garde art in 1932, Klutsis and Kulagina were devoted to
pushing the boundaries of their art. Klutsis continued to incorporate surreal imagery in his
photomontages and Kulagina wrote in her diary, “I’ve come to a decision... To make a mass
picture using the new principles of montage. To unfold a wide panorama, show a big even in all
its details, a whole history, a whole symphony.”
52
At this time, Kulagina was working on the
Dneprostroi poster alley and pressuring Klutsis to do more in painting. She thought that the
poster and newspaper business produced ephemeral work, and the finished pieces were subject to
change at the whims of others.
53
Feeling as if Klutsis had given up painting for the agitational
needs of the state, Kulagina also worried about paper shortages and the politics behind any
artwork gaining approval from the editorial council of the state. Klutsis’ Pravda photomontages
of 1933 perpetuate the Stalin cult in their depiction of several recognizable “types,” including an
airman, a soldier, factory workers, and peasants mid-stride. These industrious proletarians stretch
back from the foreground creating a sense of depth. Towering above them is a large photograph
of Stalin against a bold red rectangle. Klutsis drew a white silhouette of Lenin’s profile behind
Stalin, forging the link between the two. Portraying imagery advocating Socialism and Stalin’s
cult of personality in just the right way was important because the posters had to be approved by
the Glavlit, the Russian censorship office. Kulagina describes the frustrating challenge Klutsis
faced with Glory to the Red Army of workers and peasants – loyal guard of Soviet borders! when
she writes, “I find such things outrageous - one moment it’s this and that is bad, and Stalin
doesn’t look like himself - and then all of a sudden all is well.”
54
Although the relationship
between Klutsis and Kulagina began with mutual respect for each other as artists, their marriage
was tempestuous – they were both involved in extramarital affairs.
55
Kulagina writes in her
diary, “Unless there’s a decree declaring that love is outmoded and liquidated ‘as a class,’
complications are inevitable even under socialism.”
56

41

The aesthetic and conceptual collisions between Soviet artists working within the
medium of photomontage and the Soviet Montage filmmakers is also defined by the actual
collision of bodies. Alexander Rodchenko, for example, designed film sets for Lev Kuleshov’s
1926 film The Lady Journalist. His sets were planned as a working newspaper office and
“furnished with the latest communications media similar to Rodchenko’s utopian kiosks of
1919.”
57
Soon after, Rodchenko began photographing individuals in the artistic milieu including
Kuleshov, Esfir Shub, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. In addition to being influenced by Kuleshov,
Rodchenko designed a film poster for Battleship Potemkin and a collection of Vertov’s shorts.
Theoretically, it was Vertov’s Kino-Pravda newsreels that
“served as Rodchenko’s own point of departure as a photographer rather than the
photographs of his predecessors and peers. Working on film titles for Kino-Pravda in
1922, he became interested in narrative sequences. From Vertov, he learned how a new
kind of narrative could be constructed from separate pieces of film, each comprising a
different visual relation to a subject. For Rodchenko, the sequence was the photographic
equivalent of Vertov’s new film grammar based on motion. Rodchenko’s commitment to
a sequential structure of representation was instrumental in his rejection of the traditional
conventions of painting as well as photographs that imitated those conventions.”
58

This sequential concept is visible in Rodchenko’s illustrations for Mayakovsky’s poem About It,
which encapsulate a mini-narrative visually. For example, one features a bold, graphic, diagonal
line filled with a cityscape view, which links a man and a woman. This piece is a reflection on
communication technologies, but fundamentally addresses miscommunication between lovers.
With his wife, Varvara Stepanova, Rodchenko “argued that the whole point of the new art in the
new society was to make it meaningful to the masses by harnessing it to fulfill practical needs”
(Wolfram 63). As a result they were anxious to apply the new aesthetic knowledge in magazines
with large circulations. Ideologically, Rodchenko believed it was possible to educate the masses
about a “Marxist utopia through graphic visual propaganda” (Wolfram 63). Rodchenko
adequately summed up the reason many artists turned to photography in their approach to collage
or documentary within their approach to film when he wrote, “Fidelity to fact and documentary
truth give the depiction a power to stir the viewer such as is simply not possible for painterly and
graphic techniques” (Wolfram 66).

42

The development of Russian photomontage and Russian filmic montage resonates with
the transformation of the political system of the Soviet Union, from the Revolution in 1917 to the
implementation of Socialist Realism as an official state-sponsored policy. Despite their
theoretical differences, all of the filmmakers discussed “saw in Montage the basis of
revolutionary films that would inspire audiences” (Bordwell 129). Early on, Lenin recognized
that film could be a didactic tool in the service of the new Soviet state for aligning the peasant
population with urban workers, leveling out their differences, and showing the benefits of
collectivism and socialism to a population that was mostly illiterate. The range of artistic and
technological practices that sprung up were all designed to challenge and appeal ideologically to
the audience. By colliding photomontage with examples of Soviet Montage and concurrent
theories of montage it is possible to begin to comprehend how the various aesthetic strategies
were harnessed for creating revolutionary propaganda. Ironically, Stalin subsequently attacked
many of these artists as elitist. Both movements faced increasingly severe criticism from Soviet
authorities, “who saw the need for a more glowing representation of life than this afforded,
which could be better achieved through the stylistic devices of Soviet realist figuration”
(Wolfram 66).
The introduction of sound in the 1930s posed new challenges for Soviet Montage, as it
was difficult to reconcile rapid visual editing with rapid sound editing in a decipherable manner.
However, Communist authorities were also increasingly negative about Soviet Montage because
they disagreed with the directors’ versions and visions of Communism and distrusted the
medium of film. Sound brought script and dialogue to the forefront of the censor’s attention as
censorship of words was easier than monitoring the abstract associations of intellectual montage.
At the same time, photomontage artists were attempting to divorce the conception of
photography from its association with the fine arts in Russia. Because of the reorganization of
the arts and the proliferation of Socialist Realism, artistic expression was potentially dangerous
and both photomontage and cinematographic montage artists had to be careful with their
dissemination of new ideological images. Soviet Montage film tactics were supposed to serve the
people, but the decision of whether they achieved these ends was left up to bureaucrats. In 1932,
Joseph Stalin’s decree “On the Reconstruction of Literary and Art Organizations,” officially
endorsed Socialist Realism over non-representative forms of art. The goal of Socialist Realism
was to glorify the life of the common worker, the factory worker, and the farmer, as well as

43

educate citizens on the goals of Communism. Avant-garde aesthetics, which dominated the
previous period, were often deemed difficult to interpret clearly and hence could not be used
effectively for state propaganda. The fear that avant-garde art created a space for disrupting the
overt meaning of the art and subverting the state’s censorship board resulted in a denouncing of
experimentalism, formalism, impressionism, and cubism as bourgeois, degenerate, and anti-
Communist. Those artists who veered away from the official party line were punished and many
artists felt incapable of expressing themselves freely. For example, the advent of sound inspired
Eisenstein to travel abroad and study various filmmaking techniques. When Eisenstein returned
to Russia in 1932 he was criticized as being “formalist,” a favorite term of abuse lobbed by
Stalin’s regime at directors who were more concerned with experimenting with film language
than speaking to the masses. Eisenstein’s 1938 trilogy Ivan the Terrible, unfinished at the time of
his death, was a Shakespearean drama about Ivan’s brutal rule and madness, but the film’s daring
critique of Stalin resulted in a re-edit and finally a ban. Vertov, whose his interest in capturing
everyday life would later influence cinéma vérité and Direct Cinema, was also later charged with
“formalism” by the Stalinist regime and relegated to editing newsreels. Eventually, the tightening
of Stalin’s iron fist dashed the aesthetic and ideological hopes of the Socialist experiment,
replacing them with an oppressive autocracy.

Conclusion
The ebullience many Soviet artists felt immediately after the revolution soured during the
Stalin era. Even as his films were cinematic champions of his beliefs, Eisenstein, like many other
artists, ran into trouble with Stalin’s regime as early as 1928 on his third feature film, October.
Eisenstein originally outlined Leon Trotsky’s role in the revolution of 1917 within the film, but
during the final stages of its completion Trotsky was branded a traitor and forced into exile.
Eisenstein chose to rework October along party lines and Stalin’s revisionist history. Eisenstein’s
later career was defined by aborted projects and artistic frustration, including his time in
Hollywood and Mexico in 1930, which yielded no finished films. Although he later taught at the
Institute of Cinematography in Moscow and avoided criticizing the state, he only produced six
completed films, one of which was “destroyed” by German bombs during WWII. In reality,
Bezhin Meadow (Eisenstein, 1937) was terminated by the Soviet government in 1938. With the
official rise of Socialist Realism, Vertov turned away from film direction, instead editing

44

newsreels for the state. Perhaps one of the bitterest endings was the secret assassination of
Gustav Klutsis at Moscow’s infamous Butovo prison. The man who had worked so tirelessly,
albeit oftentimes with surreal imagery, to perpetuate the cult of Stalin, was ultimately murdered
at Stalin’s behest. Valentina Kulagina tried for years to discover what had happened to her
husband. In her diary, Kulagina wrote, “We could have anticipated anything - illness, accident -
other things - but this never even occurred to us.”
59
Not until 1989 did the state admit what she
had known for so many years. In a sad twist of fate, the last photo Klutsis would pose for was a
mugshot at Butovo prison before his execution. He had embodied various roles for the
photographs he staged with Kulagina for inclusion in his propagandistic photomontages and yet,
the mugshot is perhaps the most fitting tribute to Stalin. Stripped of the accoutrements of labor
he often donned for his own photos, Klutsis stares into the camera, representing, one last time, all
Russians.

1
The October Revolution of 1917 as one bookend and 1939 as the other because it marks,
roughly, the end of “the Great Purge” implemented by Joseph Stalin and marked by repression
and executions.
2
Margarita Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina: Photography and Montage After
Constructivism (New York: International Center of Photography, 2009), 73. Gustav Klutsis was
arrested on January 17, 1938, following his designation as an enemy of the state during the Great
Purge. It was just months after returning from installing a photo panel for the Soviet Pavilion at
the Paris World’s Fair in 1937. He was accused of being part of a Latvian fascist-nationalist
organization called Prometheus and executed on February 11, 1938.
3
Eddie Wolfram, History of Collage: An Anthology of Collage, Assemblage and Event
Structures (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1976), 57.
4
Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina, 17.
5
Yve-Alain Bois, “El Lissitzky,” Art in America (1988), 174.
6
Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina, 10.
7
Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina, 19.
8
Ibid.
9
See Figures for one of Klutsis’ rendering of an agitational stands.
10
Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina, 38. A lack of funds stymied the realization
of any of Klutsis’ agitational stands.
11
David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson, Film History: An Introduction (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 2003), 129.
12
Ibid.
13
Sam Rohdie, Montage (New York: Manchester University Press, 2006), 82.

45

14
Bordwell and Thompson, Film History, 129.
15
Rohdie, Montage, 83.
16
Ibid.
17
Wolfram, History of Collage, 65.
18
Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, trans. Kevin
O’Brien (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 9.
19
Ibid., 11.
20
Ibid., 6.
21
Ibid., 7.
22
Ibid., 8.
23
Sergei Eisenstein and Jay Leyda, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory (Orlando: Harcourt Brace
and Company, 1947), 229.
24
Sergei Eisenstein and Jay Leyda, Film Form, xix. An aside inspired by David James: “What
as-yet-unfathomed ontological warp caused the figure” of Yeats to be invoked because of Leda
and the Swan and Miss Leda Swan to be the figure thanked in Jay Leyda’s Translator’s Note for
the “unstinting contribution of her knowledge of the Russian language”?
25
Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina, 20.
26
Ibid., 19.
27
Ibid., 17.
28
Ibid., 66. Boris Eikhenbaum quoted in Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina.
29
Margarita Tupitsyn, Matthew Drutt and Ulrich Pohlmann, El Lissitzky: Beyond the Abstract
Cabinet, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 20.
30
Vladimir Nilsen, The Cinema as a Graphic Art (London: Newnes Ltd., 1937), 109.
31
Vsevolod Pudovkin, Film Technique (London: George Newnes Limited, 1929), 138-139.
32
Ibid., 60-61.
33
James Monaco, How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2009), 401.
34
Pudovkin, Film Technique, XIV.
35
Ibid., XV-XVI.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid., XVI-XVII.
38
Ibid., XVII.
39
Vsevolod Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting, (London: Vision Press, 1968), 89-90.
40
David Bordwell, “Eisenstein, Socialist Realism, and the Charms of Mizanstsena,” Eisenstein
at One Hundred, eds. Albert J. LaValley and Barry P. Scherr, (New Jersey: Rutgers University
Press, 2001), 13.
41
Monaco, How To Read a Film, 403.
42
Bordwell, “Eisenstein, Socialist Realism, and the Charms of Mizanstsena,” 129.
43
Ibid., 15.
44
Rohdie, Montage, 41-42.
45
Stanley Kauffman, Ten Great Films, (Rhinebeck, N.Y.: Sheep Meadow Press, 2012) 17.
46
Ibid., 18.
47
Ibid., 31.

46

48
Vida T. Johnson, “Eisenstein and Tarkovsky: A Montage of Attractions,” Eisenstein at One
Hundred, Ed. by Albert J. LaValley and Barry P. Scherr (New Jersey, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 2001), 162.
49
Gustav Klutsis, “Fotomontazh kak novyi vid agitatsionnogo iskusstva” in Izofront: Klassovaia
bor’ba na fronte prostrantvennykh: Shornik statei ob’edineniia Oktiabr (Leningrad: Izofront,
1931), 119-33. Reprinted in Tupitsyn, Margarita, Matthew Drutt and Ulrich Pohlmann, El
Lissitzky: Beyond the Abstract Cabinet, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 38.
50
Bordwell, “Eisenstein, Socialist Realism, and the Charms of Mizanstsena,” 129.
51
Tupitsyn, Drutt, and Pohlmann, El Lissitzky, 119.
52
Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina, 201. This quote is from Valentina
Kulagina’s notebooks, Notebook #3, covering the dates December 20, 1929-July 10, 1932.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid., 216.
55
Ibid. Gustav Klutsis with Natalia Pinus and Valentina Kulagina with Boris Fedorovich Malkin.
56
Ibid., 205.
57
Victor Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitsky, Moholy-Nagy 1917-1946
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 98.
58
Ibid., 127.
59
Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina, 230.

47

Chapter 3.
Establishing The Parameters of American Montage:
Slavko Vorkapich and “Vorky Shots”

“The cinema is like a marvelously gifted child, whose parents exploit its genius for commercial
purposes… The youngster is ambitious. It craves to conquer a place among the older Arts.”
1

Introduction
Slavko Vorkapich, in his montages and theories, was an instance of a modernist drive for
medium specificity. It is fitting, then, that he brought montage into the industry and made it
forceful and visible as a form. While classical Hollywood cinema adhered to realism,
Vorkapich’s montage interludes represent modernist moments in a medium that resisted
modernism. His work in the studios illustrates formal experimentation taking place in the
American industrial setting of the 1930s. Vorkapich’s montage sequences, embedded in larger
realist narratives typical of classical Hollywood cinema, threaten to tear the realist mode asunder.
In form as well as content, montage demonstrates modernism puncturing the realism of classical
Hollywood cinema. Formally, montage juxtaposed imagery through hyper-kinetic edits and
superimposition. The content of Vorkapich’s montages enact the compression of time and space.
The narrative plods along until suddenly a succession of kinetic cuts implies the passage of time
or the condensation of space. The rallying of the villagers by Pancho Villa in Viva Villa (Jack
Conway, 1934), for example, would take an inordinate amount of diegetic time if told in a realist
manner. However, Vorkapich links a succession of shots of villagers taking up arms to give the
viewer a sense of simultaneous action. All across the country, men are preparing to fight. The
depiction of simultaneous activity heightens the excitement of the scene, capturing in a few
flashes what would be impossible to convey conventionally.
Ultimately, though, Vorkapich’s montage interludes serve as a starting point for the
examination of how modernist impulses were ultimately contained by the realist narratives
surrounding them. Once the montage ends, the narrative continues to plod along to its inevitable
resolution. The revolutionary impulses contained in Soviet montage would have to find their
expression outside of the industry, particularly in labor films. Operating as a counterpoint to the
industry, the films of the Workers Film and Photo League reverberated with the techniques of
Soviet montage. Made and controlled by a working class, these films were interested in
consciously applying the techniques of the Soviets to mobilize the masses. Rather than a desire

48

to foment the masses, what drew Vorkapich to Hollywood was a commitment to an artistic
revolution. Vorkapich, who firmly believed film was an art, wanted to develop a body of artistic
and theoretical work to articulate his ideas of filmic specificity. Vorkapich’s early theorizing
about film aligns with other modernists arguing forcefully for film specificity. He worried “the
cinema has been borrowing so much from the other arts, especially drama and literature, and it
has become so entangled in those uncinematic elements, that it will be very hard for it to get rid
of the bad habit and to come into its own.”
2
As David James discusses in The Most Typical
Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles, Vorkapich’s lectures to
the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) in 1926 were turned into short articles in the
trade magazine The Film Mercury and the ASC journal American Cinematographer. James
writes, “These articles of the mid-1920s argued a modernist theory of film specificity, proposing
that while the cinema was fully accomplished as an industry, it had yet to distinguish its intrinsic
and unique expressive resources from those of other mediums, and so it had yet to find itself as
an art.”
3
For Vorkapich, film’s possibilities lay in motion.
Akin to other early film theorists, Vorkapich saw filmic specificity as the means by
which film would be elevated to the status of painting, writing, and dramaturgy. In the
September 3, 1926 article, “Motion in Motion Pictures, Part Two” in The Film Mercury,
Vorkapich asked the reader, “Why should not the movies express certain human feelings,
thoughts, visions, dreams, etc., in their own particular way?”
4
His answer for what makes film
different is “pictures in motion or motion in pictures.” For Vorkapich, the uniquely cinematic
way of expressing things visually was in dynamic motion and rhythm. Every time he attended
the cinema he hoped to see images onscreen, which demonstrate that “the movie’s own particular
way of saying things is the way of motion: beautiful, expressive, significant, artistic.”
5
One
example he points to is slow motion. He describes how slow motion allows an actor like Douglas
Fairbanks to defy gravity. Fairbanks in slow motion appears weightless, untethered to the rules
of gravity. Vorkapich states, “Some slow motion pictures gave us something enjoyable that no
other art before could have given us” and proposes developing these motions into a whole
language of film.
6
Ultimately, Vorkapich asserts what he believes is a potentially revolutionary
idea, “the motion picture camera should represent not the physical, optical eye, but the inward,
THE MIND’S EYE, the eye with which we watch our dreams, our visions, the pictures on the
screen of our imagination.”
7
Rather than simply record things as they actually are, Vorkapich

49

advocated for inspired movement onscreen capable of swaying the audience by drawing the
viewer into the action emotionally and physically.
Vorkapich’s career in Hollywood reveals extant tensions between the studio system and
the individual. Vorkapich was the industry outsider when he made The Life and Death of 9413,
and Vorkapich remained marginalized even when he was inside the studio system. Vorkapich’s
sequences were highly stylized. While they epitomize the exhilaration of modernist filmic
experimentation, they often sit uneasily next to the larger realistic narrative. They are
anthologized as Vorkapich’s “greatest hits” on Unseen Cinema because they draw attention to
themselves. Vorkapich, in attempting to carve out a specialized niche for himself, was similar to
many immigrant artists who entered the studio system after World War I. Vorkapich’s vibrant
interludes established the parameters of montage in the American industrial setting and even
ushered in a short period in which montage directors were tenuously accepted as part of the
production process. However, each film Vorkapich worked on provides a clue as to why
montage departments were a fleeting part of the studio system. In part, montage directors were
doomed to fail in a system invested in invisible editing. By virtue of their difference in a studio
system that prized transparent editing, they were fated to be controversial. While Vorkapich
wanted recognition for his contributions and eventually received a “Montages by” credit, the
finished films did not include a subtitle alerting the viewer to the start and finish of his work.
Besides potentially making himself a “nuisance” by swiping footage from the editing
department, Vorkapich’s sequences were always at the mercy of the editor of the film. How and
when they were incorporated into the finished picture depended on the editor, director, and
producer. In Manhattan Melodrama (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934), for example, Vorkapich utilized a
series of static shots to capture the horror of a fire aboard a river steamer. The crowd of survivors
stare at the line of dead laid out in a neat row. This shot was later excised from the film because
it was deemed too melancholy.
8

An Emigré Artist Breaks into the Industry
Lured to Hollywood by a love of film, Vorkapich initially operated on the margins of the
industry. Vorkapich was born March 17, 1894
9
in Dobrinci, Serbia; an early photograph of
Vorkapich at age ten shows the budding artist with pencil poised above paper staring pensively
into the distance.
10
World War I made Vorkapich a refugee, and he travelled with the Serbian

50

army to Albania, Italy, and finally to France where he attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts to study
painting. As an art student in Paris, Vorkapich spent his free time at the cinema, falling in love
with the films of William Hart, Mack Sennett, Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith, Rex Ingram,
and Charlie Chaplin. Vorkapich’s fascination with the movies, which he called the “art of the
century,”
11
and an aspiration to work in Hollywood led him to immigrate to the United States in
1920. Vorkapich was “discovered” by the director Rex Ingram when Ingram noticed
Vorkapich’s sketched portrait of his wife, the actress Alice Terry, in the photography studio of
dance photographer Thomas Bouchard.
12
In Vorkapich’s recollection of this fortuitous meeting,
Vorkapich told Ingram he immigrated to Los Angeles for “the art of film” and Ingram’s response
was “Film is not an art, it’s an industry!”
13
Struck by the Yugoslavian expatriate, Ingram gave
Vorkapich his first work in the studios as an extra and assistant set designer on Prisoner of
Zenda (Rex Ingram, 1922). Ingram also cast Vorkapich as a drunken artist on Trifling Women
(Rex Ingram, 1922) and as Napoleon Bonaparte in Scaramouche (Rex Ingram, 1923).
14
In two
photos of Vorkapich in his costume for Scaramouche, the bicorne perched upon a chin-length
wig transforms Vorkapich into a believably supercilious Napoleon.
15
After a brief stint in
Hollywood from 1921-22, Vorkapich moved to Santa Barbara and opened up his own art studio.
Through his work as a portrait painter, Vorkapich earned enough money to buy a Devry camera
and a projector. His artwork and his Spanish Costume Dance Party were reviewed in a Santa
Barbara newspaper in 1922, but the thought of Hollywood and the Santa Barbara earthquake
shook Vorkapich back to Los Angeles in 1925.
16
Vorkapich’s burgeoning theories about film as
art, however, were unshakeable.
For Vorkapich, the uniquely filmic way of expressing things was in capturing the world
of motion. Rather than see film as an extension of other mediums, Vorkapich advocated the
creation of a dynamic visual language. For film to be art, one had to liberate the medium from
the confines of its ability to record an event, person, or performance. Vorkapich felt value should
stem from a uniquely filmic structure about the subject. As David James points out, Vorkapich
believed “Written language (as in intertitles) and still photography were already other mediums,
so film’s possibilities had to lie elsewhere, specifically in the production of motion.”
17

Vorkapich, in his lectures to the ASC that were published in 1926, describes the opening scenes
of F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924) as emblematic of film’s potential to capture motion.
For Vorkapich, Murnau achieved an artistic sense of organization from the natural movements

51

surrounding the life of a busy hotel. Murnau portrays the daily responsibilities of the Doorman
(Emil Jannings) in the bustling lobby of the Atlantic Hotel as guests whirl in and out of the
revolving doors. James quotes Vorkapich’s description of The Last Laugh’s opening scenes:
all these actions were composed into a real symphony of motions. It was not confusion.
There were five or six distinct motions excellently orchestrated. Optically speaking, the
movie patterns of black and white on the screen were pleasing and intriguing to the eye!
Mentally speaking, they gave a convincing picture of a hotel. It was throbbing with life
and artistically true.
18

In this quote, Vorkapich employs an analogy for filmmaking to which he would constantly
return, the act of musical composition as equivalent to constructing a film. In another ASC
lecture, Vorkapich even suggested the use of musical terminology in screenwriting, like
andantes, largos, lentos, and prestos.
19
Referencing a “symphony of motions” links Vorkapich to
other filmmakers, including Dudley Murphy, Fernand Leger, Man Ray, and Viking Eggeling,
engaged in the combination of film, music, and rhythm.
20
In 1930, in an article in the
Cinematographic Annual, Vorkapich writes, “A perfect motion picture would be comparable to a
symphony. It would have a definite rhythmical pattern, each of its movements would correspond
to the mood of the sequence and each individual phrase (scene) would be an organic part of the
whole.”
21
Vorkapich always dreamed of acting as conductor to compose a filmic symphony and
would realize this dream much later in life with his Moods of the Sea (1941).
The influence of German Expressionism was visible not just in Vorkapich’s work but in
Hollywood, in general. Tracing how Expressionism entered Hollywood, cameramen added
“UFA shots” to their jargon and practice during the silent era. “UFA shots” were lap-dissolves
frequently paired with superimposed camera effects made popular by European émigrés such as
Ernst Lubitsch, Ewald Andre Dupont, and Emil Jannings. The impact of Expressionism is
especially apparent in The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (1928), the experimental
short film Vorkapich created with the help of Robert Florey and Gregg Toland.
22
The film
depicts the subjective experience of an extra struggling to land a role in Hollywood. Florey,
Chaplin’s assistant at the time; Gregg Toland, a young cinematographer; and Vorkapich all
existed on the margins of the industry when they constructed the film’s unique structure. Marko
Babac, who compiled Vorkapich’s articles and essays into Slavko Vorkapich: On True Cinema,
maintains the number assigned to the extra, 9413, refers to the year Vorkapich was born (1894)

52

and the amount of money Vorkapich had when he arrived in America (thirteen dollars). The film
was cooked up on Vorkapich’s kitchen table out of miniatures comprised of cardboard collected
from cigar boxes and Vorkapich’s laundry boxes. Toland photographed the shots at night using
one 400-watt lamp and only two actors were used, Jules Raucort and Voya Georges, both friends
of Vorkapich.
23
The impressionistic short gathered momentum as soon as Florey screened it for
Chaplin. After the film gained traction around town, newspaper articles about “this little freak
movie” were as impressed with how the picture only cost $97 to make as they were at how
difficult it was to understand.
24
On the film notes for the DVD Avant-garde Experimental
Cinema of the 1920s and ‘30s, Elliott Stein characterizes the film as a critique of industrialized
society and especially Hollywood’s star system, predicated on absolute success or failure.
25
In
focusing on the life and tragic death of a Hollywood extra, Florey, Toland, and Vorkapich force
the viewer to consider the dehumanizing nature of mass media. The dizzying effect of shapes
merging and the repeated shot of 9413 emblazoned across the actor’s forehead suggest a
dystopian society where men become numbers to those in power. Only death and ascension to
heaven will erase the number and restore the man’s humanity. Stein connects the film to trends
in foreign cinema but ultimately sees it as distinctly American. He argues, “Although influenced
by German Expressionism, particularly Metropolis,
26
this seminal film’s irreverent humor and
Hollywood satire is American and found favor with Charles Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks.”
27

Chaplin even arranged private screenings at his home for other Hollywood luminaries
28
and
accompanied the film on the piano with George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”
29
At Chaplin’s
suggestion, Florey and Vorkapich considered renaming the film The Blues Rhapsody of
Hollywood.
30

Irreverence is an apt description of the film’s lambasting of the dream factory by three (at
that time) relatively unknown players. The film flippantly calls a Hollywood casting director
“Mr. Almighty” and equates the city to a monster with tentacles. The disrespect the film conveys
towards Hollywood must have resonated with Chaplin and Fairbanks, who often found
themselves at odds with the studios. In a column called Screenographs from February 1928,
author Harrison Carroll writes about the film, “In many respects, The Life and Death of 9413 is
the strangest film ever made. To begin with, it was photographed with an amateur camera in the
kitchen and bedroom of S. Vorkapitch, a Serbian artist, who collaborated with Florey on the
production.”
31
Vorkapich, displaying a wry sense of humor in his scrapbooks, drew a line in ink

53

from Carroll’s quote and wrote, “I get almost as much credit as my kitchen and bedroom.”
32

Eventually United Artists bought the film and exhibited it in conjunction with Sadie Thompson
(Raoul Walsh, 1928) as a one-and-a-half reeler called An Extra’s Nightmare. In the 1920s, the
new movie picture palaces often screened newsreels, comedies, and other shorts before the main
picture. Florey, Toland, and Vorkapich had made the film in 35mm with the hope that it would
find distribution. The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra helped all three of its creators,
who used it as a stepping-stone within the industry. Indicative of, as James mentions, “More or
less independent filmmakers in Hollywood who produced a variety of innovative ‘calling-card’
films, expecting that their experimentation would facilitate, not preclude, the commercial
distribution of their work and perhaps bring them contacts and contracts in the industry.”
33
The
film not only found commercial distribution but it also established connections for Florey,
Toland, and Vorkapich that would lead to commercial employment.
For example, the film’s judicious use of visual effects landed Vorkapich a contract at
Paramount in the Special Effects Department. David James writes of Paramount, “Before its
collapse into bankruptcy in 1935 and reorganization among more mainstream lines, Paramount,
where the Marx Brothers did their best work, was known for its ‘European’ orientation and for
providing a home to émigré Europeans.”
34
The studio hired Vorkapich for his special effects
knowledge, and it was at Paramount that Vorkapich began to shape Hollywood’s adoption of
montage as an aesthetic and narrative device. It was during his time at Paramount that Vorkapich
began considering how the laws of perception can shape an understanding of film as a visual
language. Called on to create a daydream sequence of a chorus-girl imagining herself as a big
star on Broadway, Vorkapich spent a long night in Paramount’s back lot setting up a dolly shot
to capture the actress traipsing dreamily along. He instructed the cinematographer to use low-key
lighting on the street. Happy with the shot, Vorkapich slept like a baby. Alas, the next day, the
dailies revealed the actress’s face “bobbing up and down like a lure in the Pacific.”
35
Vorkapich,
ignorant of the “perceptual principle of induced motion” of Gestalt psychology, had violated the
rules without knowing first how to observe them. The rule states, “If a stationary object is
surrounded by a moving background then the object appears as moving, and the background or
framework as stationary.”
36
In retrospect, Vorkapich realized by shooting a homogenous
background he negated the actress’s motion in ambient space. Instead, he should have shot the

54

lights of the surrounding marquees receding into the distance on both sides of the actress’s close-
up. Vorkapich felt viewers react bodily, kinesthetically, to visual change.
Around the same time Vorkapich started work at Paramount, Vorkapich’s work began to
resonate with Soviet montage filmmaking. This is especially evident in the montage sequence he
completed for Dorothy Arzner’s Manhattan Cocktail (1928). Although the film as a whole is
lost, Vorkapich’s montage sequence survived because Vorkapich kept prints of all his interludes.
Included on the third DVD, “Light Rhythms,” of the Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant
Garde Film 1894 – 1941 compilation, Vorkapich’s “Skyline Dance” anticipates Dziga Vertov
and Yelizaveta Svilova’s Man With a Movie Camera (1929). Vorkapich animates a scene of
Manhattan by playing the footage first forwards then backwards. This brings the birds-eye view
of the city street alive, making it seem as if the cars are jumping and jiving. Superimposed over
the city scene are nimble chorus girls in silhouette. The juxtaposition of the agile dancers and the
city street combines to present a vivacious view of Manhattan. In contrast to Vertov’s desire to
portray the benefits of electrification, industrialization, and labor by the working class,
Vorkapich enlivens the entire city in this brief sequence as a place for enjoying life through
dance. This is a theme Vorkapich would return to throughout his career and he would later
collaborate with the Jewish musicological archivist Corinne Chochem and the modern graphic
design pioneer Alvin Lustig on the 1948 book Jewish Holiday Dances.
37
Vorkapich’s arresting
photography paired with Lustig’s dynamic designs results in a joyous recreation of Jewish folk
dances.
Vorkapich’s exposure to Soviet cinema is apparent in an article he published in the
Cinematographic Annual of 1930, entitled “Cinematics: Some Principles Underlying Effective
Cinematography,” wherein he lays out the interrelationship between filmic motions and specific
emotions. Vorkapich writes, “The diagonal, dynamic motion suggests power, overcoming of
obstacles by force. A battle sequence may be made very effective by using short sharp diagonal
clashes of arms: flags, guns, bayonets, lances and swords cutting the screen diagonally, soldiers
running uphill, flashes of battle shot with slanting camera.”
38
This quote evokes Soviet cinema
with its dynamic, diagonal lines. Specifically, it brings to mind the clash of soldiers and citizens
in the Odessa Steps sequence. It also prefigures the battle sequences Vorkapich created at MGM
for The Firefly (Robert Z. Leonard, 1937). These sequences employ short sharp clashes with
guns, bayonets, swords, and soldiers running to lance across the screen diagonally. The energy of

55

the “Rebellion and War Montage” is indicated in Vorkapich’s script, which lists in staccato
succession the improvised weapons the Spaniards wield to attack the invading French army —
“rifles, pistols, swords, clubs, pitchforks, axes, knives and spears gathered from the corners of
their huts, shops, stables, and barns.”
39
Vorkapich’s affinity for battle scenes, however, began at
Paramount on The Vagabond King (Ludwig Berger, 1930).
Vorkapich matches excitement with affectation in the scene of beggars marching to battle
in The Vagabond King, for which he was not officially given credit. In his scrapbooks,
Vorkapich amended the April 1930 review of the film in The Film Spectator to express his
displeasure with the article’s description of the film. While the review calls Berger’s directing
“stiff and cumbersome” it acknowledges the “one brief moment in the march of the beggars to
battle outside the city’s walls he soared into a freedom and strength of expression that was
almost breathtaking.”
40
In his scrapbook, Vorkapich underlined this quote and wrote “SV!!!”
Faced with the dilemma of a collaborative medium, Vorkapich reconciled himself to editing the
review so it reflected his involvement. Ironically, on at least one occasion Vorkapich did not
receive screen credit even when Paramount was simultaneously touting his contributions to the
studio. In a publicity photo by the studio, Vorkapich is portrayed directing a scene for a montage
for the pre-Motion Picture Production Code Girls About Town (George Cukor, 1931). The photo
shows the film’s cinematographer, Ernest Haller, behind the camera and Vorkapich seated
nearby. Both men gaze intently at the actress Adrienne Ames as she dons a sheer stocking.
Ames, who played an uncredited party girl in the film, is presented as the object of desire. The
photo recreates on a small scale the voyeuristic system of commercial cinema with Ames, the
object of the male gaze, present only as a reflection in a mirror. The photo’s accompanying copy
reads, “Slavko Vorkapich is Paramount’s trick shot director. Some of his handiwork appears in
almost every Paramount picture for he is called in for all such work.”
41
Despite the claim that
Vorkapich had a hand “in almost every Paramount picture,” Vorkapich was uncredited on Girls
About Town.
This was partly because Vorkapich blurred the boundaries between creative and technical
workers. With the industrialization of the production process throughout the 1920s along Henry
Ford’s automobile assembly line came a concurrent segregation of creative and technical
workers. While Vorkapich was ostensibly one of the technical workers housed within the Special
Effects Department, the publicity photo shows him directing Haller, akin to a creative worker,

56

the Director. One montage of note in Girls About Town echoes German Expressionism as it
compresses time with quick edits set to the sounds of a party in full swing. Wanda (Kay Francis)
and Marie (Lilyan Tashman) are showing two out-of-town businessmen a good time but
privately complaining about it in the ladies powder room. When they return to their table, a shot
of a waiter pulling champagne out of an ice bucket dissolves into a montage of the table getting
drunk. The sequence recalls the Hotel Doorman’s inebriated state at his niece’s wedding in The
Last Laugh. Superimposed over a moving shot of champagne glasses on a table, corks pop,
champagne flows, bubbles explode, garish faces loom towards the viewer, and a tear runs slowly
down Marie’s face.
42
Throughout the 1930s, Vorkapich would work on three films directed by
George Cukor, What Price Hollywood (1932), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), and Romeo and
Juliet (1936). While Girls About Town echoes German Expressionism in its depiction of the
subjective experience of falling under the influence, Vorkapich’s work also drew on Soviet
montage film and theory.
Besides borrowing the aesthetics of German Expressionism, Vorkapich’s work reflected
the influence of Soviet montage filmmakers and especially Eisenstein. Like the Soviets,
Vorkapich felt strongly he was equal parts theorist and practitioner. Similar to Sergei Eisenstein,
Lev Kuleshov, and Dziga Vertov, Vorkapich strove to create uniquely filmic compositions that
resonated with symbolism. Like the Soviets, he was interested in producing an intellectual
response in the viewer and saw film’s true nature embodied in “composing visually, but in
time.”
43
From Soviet montage film and theory came Vorkapich’s ideas about an omnipresent
camera and analytical montage, the breaking down of an action or event into its component parts.
Unlike the Soviets, who theorized editing as the basis of filmmaking, Vorkapich believed film’s
possibilities lay in the production of motion. For Vorkapich, capturing the “world of motions”
44

combined with editing would result in a dynamic visual language. He stated, “Beautiful
photography is only surface embellishment, while cinematography is the gathering of visual-
dynamic-meaningful elements, which creative cutting combines into living entities.”
45
In this
quote Vorkapich emphasizes the effect of forces upon the motions of material bodies, forging a
direct link with Eisenstein and other Soviet Montage filmmakers. Despite a shared
acknowledgement of the importance of kinetics, the divergent cultural and political contexts
informing their work made other differences more profound. The Soviets designed films to
provoke thought and inspire direct action. Vorkapich’s interludes were dictated by the

57

parameters of the commissions he was given within the studio system. Employed predominantly
by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia, Vorkapich was called on to produce two kinds of
montage: the illustration of traumatic experiences in melodramas and the condensation of
narrative in various genres. Vorkapich examines tragic events with efficiency in the famine
sequence in The Good Earth and the battle scenes in The Firefly. The compression of narrative
transformed important events within the story, which could stretch decades, and squeezed them
into a spectacularly small amount of screen time. This is the case in Jeannette MacDonald’s rise
to fame in Maytime, the outbreak of revolution in Viva Villa, and Edward G. Robinson’s jail time
in The Last Gangster (Edward Ludwig, 1937). Whereas continuity cutting tries to be as
unobtrusive as possible to keep the audience from noticing it, effect cutting in montage draws
attention to itself. In order to cut a montage effectively, Vorkapich believed in shooting for it. He
said, “The filmic mind should really become an omnipresent mind, and it should try to visualize
all action from every possible angle.”
46
This is reminiscent of the radical reversibility apparent in
the work of Klutsis and Eisenstein.
Vorkapich was also drawn to Eisenstein’s ability to evoke emotion through editing.
Vorkapich explained,
Sometimes, in cutting, the movements are slightly overlapped, i.e., each new fragment
begins a little back of the point already reached by the preceding fragment; in other
words, in each new strip a small fraction of the preceding movement is repeated. Often
surprisingly beautiful effects result. A sort of rhythmical time-stretching occurs. There
are several striking instances of this effect in Eisenstein’s earlier films.
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In the sequence where the sailor breaks his plate, Eisenstein intensifies the action by observing
the event from multiple points of view. By linking multiple shots, Eisenstein creates one small
yet ideologically powerful moment. The sailor and the broken plate informed Vorkapich’s
depiction of the murder of the heroine Margo and the unleashing of the Furies in Crime without
Passion (1934). Vorkapich drew on Eisenstein’s method of capturing several points of view in
the creation of the montage sequence he was most proud of and, perhaps not coincidentally, was
produced outside of the studios by the independent Hecht-MacArthur Company. This is the
Vorkapich montage, above all others, which is more Soviet than American. “By making their
own selections of shots or designs and intercutting them in various ways students become aware
of a new purely filmic force: more or less intense visual impact that occurs at each cut.”
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Shooting an action with as many simple motions as possible and from a variety of angles is the
way to distinguish cinema from the simple act of recording. “This process is really a filmic
liberation of bits of dynamic visual energies, extracted from a simple event in reality. Each angle
is selected to take hold of a single clear visual note. None is intended for any individual display
as a ‘best shot’ in the picture, not any more than a note is intended to be the best in a melody. In
the recreation of the event in cutting, each filmic facet acquires value only by its place in the
total filmic structure.”
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Vorkapich wrestled with Eisenstein’s “Cinematography Principle and Ideogram” and its
assertions about how to build an intellectual film through editing. “Eisenstein’s invention would
not have any particular value, except decorative perhaps, if one would have first to learn by heart
a whole system of combinations, a whole new language in order to be able to understand
intellectual film.”
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Since Eisenstein wanted the connections to be understood by the viewer,
Vorkapich attempted to visualize practically how to apply Eisenstein. In thinking through the
associative possibilities between images, Vorkapich was clearly influenced by Eisenstein’s
connecting montage to Chinese ideograms. However, Vorkapich developed a uniquely American
way to capture this concept in his description of montage’s relationship to the American Indian.
In his “The Meaning and Value of Montage,” Vorkapich writes:
The principle of Montage is not new. It is as old as human expression, language, or art.
When an American Indian wants to tell another from a different tribe that he is happy he
makes signs for ‘Sunrise — in — the Heart.’ He puts together two apparently unrelated
images and lo! an expression visual and rich is born. A perfect Montage!”
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This quote evokes a picture of Vorkapich as the European immigrant besotted with an image of
the American West partly created by Hollywood pictures. The ideogram is a useful analogy for
considering superimposition as a technique. Superimposition forces the viewer to reconsider the
object onscreen. If an object on a table appears by itself, it retains its identity and natural
behavior. However, superimposing another object atop the first object changes both objects. The
two objects must now be defined in relation to each other. Vorkapich’s ruminations on how a
close-up shot disassociates an object from its context echoes Kuleshov’s editing experiments.
Vorkapich writes of an object in close-up, “It is thus more or less liberated and made available
for new combinations, both in respect of its visual values and of its meaning connotations.”
52

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Kuleshov demonstrated how the same close-up of a face could result in different meaning
connotations when juxtaposed with different objects.

Conquering RKO, 1932-34
The early 1930s saw Vorkapich crafting numerous montage interludes for various
studios. Slotted into a variety of film genres, what unites these montages is their quick edits, the
use of stock footage, and the desire to evoke a mood or theme in as little amount of time as
possible. Vorkapich was also utilizing “certain types of visual changes, namely: lap-dissolves,
fades, changes of focus, changes in iris, rhythmical cutting etc.”
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This coincided with
Vorkapich’s greater exposure to the optical printer, which produced a multitude of effects
including dissolves, fades, multiple images, split screens, slow motion, superimpositions, and
enlargements of parts of the frame to create close-ups. Vorkapich’s process before he started
constructing any montage involved first conveying his ideas in treatment form. Perhaps one of
the reasons Vorkapich initially thrived within the studio system is what attracted Rex Ingram’s
notice in the first place — Vorkapich’s ability to draw. Vorkapich would prepare to construct a
montage by first ascertaining the central idea to be conveyed and then figuring out how to
express it pictorially. At this stage, Vorkapich would draw detailed sketches of shots he wanted
to use. The equivalent of a look-book today, these sketches captured the montage visually before
Vorkapich even started work. Most importantly, the film’s producer could approve his montage
look-books.
Vorkapich’s skill at conveying his ideas in treatment form is displayed in his drawings
for the RKO film The Conquerors (William A. Wellman, 1932). The film, which encompasses
life in the Standish family from 1870 to the early 1930s, suggests that America comes back
stronger after periods of economic crisis. These black, orange, and white sketches expressed
strong diagonal lines of action, embodying Vorkapich’s ideas about creating motion in every
shot. Like the work of the Soviets, the drawings play with a sense of scale. In one drawing, a
man building a bridge appears gigantic and distorted when depicted from below. Vorkapich,
using exquisite detail, embodies a feeling of industry by pairing the man at work with busy
factory chimneystacks in the background. Another drawing foregrounds a test-tube beaker with
boiling water and bears a hand-written note to “dissolve from test tubes to factory chimneys.”
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The links between science and industry are foregrounded in another set of drawings emphasizing

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ingenuity as men at desks invent a steam engine. One finished montage sequence for The
Conquerors evokes Hans Richter’s work in the twenties. Vorkapich’s encapsulation of the Great
Depression contained motifs similar to the prologue for Inflation (Hans Richter, 1928).
Vorkapich depicted chimneys smoking, the busy stock exchange, happy faces, growing stacks of
coins, and finally, distraught faces. To capture the manic prosperity right before the Depression
of 1873, Vorkapich used a reverse action shot of the coins. First, he constructed a brass tube and
leaned it against the coins. When the brass tube was removed, the coins fell backward. Next,
Vorkapich shot the sequence in slow motion and finally, reversed the footage in the optical
printer. The resulting image has a magical quality as the coins fly exultantly onto the pile higher
and higher.
Vorkapich’s time at RKO coincided with David O. Selznick’s tenure as Head of
Production. Although Vorkapich thought of himself as a Selznick protégé, he referred to
Selznick as “a dictator on the whole” when it came to overseeing RKO’s productions.
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For The
Conquerors, Selznick assigned Vorkapich a montage sequence which called for the expression
of “Prosperity and Depression” in the year 1888.
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In recounting the process, Vorkapich
describes being “left alone,” which fits with a specialized division of labor within the classical
studio system. Vorkapich would first write and sketch a treatment for the producer to see what he
intended. Vorkapich explained how Selznick gave him the freedom to direct the stars, set up
camera angles, and suggest the lighting.
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Simultaneously, Vorkapich admitted he couldn’t touch
anything because he was non-union.
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Revealing the tensions between the individual and a
collaborative working environment, Vorkapich takes credit for the overall look of the montage
(lighting, shot selection, direction, and editing) at the same time that he explains he couldn’t
actually touch anything on set because he was non-union. Vorkapich clearly saw himself in
contrast to the technical workers who helped enact his vision. Eventually, the merging of
symbolism and spectacle in The Conquerors attracted attention from a reviewer in Variety, who
singled out Vorkapich’s work: “Best efforts are the symbolistic connecting sequences conceived
and directed by Slavko Vorkapich. Slavish technician has done some pip stuff that will please the
arty critics and average audiences alike.”
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Although Vorkapich’s “pip stuff” earned him a credit for “transitional effects” on The
Conquerors, his work on Turn Back the Clock (Edgar Selwyn, 1933) was once again uncredited.
However, Vorkapich’s treatment alone for “Effects for the Anesthetic Transition” in the film

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befits a descent into anesthesia. Despite its rather droll title, the treatment recalls Surrealistic
dream sequences in its experimental visualization of Joe’s (Lee Tracy) subjective trip. The
treatment visualizes time as viscous in order to capture Joe’s gradual loss of consciousness.
Vorkapich recommends opening up the montage with an Eyemo close-up of Joe on an operating
table. Slowly a shot of a pool of mercury should be superimposed over the image. As drops of
mercury fall into the pool of liquid, centrifugal ripples radiate outward. Vorkapich writes,
“Heavy fumes float across in slow motion while at the same time dizzily revolving whirlpools
zoom up from the corners of the screen. Every angle is shot off balance and all sense of direction
and up and down is lost. Drops change into large steel balls that fall and bounce off in slow
motion. Balls change into heavy drumsticks beating large drums.”
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Vorkapich’s dedication to
rhythm and symbolism is conjured by the beating drums denoting the patient’s slowing
heartbeat. Unfortunately, the only aspect of this psychedelic sequence that ended up in the film
was the drop of mercury rippling the surface to suggest Joe slipping under the ether.

Unleashing a Symphony of Motions in 1934
A dream turned nightmare is the feeling evoked by the unleashing of the Furies sequence
in Crime Without Passion, which Vorkapich completed for the independent Hecht-MacArthur
film shot at the Paramount Studios in Astoria, Long Island. Of all of Vorkapich’s inventive
montage sequences, this one best encapsulates his theories of dynamic motion. The sublime
sequence is a symphony of movement and music exploring the theme of alienation in a morally
bereft urban landscape. Vorkapich’s agents had sent him to New York at the behest of Ben
Hecht, who was told he would make a fantastic editor.
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Vorkapich was adamantly against
editing the entire film but amenable to Hecht’s suggestion that they do something together. After
Vorkapich described his work on other montages, Hecht gave him the theme of “furies flying
over New York and laughing at human passion.”
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Although he was constrained by a budget,
Vorkapich had a free hand to create whatever he wanted and later felt it was the best thing he
ever accomplished.
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Vorkapich discusses the Furies sequence in “The Meaning and Value of
Montage,” where he expounds on how montage “could become a true filmic form of
expression.”
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Vorkapich describes, “mounting, assembling, putting together” as montage’s
general meaning but expands on this definition in articulating montage’s special meaning:

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Putting together two or more images, one next to another, one after another or one on top
of (superimposed on) another to depict an event, to suggest a lapse of time, to convey an
idea, to arouse an emotion, to express a state of mind, to create a mood or ‘atmosphere.’
This mounting of images, besides being expressive, must possess a certain visual
rhythm.
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Vorkapich was interested in montage because through juxtaposition he could transcend the literal
meanings of two shots to create poetic images. A successful montage sequence builds on the
concerns of the poet – tempo, rhythm, visual change, and imagery – and adds the specifically
filmic principle of movement. These elements are highlighted in Vorkapich’s montage sequence
for Crime without Passion, in which Vorkapich builds tempo and rhythm to a powerful climax.
The sequence starts with an open and terrified eye, which recalls the eye awaiting
disfigurement as well as the visual disassociation of images in Un Chien d’Andalou (Louis
Bunuel, 1929). Through a dissolve, Vorkapich moves from a frozen frame close-up of Margo’s
eye opened wide in fear to the revolver pointed at her. The graphic match from the circular shape
of the iris to the barrel of the revolver establishes a disembodied eye staring at death. The link
between the two shots is purely visual and thus different from Eisenstein’s conceptual
combination of slaughter shots in Strike. However, Vorkapich does employ the visually poetic
graphic match to heighten the intensity of the interlude. The gun barrel places the terrified eye in
context – the viewer is jarringly inserted into a horrific tableaux. Margo’s eye twitches in close-
up and alternating black and white frames convey the bullet’s explosion. Vorkapich cuts to
Margo’s eyes wincing in pain and then cuts to an out of focus shot of smoke leaving the gun and
a man’s blurry figure silhouetted against an open doorway. The out-of-focus shot puts the viewer
in the emotionally intense subjectivity of the woman about to be killed. As Margo falls in slow
motion to the floor, Vorkapich stretches time slightly and imbues the shot with importance.
Vorkapich writes, “Sometimes, in cutting the movements are slightly overlapped, i.e., each new
fragment begins a little back of the point already reached by the preceding fragment... Often
surprisingly beautiful effects result. A sort of rhythmical time-stretching occurs.”
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Vorkapich
emphasizes a drop of blood hitting the floor and suddenly, Margo becomes one of the vengeful
Furies. In the space of a few drops of blood, Margo is transformed from murder victim to a
powerful force. Vorkapich superimposes an ethereal woman over the dark blood, emphasizing
the moment she leaps into the air, ecstatic with rage, by repeating her ascent multiple times. The

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subjective aerial shots as the Fury careens over the city are interspersed with quick cuts of a
knife slashing downwards and another Fury taking flight from a drop of blood. The three Furies
take to the skies over the city, their translucent dresses waving gracefully as they wreak havoc on
the relationships of unfaithful men and women. The striking image of the stunning yet dreadful
Furies in white set against a black background imagines the women as a force of Nature. Like a
reversed white on black Rorschach, they resemble flames or comets or giant killer butterflies
trapped in the moment of metamorphosis, too close to the chrysalis stage to be truly beautiful.
In the September 1937 Bulletin of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
Vorkapich described how he created the special effects in the montage. To achieve the effect of
the Furies coming up through the air toward the camera, Vorkapich first tried to suspend the
actresses on wires. When that failed, Vorkapich engineered a practical effect to create the
illusion of movement. He placed the camera on a boom and a black swath of velvet on the floor.
The actresses were placed on a velvet-covered platform a few feet above the floor. The actresses
were shot stationary from above, and the camera moved downwards past them.
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In the
sequence, the Furies appear to be flying towards the camera. In order to depict the Furies
floating, Vorkapich shot the actresses with a wind machine and the camera above them, and then
superimposed the shot onto a moving background to convey the impression of motion.
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The
money piling up was a reverse motion.
The destruction and death that accompanies the Furies is symbolized near the end by
Vorkapich’s equation of the face of the Fury with a skeleton laughing. This shot is linked to the
film’s narrative as falling glass forms the words “crime without passion.” Vorkapich describes
the technical problems he had shooting the glass breaking sequence in a 1938 lecture at
Columbia University. Vorkapich’s effects man was worried the actress would get hurt if she
broke the window with her hand. However, remembering Eisenstein’s plate breaking sequence,
Vorkapich knew he could achieve the sequence by linking several shots in the cutting. He filmed
the actress hitting toward the camera in one shot, a pane of glass broken with a piece of iron in
the next shot, and a pane of glass hitting the pavement in the third. Vorkapich felt the end result
was better than had they done it in one shot, for together the three shots capture “the breaking of
the window much more vividly.”
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In his insightful, dense section on Vorkapich, James writes of
the relationship between Vorkapich’s Furies and the film it was embedded in:

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As decorative embellishments of the fates of the characters that the diegesis recounts in
detail, they are dependent, subordinate, and narratively superfluous. On the other hand,
they are the narrative’s condensed essence, its thematic and affective core. Though the
narrative could dispense with them, they could equally well dispense with the narrative.
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This is exactly what has happened in the case of “The Furies.” It has not only been extracted
from the diegesis of Crime without Passion and uploaded to YouTube, but it is also included on
Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894 – 1941, released by Image
Entertainment. On the DVD, Bruce Posner’s film notes state “Vorkapich had complete creative
freedom in writing, designing, directing and editing his montage sequences for feature films.”
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Despite the leeway afforded Vorkapich to shoot montage sequences with his own crew, it did not
eliminate the constraints he ultimately felt imposed on his work by the studio system. One
problem Vorkapich constantly faced was getting montage budgets approved by the producer. He
always faced an argument over how much money he would be allocated; eventually, he felt Rex
Ingram was right that film is a business because of the consternation surrounding whether or not
a film would make its money back. Even when Vorkapich was pleased with his finished
montage, the versions he submitted were often altered before they were incorporated into the
picture. Often the producer and director were unsatisfied with the length of the montage. After
previewing the interlude, Vorkapich would hear a chorus of “it’s too long.” Either Vorkapich
was forced to reduce the montage in length or he would discover it had been shortened once he
saw the finished film.

Wreaking Montage Mayhem at MGM, 1934-1939
Achieving credit was paramount to Vorkapich when he began work at Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer. Upon arriving, Vorkapich advocated for credit titles as a Montage Director and
established the Montage Department in the days of Irving Thalberg. Housed in Bungalow 9 on
the MGM lot,
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Vorkapich’s responsibilities for completing a montage from start to finish
included sketching potential shots for a treatment, writing a script from his sketches, constructing
the sets, shooting the setups, making a chart for the optical printer, and editing. Throughout the
entire process, Vorkapich would confer with the film’s producer. While he worked with his own
crew, Vorkapich sometimes encountered a director who wanted to physically direct the star even
during the montage filming.
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In such instances, Vorkapich acted like a consultant suggesting

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how the shots would fit into the montage sequence. Even with his own crew, Vorkapich needed
approval from the director or producer; with sketches in hand; Vorkapich could get an ok to
shoot from the producer, who would estimate the cost. Over the course of his career within the
studios, Vorkapich thrived when the producer encouraged his vision. Otherwise, his work within
the montage department was seen as not just separate from the editing departments of
Paramount, RKO, MGM, and Warner Bros. but even a nuisance. Harold Kress, the editor on The
Good Earth, described Vorkapich as an interloping troublemaker during the production, saying,
“They thought they were running the whole show. They did background for main titles, time
montages. I don’t know.”
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Kress’s dismissal reflects both the self-aggrandizement regularly
occurring within Hollywood and the lack of a working relationship between the editing
departments and the montage departments. Instead, in an industry with a highly specialized
division of labor, each department guarded their part of the process.
The multiple treatments Vorkapich wrote out for the effects sequences in the David O.
Selznick production Dancing Lady (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933), which starred Clark Gable and
Joan Crawford, showcase the repertoire of filmic devices he hoped to utilize. In the “Cuban
Sequence,” for example, Vorkapich’s script calls for composite shots, panning shots, close-ups,
and dissolves. Vorkapich heightens the intensity of a gambling montage with a “fast montage” of
“Hands shuffling cards. Cards being dealt. Hands shaking dice. Dice rolling on felt. Fortune
wheel revolving. Roulette. Hands placing coins and chips on numbers. Chuck-a-luck cage
turning.”
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This staccato description arouses the excitement of a gambling floor and brings to
mind the analogy of musical composition, which Vorkapich often used to describe filmmaking.
For Vorkapich, motion created in editing was akin to the creation of music. Motion created in
editing is used to great effect in the association of imbibing alcohol and feeling light-headed in
Dancing Lady. The “Analytical Montage of Rumba Dance” ends when Tod’s Grandmother
coquettishly drinks a glass of champagne and “The screen explodes into millions of bubbles.”
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This silly effect reflects a playful side of Vorkapich, who usually comes across as pedantic in his
practice and writing. Vorkapich also completed a script for Janie (Crawford) chasing Patch
(Gable) through New York traffic and a “Rhythm of the Day” dramatic recitation sequence for
Dancing Lady.
Vorkapich once recounted an anecdote about MGM’s Head of Production, Irving
Thalberg, which exposes the tenuous position Vorkapich found himself in artistically within the

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studio. On Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor, 1936), Vorkapich found himself arguing with
Cukor about an effect he wanted to execute. Thalberg quickly terminated the argument by telling
Cukor, “Let him do it. We can always cut it out.”
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Vorkapich had to set the stage for love
visually with the threat of the cutting room floor looming over him. In a roundabout way,
though, Thalberg acted as Vorkapich’s advocate on set. One of the montage sequences from
Romeo and Juliet shows Vorkapich’s desire to convey mood through imagery. In the plague
sequence in Romeo and Juliet, Vorkapich used a red filter to get a dream-like fantastic effect.
Vorkapich links a succession of evocative shots — a starlit sky, a superimposed stream with light
dancing on its surface, rose bushes, the lessening of shadows as dawn breaks, and a lark, the bird
of love. The juxtaposition of these shots establishes an atmosphere of romance. On a lark, at a
1938 lecture to Columbia students, Vorkapich exposed the artifice of filmmaking with an avian
anecdote. Vorkapich recalled they had hired a bird wrangler to get the shots of the lark, but on
set, the bird would not come out of his cage. While the bird wrangler cajoled his errant actor, the
blackbirds circling overhead heard it chirping and came down to investigate. This is how
Vorkapich came to pull a fast one on The New Yorker – their critic specifically noted the film’s
lark, never knowing it was actually a shot of an inquisitive blackbird.
The mythologization of Vorkapich as lone genius that Posner suggests on Unseen
Cinema is tempered by David James’ analysis of the contributions of Gustav Machaty and Karl
Freund on The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937). James highlights collaborative working
conditions, complicating the desire to easily assign authorship. The tricky business of parsing
Vorkapich’s contributions to a picture are exemplified by a close look at the epic 1937 film The
Good Earth, which Thalberg developed at MGM over the course of six years. The intricacies
surrounding the creation of The Good Earth brings to mind the emotional and physical trials
facing the Chinese peasant Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan in Pearl S. Buck’s 1932 Pulitzer
Prize winning novel. Just as locusts and loss plagued Wang and O-Lan, the film’s fate was
jeopardized by the suicide of George Hill and death of Irving G. Thalberg. Originally, his
Scheherazade, Kate Corbaley, brought Buck’s novel to the attention of Louis B. Mayer.
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George
Hill, initially given the project to direct, shot footage in China while MGM researchers sent back
props of period Chinese furnishings to the studio. Upon Hill’s suicide, the project languished for
two years until Sidney Franklin took the helm. Although Thalberg and associate producer Albert
Lewin originally envisioned the project shooting entirely in China, they later had 500 acres in

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Chatsworth, California plowed, terraced, and transformed into Chinese farmland. The size and
scale of these sets are captured in a two-page spread from the January 18, 1937 issue of Life
Magazine. Paul Muni and Luise Rainer in yellowface played Wang and O-Lan, and Rainer’s
performance as the long-suffering wife was recognized by the Academy in 1937. Although
Rainer had fewer lines than the average supporting performance, she relied on facial expressions
and body language to become the first actor to win two Oscars back-to-back for The Great
Ziegfeld (Robert Z. Leonard, 1936) and The Good Earth. Like the book it was based on, the film
adaptation depicts Wang Lung’s journey from farmer to prosperous lord over the course of
decades. As a result, the film necessitated exciting montages to compress time and illustrate the
challenges posed by farming, famine and war. As David James argues, Vorkapich’s work on The
Good Earth is powerful inasmuch as fits the vision of several talented artists who worked on the
film, including cinematographer Karl Freund, composer Herbert Stothart,
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and editor Basil
Wrangell.
In addition, Vorkapich only completed the famine and exodus montages for The Good
Earth. The film is an unusual example of classical Hollywood cinema because its stylistics are
more aligned with Soviet montage. The famine and exodus montages for which Vorkapich was
responsible stand out for their use of symbolism. Vorkapich wrote his own treatments for his
montages, but the two montages by Wrangell in the film are alluded to in the screenplay by
Talbot Jennings, Tess Slesinger, and Claudine West, which outlines what these transitional
moments should convey. While all the montages are designed to condense narrative, they also
express the major themes of the film. The couple’s industriousness is highlighted in a
straightforward montage towards the start of the film. The screenplay reads “The summer of
1903. Over music which suggests the slow, persistent rhythm of workers, a Montage unfolds the
changing seasons, from spring blossoms into thickening summer leaves, from young wheat into
maturing grain, with sun and rain and drifting wood smoke.”
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Following this is a description of
a series of shots all separated by dissolves: a scene of Wang guiding his ox and plough, O-Lan
struggling under the weight of water buckets, Wang weeding in his field, O-Lan in the rain. This
sequence in the script outlines eight dissolves designed to convey the passing of the seasons. In
the film, the montage captures the passing of time and highlights the young couple toiling over
their land. The physical labor endured by Wang and O-Lan is conveyed through shots of them
carrying heavy water buckets, milling the grain, washing and mending wet clothes, hoeing the

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field, and planting the rice. Interspersed are close-ups of their stoic faces. Other close-ups
emphasize the primitive tools they wield — a rough-hewn plough, a wooden wheel turned
manually. Through the use of a variety of shots, the montage stays visually interesting and even
pauses for a contemplative moment when O-Lan considers her reflection in the water.
The integral role of a successful crop in their lives is further emphasized in the opening of
Part Three, where the script reads, “An AUTUMN MONTAGE of falling leaves, sun and rain
fades in, and then in WANG’S COURTYARD are seen WANG and O-LAN beating out with
flails their grain upon the threshing floor which is also the dooryard to the house. Faces, hands,
bare feet are visible in flashes as the rhythmic, persistent beating continues over music.” This
montage description highlights how important the crop is in their lives and alludes to a desire for
a rhythmic cutting style. In the finished montage, quick scenes feature Wang and O-Lan beating
the wheat against the slats, winnowing the grain, pouring wheat onto mats, their son playing in
the grain, and a close-up of the silver coins they have earned from the wheat. These scenes
dissolve into a New Year’s Day celebration in Wang’s house where the family’s current state of
prosperity is denoted through the different kinds of food laid out around the house. When Wang
and O-Lan experience the Chinese New Year on their way to the Great House, the rapid pace of
the editing and repetition of imagery suggests the link to Soviet montage. The script reads “the
streets are crowded with people making holiday. Well-dressed children are setting off
firecrackers. Jolly, smiling young men pass, calling greetings, carrying emblems of the New
Year.” In the film, this scene begins with a string of fireworks smoking and spitting, a dragon’s
face whirling, strips of paper blowing in the breeze, lanterns swinging wildly, a man in a white
mask shown three times, fireworks exploding, smiling faces, shots of villagers, old men and
young girls watching a puppet man make two puppets fight each other, a dragon racing at the
camera. As the dragon passes the camera, Wang and O-Lan walk across the frame. It is easy to
imagine this montage was constituted out of recycled bits of film. The dragon shot is repeated
three different times and it transitions the film seamlessly out of the montage. The shots of the
masked man call attention to his repeated action but in a medium close-up to a close-up. Twice
he turns away from the camera with his masked head and shoulders and then finally there’s just a
shot of his head flung backwards. The paper lanterns filmed from below evoke the masked man’s
point-of-view, as if he had thrown his head back to look at the lanterns. There is energy and

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movement in this scene. The excitement of the Chinese New Year is conjured through the energy
and movement of the villagers and the dragon, especially as it speeds towards the camera.
As famine befalls Wang’s village, another montage shows various scenes of impending
doom separated by dissolves. The moat is barely filled with water, the young rice is shriveled
and dead in the cracked earth, the muddy water no relief for the parched earth, and villagers are
caught trying to steal the ox. The tools that felt useful in the first montage are now stuck in the
cracked dry earth, the wheat shriveled and dead, the ox digging in the one patch of mud in the
caked earth, hands tossing mud into a barrel, a vulture eating a dead dog. Wang and O-Lan
struggle with the buckets of mud; they talk for a bit, and then stop the villagers from stealing the
ox. They debate killing the ox, which has been humanized throughout the film. The devastation
wrought by the famine forces the Lung family to flee the countryside. Encapsulating the family’s
exodus south is a montage of the family leaving their land and traveling with other refugees.
Several ominous shots heighten the emotional intensity. Shots of dead bodies, grandpa is
flagging, a son pushing on his dead mother, a hand buried in the dirt, shots of marching feet, a
skeleton in the dirt, vultures lingering overhead, and a mass of people barely putting one foot in
front of the other. This interlude reinforces the divide between the country and the city. The train
frightens the family, who are unfamiliar with modern technology. Riding atop the boxcar, they
see the countryside flash by. Bringing to mind Vorkapich’s quote about the dream-like quality of
film shot from a moving train, the shots fly by in a blur of villages, rickshaws, and people. The
montage compresses space as Wang’s family quickly passes from the countryside to the city.
Several shots reinforce how the overpopulated city is impersonal and fast-paced in contrast with
village life. The exodus montage reflects how causality in The Good Earth is impersonal; the
exodus from the North is the result of natural causes, drought and famine, and the threat at the
end of the film is locusts. Vorkapich’s exodus montage also recalls Lev Kuleshov’s experiments
linking together shots made at divergent times and places to create meaning. During the family’s
journey out of the countryside, Vorkapich intersperses the strenuous march with stock footage.
By cutting away to this footage, Vorkapich elevates the extent of the fictional tragedy by
equating it with documentary footage. When the film focuses on life in the city, history is
obscured; the factions fighting disrupt the experiences of Wang and O-Lan without providing
any political context. This impersonal causality is quickly subsumed and O-Lan’s psychological

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motivations take over; she risks her life to potentially save her family by grabbing the bag of
jewels.
Fresh off The Good Earth, Vorkapich began editing the destructive battle sequence for
The Firefly (Robert Z. Leonard, 1937) with the intention of creating a montage of sound and
image.
81
Initially, Vorkapich borrowed the sound of lightning and thunder from a giant storm
from the sequence he had already created for The Good Earth. When he screened the montage
interlude, he found the effect of the battle paired with the sound of the storm evocative.
Unfortunately, the producers were less entranced, telling the frustrated Vorkapich, “This is a
musical, we have to use music.”
82
The Unseen Cinema collection allows the viewer to compare
Vorkapich’s personal copy of the “Battle of Vitoria” montage with the version included in the
final release version of The Firefly.
83
Both versions feature flags blowing in the wind, juxtaposed
with animals, then men running towards outstretched bayonets. The soldiers’ deaths are evoked
through a skeleton head rushing toward the men. This trick shot was filmed upside down along
with a shot of a wreath descending onto a sword. The two set-ups were shot upside down and the
film was turned on its end to reverse the action. This reversal makes it look like the wreath or the
skull is flying towards the camera.
84
Lightning strikes as the two forces meet and devolve into
hand-to-hand combat, horses charge forward. A canon explodes and men go rolling down a hill
as Vitoria on the mountain is destroyed. To close out the sequence a flag descends over the body
of a dead soldier lying next to the eagle from the top of the flag. Vorkapich’s finished montage
expresses thought and emotion by means of image and motion. The imagistic power is toned
down in the release version, which eliminated the skeleton head as well as the poetic close-up of
the broken flag next to the soldier.
An article entitled “Montage Marches In” by Ed Gibbons in the October 1937 issue of the
International Photographer exemplified a broader awareness of the role montage played within
the production process. Gibbons maintains, “a middle course is being drawn between the
banalities of formula picture making and the devious mysticisms of the ‘cinema art form’
fraternity, so that montage already has assumed a practical and essential role in Hollywood
production.”
85
Touting Vorkapich as achieving a compromise between “bread-and-butter and
high blown theory,” Gibbons surmises, “Vorkapich began advocating montage and sold it so
well, that today he enjoys the confidence of the top executives and creators at one of the
principal organizations in the industry; and today he and others with a similar bent are gradually

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establishing for montage a definite bracket in the Hollywood formulae.”
86
What Hollywood
agrees on, according to the article, is montage’s ability to solve story limitations by
“compressing an over-abundance of story action into the limits of a picture.” Budget restrictions
are also solved by a judicious use of montage, especially in the depiction of battles, parties, riots,
sports events, and similar scenes. “Montage today is used to prevent either the producer’s money
or the audience’s time from being wasted. It is geared to the modern tempo. It is as terse, factual
and to the point as today’s crisp journalism.” Vorkapich “gathers scenes, pictures of objects or
action, or whatever he believes will convey the impression, obtains the negatives, superimposes
and arranges them until the effect is a mixture of scenes dissolving into each other, one coming
over the other, unusual and telling effects.” Around the same time as this article, Vorkapich
worked on a torture sequence for The Last Gangster (Edward Ludwig, 1937). There is a sheet
containing Projection Room Notes including “Suggested Scenes for Mr. Vorkapich to Shoot for
Torture Sequence” with an instruction from J.J. Cohn to get a shot of Edward G. Robinson being
hit in the face “because of his reply in admiration to the kid’s taking the torture.”
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In the late 1930s, Vorkapich was aware of the main criticism leveled at montage — that it
was all camera tricks with no substantive value. While Vorkapich agreed montage availed itself
of the optical techniques of film at the time — lap dissolves, fades, rack focus, double exposures,
slow-motion, reverse action — he argued for their visually expressive possibilities in service of
conveying a mood or theme, or enlivening the larger story. He asked, “Who would accuse a
musical composer of trickery for using all the possibilities of his instruments to best express his
themes?”
88
Vorkapich believed the techniques “are tricks only when they are used for their own
sake,” but does caution against this sort of trickery. “To obtain motion it is not always necessary
to put the camera on a truck, an elevator, or a trapeze and to swing it around all the time in a
meaningless fashion.”
89
Instead, the special techniques of cinema should be implemented to
intensify the expression of a scene and its mood. He then distinguished between surface
embellishments and creative cutting of “visual-dynamic-meaningful elements.”
90
Despite
Vorkapich’s segregation from the editing departments within the studios, his entry into The
Society of Motion Picture Film Editors suggests the industry, at least, saw him akin to an editor.
On January 13, 1938, Vorkapich received a welcome letter from the Secretary, Edward Dmytryk,
who closed with “We sincerely hope that your membership in this Society will help to form a
sincere bond of understanding between the editor and the producer.”
91
Ironically, Vorkapich

72

often found himself at odds with, producers arguing over how his montages should be integrated
into the finished film.
92

The Maytime (Robert Z. Leonard, 1937) montage encapsulating Marcia Monay’s
(Jeanette MacDonald) rise to fame garnered Vorkapich attention in the trade press for his skill at
squeezing a decade of long arias into one brief arietta. Vorkapich proudly transformed a time
lapse of ten years of Monay’s travels across Europe with her mentor Nicolai Nazaroff (John
Barrymore) into 350 feet of film.
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Vorkapich achieved this by linking momentary glimpses of
piano practice, ticking metronomes, opera appearances, cheering crowds, and Monay’s arrival in
America. Filming MacDonald’s rise to fame montage for Maytime was difficult for Vorkapich
because MacDonald would only allow her cameraman
94
to shoot her. Orson Welles was so
enamored with this sequence that he paid homage to it in Citizen Kane (1941).
95
When planning
out effects, Vorkapich would rely on the man who worked with the optical printer to expose the
film according to Vorkapich’s charts. Vorkapich marked out dissolves, wipes, superimpositions,
and split-screens corresponding to each foot of film.
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Although he made no final decisions over music or sound, Vorkapich strongly believed in
the union of impressionistic sound and images. While at MGM Vorkapich often worked with
musical director Herbert Stothart, planning abbreviated compilations that harmonized with the
montage sequence. In April of 1938, Vorkapich worked on the war montage from the Shopworn
Angel (H.C. Potter, 1938), which presents Bill’s (James Stewart) naïveté and idealism in stark
contrast to the scenes of war exploding around him. In his treatment for the war montage,
Vorkapich indicates he will utilize stock shots for the impressions of trench warfare. For his
“Suggestion for the Birth of the Revolution Montage” in MGM’s Marie Antoinette (W.S. Van
Dyke, 1938) Vorkapich follows a conventional narrative of the French Revolution gathering
steam. Rather than creating conceptual links between visual images as Eisenstein accomplished,
Vorkapich sticks to exemplary events in the condensation of time between the birth of Marie
Antoinette and Robespierre penning “liberty, equality, fraternity.”
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Vorkapich’s treatment for
the montage of the building of Boys Town (Norman Taurog, 1938) includes a description of
“Flashes of effect headlines showing the press supporting Father Flanagan’s campaign for
financial help to build Boys Town.”
98
Vorkapich’s use of found footage is alluded to in a
directive reading, “For the second part of the MONTAGE (boys at work and play) we shall try to
cut the trailer material shot on location before we decide to shoot additional scenes.”
99

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Vorkapich’s ability to compress time stands out in the treatment he wrote for the “Road
Show Montage” from Sweethearts (W.S. Van Dyke, 1938) with Jeannette MacDonald as Gwen
Marlowe and Nelson Eddy as Ernest Lane. The two lovers have just parted ways when
Vorkapich’s montage illustrates their hearts torn asunder. Publicity posters and photographs of
the two are ripped apart before Vorkapich depicts two trains pulling in to different locations. The
trains travel through different countryside indicating the two lovers taking different paths at
lightening speeds. The montage condenses story time as it depicts Gwen and Ernest forming new
couples and performing in cities across America. The interlude exemplifies how Vorkapich
wanted to make every shot dynamic through motion. He repeatedly returns to shots of trains
traversing the country and moving shots of cities passing by. Extrapolated from the narrative, the
montage captures the wonders of new technologies of transport. As a crucial element to the
narrative, the montage conveys the alienation Gwen and Ernest experience apart from each other;
effectively, strangers on a train. In “Motion in Motion Pictures” from The Film Mercury,
Vorkapich discussed film taken from moving vehicles as “not exactly how the things appear
when we actually ride on one of those machines, but it was more like weird motions of things in
our dreams.”
100
This appeals to Vorkapich as he asks, “What else should the great art be but the
embodiment of our dreams?”
101
Vorkapich, along with John Hoffman, worked on another travel
montage for Idiot’s Delight (Clarence Brown, 1939) with Clark Gable and Norma Shearer. The
montage encapsulates Harry Vin’s (Gable) travels across America and Europe performing in
various vaudevillian settings. Vorkapich and Hoffman hoped to find stock shots of Harry’s
Coney Island high-dive act.
In contrast to Vorkapich’s many montages of war and destruction, the montages for Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington (1939), starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur, build on the film’s
theme of patriotism. Vorkapich constructed several vivacious montages for director Frank
Capra.
102
David James writes of Vorkapich’s interludes in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,
“These are also motivated as transitional sequences, and their narrative compression is enriched
by metaphoric connotation and affective eloquence.”
103
The travel montage of American
monuments Smith sees when he first arrives in Washington is especially effective. Vorkapich
captures the solemn, wondrous tone of the script by constructing an “imaginative re-creation of
the events they memorialize.”
104
Vorkapich also wrote a six page “Contest Montage” to explain
the typesetting and printing process of the newspaper as the story is dictated by Clarissa

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Saunders (Jean Arthur). On August 10, 1939, Vorkapich and John Hoffman submitted
suggestions for a new ending to the film to Capra. Their scenario has Jefferson Smith (James
Stewart) and Saunders at the opening of the boys’ camp in a beautiful countryside. It opens after
the scene in the Senate, “with a gaping black opening of a TUNNEL. A train zooms out. Like a
wild cry of victory the train whistle blows. The sound of the whistle dissolves to a bird cry. BIG
CLOSEUP OF JEFF in open air, finishing the call. He listens: From the distance he hears a
woman’s voice answering his call.”
105
Presiding over the idyllic setting is the camp’s flag, and
Vorkapich and Hoffman ended their treatment with a close-up of the flag superimposed with the
words “Life.. Liberty.. And the Pursuit of Happiness.”
106
Needless to say, Capra did not use this
heavy-handed coda, preferring to finish on the rousing Senate scene and Jeff’s moment of
triumph. Reviewing the film in 1939, Otis Ferguson of The New Republic laments Frank Capra’s
film as a “mixture of tough, factual patter about congressional cloakrooms and pressure groups,
and a naive but shameless hooraw for the American relic.”
107
Ferguson summarizes the plot and
refers to the montages… “So he gawps around lost for a whole day, throw in thousands of feet of
what can only be called a montagasm, buildings, monuments, statues, immortal catch-phrases in
stone.”
108
To Ferguson, the orgy of images encapsulating American democracy seemed to fly by
with no payoff. Although Ferguson meant it as a critique, and as unwieldy a portmanteau as
“montagasm” is, it emphasizes the pleasurable aspects of viewing. The montage of Jeff touring
the monuments asks the viewer to reflect on citizenship, democratic ideals, and patriotism.
The subject of democracy suffused a series of correspondences in June 1938 between
Vorkapich and Charles J. Chic of the Production Department. These letters demonstrate
Vorkapich’s concern over MGM’s treatment of the nascent Montage Department. Primarily,
Vorkapich worried about personnel changes, credits, and footage counts. On June 6, Vorkapich
wrote about MGM’s inconsiderate snatching of his assistant cutters, who were continually taken
from him without a word of warning, leaving him short-handed at inopportune times. Vorkapich
wrote, “To my great disadvantage I so much abhor squaking and complaining that I never went
to you to report these things and we just managed somehow, through nightwork and overtime, to
make up for the time lost through this lack of cooperation.”
109
Vorkapich asks to be put in charge
of those employed as his assistant. This letter expresses the frustration and lack of power
Vorkapich felt at the time. His letter dated June 10 builds upon these themes as Vorkapich
responds to a request from Chic about the footage used for montage sequences and the length

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ending up in the finished pictures. Besides counseling Chic not to trust anyone outside the
Montage Department to supply these numbers, Vorkapich opens his letter with an accounting of
recent work his department has done without proper credit. He expounds on how some of the
work they complete is not limited to montage effects and mentions the flight sequence in The
Bad Man of Brimstone and the opening of Paradise for Three. In regards to The Bad Man of
Brimstone, Vorkapich writes “I had to re-shoot one of the most important STRAIGHT
PRODUCTION sequences because at the preview it was laughed off the screen — In its new
form it was then mentioned in several write-ups as ‘one of the most exciting flight scenes ever
filmed.’ As I did not claim the screen credit for it, I suppose this is not going to count as work
done in my department.”
110
Here Vorkapich successfully reminds Chic of the good work the
Montage Department does “saving” pictures.
In addition, he draws attention to the complications around calculating data on footage
used for montage sequences. Vorkapich goes on to mention The Girl of the Golden West (Robert
Z. Leonard, 1938) because he saved Leonard money by suggesting almost the entire montage
could be cut out of stock material.
111
Vorkapich insinuates the Montage Department has actually
saved MGM incalculable amounts of money right before he dives into why he should not be
forced to supply footage counts. He argues his points by articulating the purpose of montage -
“to convey a maximum of story or mood within a minimum of footage” - and montage’s reliance
on trick shots.
112
Since montages often called for superimposition, they regularly necessitated
shooting various separate negatives, and Vorkapich cautions against counting that footage as
superfluous. He also blames producers, directors, and screenwriters for dictating what the
Montage Department will shoot without determining how it will work with the finished picture.
Vorkapich asks, “But can you blame us for the footage (and money!) spent on this?”
113

Vorkapich closes his letter with a plea to take his points into consideration when judging the
work and efficacy of the Montage Department. These two letters are interesting because they
point to the uneasy relationship between the recently formed Montage Department and the studio
as a whole. Chic’s request may be a simple matter of bookkeeping in an economically depressed
period, but it smacks of complaints from higher ups about the working process of Vorkapich’s
department. It is impossible to tell how these issues were resolved based on Vorkapich’s
scrapbooks, but at the end of November 1938 MGM decided not to exercise Vorkapich’s option,
which expired January 31, 1939. The Hollywood Reporter noted Vorkapich’s leaving MGM in a

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December 1938 piece in which Vorkapich says he left the studio after too many rote Civil War
montages. Vorkapich added that his Hollywood experience would qualify him as a general, since
he has completed a montage for almost every war in history.
114

Beyond the Studio System
In late 1938, Vorkapich’s frustrations with the studio led him to explore two alternative
avenues of employment, advertising and teaching. Vorkapich kept scrapbooks of memorabilia
covering 1929-1950, which comprises ephemera including contracts, telegrams, film reviews,
studio identification cards, receipts, hotel bills, stock certificates, film publicity materials,
copious amounts of correspondence, and even the Beverly Hills telephone directory! Of
particular interest is Vorkapich’s correspondence with the graphic designer Erik Nitsche. The
exchange of letters reveals how, in November 1938, Nitsche and Vorkapich pitched a
promotional film to Dole Food Company, Inc. and N.W. Ayer & Son, the advertising agency.
The N.W. Ayer & Son accounts included Dole, American Container Corporation, Bell
Telephone, Cannon Towels, and French Line, amongst others. Nitsche’s playful personalized
letterhead featured a cut-away side view of a worm poking out of a hole in the ground gazing
through binoculars at his own tail poking out of another hole. Nitsche wrote to Vorkapich about
the “Cedric Gibbons movie like” Art Deco conference room at N.W. Ayer & Son, where he met
with Dole executives regarding the film-length commercial for Dole he hoped to complete with
Vorkapich. In his account of the meeting, Nitsche mentions the N.W. Ayer & Son executives
feared Vorkapich would shy away from the commercial nature of the project. Their worries were
unfounded considering Vorkapich was well aware how montage was perfect for advertising.
Earlier that year, in “The Meaning and Value of Montage,” Vorkapich wrote, “When LIFE’s
advertising artist wants to convey the idea that LIFE is ‘an eye that thinks — an eye with a
brain!’ he puts together a picture of a camera with a picture of an academic cap and achieves a
striking expression.”
115
Vorkapich saw the possibilities in advertising to wield symbolic
juxtapositions. After reassuring N.W. Ayer & Son and Dole of Vorkapich’s commitment to the
project, Nitsche reminded the executives of their reputation for progressive ad campaigns
including Cassandre’s
116
evocative prints. Famous for his bold, graphic posters for the Dole Fruit
Company from 1936-1938, Cassandre elegantly conjured a mysterious mood in many of his
images for the banana behemoth.
117
Nitsche informs Vorkapich the project would shoot in May

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and June because Dole “would want us to go to Hawaii at the climactically most favorable time,
and of course they want the harvest to be shown.”
118
The film, budgeted at $10,000-$20,000,
would be shot on 16mm, as Dole hoped to show it extensively at schools equipped with 16mm
projectors.
119

From the letter it’s obvious Nitsche was positioning himself, along with Vorkapich, as
the perfect team to start a Motion Picture Department at N.W. Ayer & Son. Excited by a film he
saw for Greyhound Lines, Nitsche believed advertising firms were quickly getting on board film
production. While Nitsche hoped to open the N.W. Ayer & Son Motion Picture Department with
Vorkapich, he also expressed amazement at the elaborate crew Vorkapich discussed. At the time
Vorkapich, ensconced in the studio system, was used to having cameras and a crew at his
disposal. Nitsche, on the other hand, knew he had to convince the N.W. Ayer & Son that they
could accomplish wonders on a strict budget. Nitsche asks Vorkapich if the two of them could
operate his Eyemo and if union membership is a necessity for free-lance filmmaking.
120
In
response to Nitsche’s queries, Vorkapich responded with a begrudging acknowledgement that
promotional industrial films might be the only place to get paid to experiment. Expressing his
exasperation with Hollywood, Vorkapich wrote, “If we intend to make industrials later on I don’t
think it would be good idea to make travelogues now. Personally I wouldn’t find it as interesting
as doing an industrial film. As an alternative I would prefer making an abstract film. But there is
no money in it, you might say. If I wanted money alone I could stay in Hollywood. So the
industrials would be the best solution both for money and the abstract rhythmic quality one could
introduce into them.”
121
Despite Vorkapich’s assertion that he could stay in Hollywood, his plan
with Nitsche was taking shape in November, the same month that MGM decided not to exercise
his option for 1939, and the month in which Vorkapich wrote to Pathe expressing a desire to
work in documentary and commercial films, “having lost interest in Hollywood type of
pictures.”
122

In December of 1938, Vorkapich lectured at Columbia University, opening his remarks
with a description of the difference between continuity editing and montage effects editing. He
said, “Regular production cutting is supposed to remain invisible and smooth, and two scenes
should be sufficiently similar; but in effective or creative cutting, two scenes should be
sufficiently different.”
123
For Vorkapich, planning for both kinds of cutting began in shooting.
When focused on the unobtrusiveness of continuity editing, Vorkapich maintained, “A director

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has to know how the picture is going to be cut, and he should shoot it in such a manner that the
cutter will not have too much difficulty in putting it together.”
124
To illustrate his point,
Vorkapich described the axis of action and how to shoot a scene with two people talking. He also
explained how to “cut on the movement” to hide the cut and keep the editing from being
noticed.
125
Similarly, Vorkapich advised the audience that creative cutting used in montage
should be planned out in shooting. To intensify any action within a scene, Vorkapich encouraged
the development of an “omnipresent mind.” For Vorkapich, “the filmic mind should really
become an omnipresent mind,” which “should try to visualize all action from every possible
angle.”
126
To illustrate his concept of an “omnipresent mind,” Vorkapich analyzed the example
of a train in motion. He commands his audience to first put themselves in the camera’s POV
from a distance, then from either side of the train, from a view of above and below the train, and
a close-up of the train’s churning wheels. By thinking through all the angles and visualizing each
one in turn, it is possible to “get a much more direct impression of the event.”
127
Vorkapich
repeatedly returned to the problem of shooting a moving train to illustrate the efficacy of
multiple points of view when capturing and editing an event. The different shots can be
stretched, condensed, or overlapped to create suspense, excitement, or dramatic tension. Besides
revealing Vorkapich’s fetishization of movement, the train in motion example captures a
modernistic concern with powerful new technologies.
Vorkapich screened Ballet Mecanique (Fernand Leger, 1924) as part of his Columbia
lecture because he felt the film embodied the principles of montage through rhythmical cutting.
Vorkapich lectured, “Each cut or scene was so visually different than the next that we
rhythmically felt those cuts.”
128
Vorkapich explicitly connects editing to composing music in his
lecture. He analogizes the editing of a film to the creation of beats in a musical composition.
Vorkapich advocates an awareness of every aspect of filmmaking, because each one has a
different psychological value. He is especially poetic about techniques often used in montage
including dissolves, slow motion, and superimposition. Vorkapich connects dissolves to thoughts
when he says, “A new thought is born, and it dissolves from one to another.”
129
He observed how
slow motion induced a dream-like state in the viewer and how slow motion magically brings
inanimate objects to life. During the lecture at Columbia, Vorkapich conceded his sequences for
Maytime (Robert Z. Leonard, 1937) were “a little crowded.”
130
However, he maintained, “it is
because I have usually been compelled to condense a lot of story into short footage.”
131
Although

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Vorkapich admitted to his audience eventually “the story must go on,” he also betrays a
reluctance to ever move on from his montage sequences.
As a lecturer and teacher, Vorkapich encouraged his students to follow in his footsteps
and figure out how to make the screen come alive. He saw this as the chief creative problem of
filmmaking, and he believed the solution lay somewhere in the organization of images
rhythmically. His teaching methodology was predicated on making a point and punctuating his
claim with film clips. To this end he relied on film libraries to provide him with excerpts from
various films
132
and distributors or producers to give him permission to screen the excerpts.
133

Two of the filmmakers he almost always turned to were Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander
Pudovkin. In his lectures, Vorkapich used the Soviet filmmakers to demonstrate the expressive
possibilities of editing, and he would screen sequences from Alexander Nevsky, The Old and the
New, Ten Days That Shook the World, Battleship Potemkin, Storm Over Asia, and Mother.
Although Vorkapich never explicitly engaged with Soviet photomontages, his sage advice for
those interested in learning how to create a montage was to collage. He advocated cutting
pictures from magazines and building up entire sequences from a variety of points of view.
134

Here Vorkapich not only espouses an omnipresent viewpoint but a cut-and-paste method
reminiscent of Soviet photomontage. Like Klutsis and Kulagina, Vorkapich is invested in
evoking a physiological and psychological reaction in the viewer. Although the contexts were
radically different, Soviet filmmakers and Vorkapich often struggled with a shortage of
materials.
An entry entitled “He Calls It Ideagraphy” from The New York Times Encyclopedia of
Film 1937-40 suggests Vorkapich’s montages “differed radically from the old Ufa shots.”
135
The
entry describes how Vorkapich “collects parts of scenes, pictures of objects, or whatever he
thinks will express his ideas and goes to work with them in his laboratory.”
136
The article also
mentions Ray Mammes and Irving Reis as experts in the montage field. They conclude, “Today
Hollywood recognizes the idea once scorned as ‘arty’ as highly practical. In condensation of
footage alone it has proved of immense value, while its dramatic effect has been great.”
137

Throughout his career as a filmmaker and teacher, Vorkapich argued for a filmic specificity
predicated on what he saw as the “appropriate” use of montage. Vorkapich’s time within the
studio system reveals the challenges he faced attempting to bring his theories to fruition in an
industrial setting. Vorkapich found himself at odds with the studio system, which quickly

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recognized montage’s potential for explicating narrative time and distance efficiently without
recourse to symbolism. Vorkapich felt frustrated by this application of montage as an economic
device to save money and bridge a story gap.
138
Unable to dictate how his interludes were
encompassed into the finished film and constrained by the studio’s dictate to compress time and
distance, Vorkapich’s montages are sometimes prosaic. However, even the most mundane
compression montages are tasked with transcending space and time visually. This transcendence,
in turn, reflects certain concerns of modernity that suffused the culture of the 1930s.

Conclusion
Vorkapich was one of many European immigrants who arrived in the United States
fleeing the devastation of World War I, eager to be a part of the industry producing the films of
Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Sennett, which had impressed him so much when he was a student in the
Marais. This was in the mid-twenties, at the height of the studio system’s consolidated powers.
Studio heads and their producers were kings who dictated the direction each picture would take.
Hollywood has always been a cannibalistic industry, swallowing new techniques whole. The
studios, startled by different artistic movements, were eager to incorporate their aesthetics and
tout them as revolutionary. German Expressionism, Surrealism, the French New Wave all
influenced the look and feel of Hollywood. For the American studio system, explorations into
experimental film form were for the purposes of making money through entertaining the
audience. Vorkapich, on the one hand, helped Hollywood cannibalize montage and claim it as its
own clever narrative device. On the other hand, Vorkapich rebelled at Hollywood’s adoption of
montage as merely a timesaving device and argued for intellectual montage as the basis of
cinema as art. Vorkapich exemplified the conflict between art and commerce during 1930s
Hollywood. Vorkapich shaped Hollywood’s adoption of montage as an aesthetic and narrative
device. Therefore, in many respects Vorkapich serves as the bridge from montage in the Soviet
context to montage in the American industrial system. Drawing inspiration from German
Expressionist and Soviet montage filmmakers, Vorkapich employed a hyper-kinetic editing style
to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. His most successful and experimental montages
transcended the films in which they were embedded and are anthologized in avant-garde
compilations. Vorkapich helped codify a form that was, in essence, fundamentally engaged with
modernity in its transformation of time and space.

81

One half-hidden item in Vorkapich’s scrapbooks stands out in the sea of banal mementos.
A manila envelope affixed to the back of the first scrapbook contains three articles about the
labor film Millions of Us (American Labor Productions, 1936).
139
Produced anonymously by
technicians working in Hollywood, the dramatic pro-union short film by American Labor Films,
Inc. depicts an unemployed starving machinist who becomes a scab but later understands the
necessity of the labor movement. In September 1936, the New Theatre published an article on
the film and wrote, “We are tempted to surprise our readers with the familiar names associated
with the production, but the makers request anonymity; less out of modesty than out of a
disconcerting knowledge of the methodology of Hollywood blacklisting.”
140
The film makes
effective use of montage especially in the first scene where the unemployed machinist dreams of
a delicious dinner while he lies sleeping on the street. His desperate situation is juxtaposed with
the sumptuous dinner as the shot of him sleeping is superimposed over the entire sequence.
Besides a lack of money to produce independent labor films, American Labor Films, Inc. was
faced with the problem of distribution. Other than organizing trade union halls and fraternal
societies as theater halls, productions like Millions of Us were met with hostility even when
shown at art cinemas. A December 1936 article from The Newspicture Weekly described the
film’s exhibition in a New York art cinema as a “scene for contrapuntal hisses and applause: a
miniature war of taste and political opinion was fought in the darkness of the theater.”
141
The last
article Vorkapich collected was a Life Magazine excerpt from August 1937 with a picture of a
tarred and feathered socialist named Herbert Harris who attempted to show the film in Dallas to
its cotton-mill workers. Discerning Vorkapich’s interest in Millions of Us is impossible, however
it brings to mind labor films of the thirties, which employed montage for political ends.
Vorkapich forcefully believed the cinema was equal to painting, literature, and
dramaturgy. His commitment to elevating cinema to the same level as the other arts spurred his
theories of what made the cinema unique. Vorkapich’s fetishization of motion in pictures aligns
with his argument about filmic specificity. A concern with motion also reflects one of the
primary concerns of his time, namely new technologies capable of transporting people rapidly
across continents. In Vorkapich’s montages, one can see the encapsulation of the challenges and
opportunities presented by modernity. Vorkapich’s most compelling montages reflect the legacy
of war, new technologies, and feelings of alienation saturating early twentieth century culture. In
his montages, Vorkapich often captured this spirit of modernity by depicting new technologies of

82

transport, such as trains, automobiles, streetcars, roller coasters, elevators, and airplanes, which
radically altered America’s conception of travel time. Vorkapich believed, “It is within the
power of the cinema to create its own space and time. It can tie fragments of several different
objects, situation in distant points of space, into one organic unity; it can stretch one tragic
moment into unbearable suspense. This ability of the motion picture to recreate, expand, contract
and transform space and time to its own purposes makes it very much in keeping with the theory
of Relativity.”
142
Simultaneously, the montages themselves transcend cinematic time in their
condensation of events such as war, famine, and extended periods in the characters’ lives. In
addition to playing with time, Vorkapich emphasized motion onscreen as capable of
transforming a sense of space. Static shots remind the viewer they are watching images projected
onto a two-dimensional screen, however, “as soon as motion is introduced, you get the feeling of
space, of three dimensions.”
143
For Vorkapich, “The power of the cinema to embody the
principles of rhythm makes it a truly dynamic form of art.”
144

1
Slavko Vorkapich, “The Motion Picture as an Art: Part I,” Film Mercury 4.22 (29 October
1926), Box 1, “Slavko Vorkapich Articles,” David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic
Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
2
Slavko Vorkapich, “The Motion Picture as an Art: Part II” Film Mercury 4.23 (5 November
1926), “Slavko Vorkapich Articles,” Box 1, “Slavko Vorkapich Articles,” David Shepard
Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
3
David James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in
Los Angeles (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 70.
4
Slavko Vorkapich, “Motion in Motion Pictures, Part Two.” Film Mercury 4.14 (3 September
1926), Box 1, “Slavko Vorkapich Articles,” David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic
Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
5
Ibid.
6
Slavko Vorkapich, “Motion in Motion Pictures, Part One” Film Mercury 4.13 (10 September
1926), Box 1, “Slavko Vorkapich Articles,” David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic
Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
7
Ibid.
8
Slavko Vorkapich, “Montage - A Look Into the Future with Slavko Vorkapich,” Cinema
Progress 2.5, (Dec-Jan 1937-1938), Box 1, “Slavko Vorkapich Articles,” David Shepard
Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
9
Box 2, “Slavko Vorkapich Photographs,” David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Or 1895, depending on whether you believe

83

Vorkapich’s obituary in the trade presses or his CV. An early studio portrait from a Budapest
photographer’s studio captures Vorkapich as serious and self-assured even as a young boy
dressed in a jaunty sailor suit.
10
Ibid.
11
Slavko Vorkapich, “Toward True Cinema,” American Cinematographer 54.7 (July 1973): 18.
12
James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2005), 70. Vorkapich was working as a painter and retouching photographs at the time.
13
Slavko Vorkapich, interview by Ronald L. Davis, August 11, 1975, Southern Methodist
University Oral History. Box 1, David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles. In his obituary for Vorkapich, the editor John Hoffman,
who worked with Vorkapich at Pathe, also recounted this story.
14
Box 2, “Slavko Vorkapich Photographs,” David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic
Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. As Napoleon he was featured in Photoplay
magazine in December 1923.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid.
17
James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde, 70.
18
Slavko Vorkapich, “The Motion Picture as an Art: Part II” Film Mercury 4.23 (5 November
1926). Also quoted in James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde, 71.
19
Slavko Vorkapich, “Motion and the Art of Cinematography,” American Cinematographer 7.9
(December 1926), Box 1, “Biographical Information,” David Shepard Collection, School of
Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
20
Dudley Murphy’s Soul of the Cypress (1920), Fernand Leger, Dudley Murphy, and Man Ray
with Ballet mecanique (1924), and Viking Eggeling’s Symphonie diagonale (1924).
21
Slavko Vorkapich, “Cinematics: Some Principles Underlying Effective Cinematography,”
Cinematographic Annual I (1930). Box 1, “Biographical Information,” David Shepard
Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
22
Box 1, “Biographical Information,” David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Later in life, Vorkapich was especially proud of
the film mentioning its presence in the Museum of Modern Art Film Library permanent
collection on his CV.
23
Elliott Stein, “Film Notes,” Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s (Kino
Video, 2005).
24
New York News and New York Telegram Articles in Slavko Vorkapich Folders in Box 2
David Shepard Collection USC.
25
Elliott Stein, “Film Notes,” Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s (Kino
Video, 2005).
26
The reference is to Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927).
27
Elliott Stein, “Film Notes,” Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s (Kino
Video, 2005).
28
Ibid.
29
Slavko Vorkapich, Slavko Vorkapich: O Pravom Filmu = On True Cinema, trans. Marko
Babac (Beograd: Fakultet dramskih umetnosti, 1998), 22.
30
Box 2, “Slavko Vorkapich Folders,” David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

84

31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
33
James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde, 22.
34
James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde, 69.
35
Box 1, “Biographical Information,” David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
36
Slavko Vorkapich, “A Fresh Look At the Dynamics of Film-Making,” The American Society
of Cinematographers (February 1972). Reprinted in The Motion Picture Division of the UCLA
Theatre Arts Department flyer for “The Visual Nature of the Film Medium,” Ten Lecture-
Seminars by Slavko Vorkapich. Box 1, Biographical Information, David Shepard Collection,
School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
37
Corinne Chochem, Jewish Holiday Dances (New York: Behrman House, Inc., 1948). The title
page of Jewish Holiday Dances stresses its formation as a collaborative undertaking listing by
Corinne Chochem as well as poems by Alfred Hayes, music arranged by Trudi Rittman,
photographs by Slavko Vorkapich, and book designed by Alvin Lustig.
38
Slavko Vorkapich, “Cinematics”
39
Slavko Vorkapich, “Film Montages Scripts,” Box 1, “Biographical Information,” David
Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
40
The Film Spectator (12 April 1930), Box 2, “Slavko Vorkapich Folders,” David Shepard
Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
41
Box 2, “Slavko Vorkapich Photographs with Others,” David Shepard Collection, School of
Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
42
See Figures for a still from Girls About Town (George Cukor, 1931).
43
Slavko Vorkapich, “Film: A Montage of Theories,” Film Culture 19 (March 1959): 175.
44
James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde, 71.
45
Vorkapich, “Film: A Montage of Theories,” 173.
46
Slavko Vorkapich, “The History of the Motion Picture,” (lecture, Dept. of Fine Arts at
Columbia University, December 20, 1938), Box 1, David Shepard Collection, School of
Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
47
Vorkapich, “Film: A Montage of Theories,” 178
48
Ibid., 177-178.
49
Ibid., 178.
50
Vorkapich, On True Cinema, 192.
51
Slavko Vorkapich, “The Meaning and Value of Montage” (21 September 1938). “Slavko
Vorkapich Articles,” Box 1, David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
52
Slavko Vorkapich, “Creative Use of the Motion Picture,” Educational Theatre Journal 2.2
(1950): 142-147.
53
Vorkapich, “Cinematics.”
54
Vorkapich, “Film Montages Scripts.”
55
Vorkapich, interview for SMU Oral History.
56
Ibid.
57
Ibid.
58
Ibid.

85

59
Variety, November 4, 1932. Slavko Vorkapich Folders in Box 2 David Shepard Collection
USC.
60
Vorkapich, “Film Montages Scripts.”
61
Vorkapich, interview for SMU Oral History.
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid.
64
Vorkapich, “The Meaning and Value of Montage” (21 September 1938).
65
Ibid.
66
Vorkapich, “On True Cinema,” 117.
67
Slavko Vorkapich, Description in “Bulletin of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences,” September 1937. Box 1: Biographical Information in the Cinematic Library David
Shepard Special Collections at USC.
68
Ibid.
69
Slavko Vorkapich Box 1: Biographical Information in the Cinematic Library David Shepard
Special Collections at USC.
70
James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde, 75.
71
Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941 (Los Angeles, CA: Sony
Pictures Home Entertainment, 2005) DVD.
72
Slavko Vorkapich, “Montage - A Look Into the Future with Slavko Vorkapich,” Cinema
Progress 2.5, (Dec-Jan 1937-1938), Box 1, “Slavko Vorkapich Articles,” David Shepard
Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Mentions
interview with Vorkapich took place in Bungalow 9.
73
Victor Fleming insisted upon directing Ingrid Bergman even in the montage sequences for
Joan of Arc (Victor Fleming,1948).
74
Gabriella Oldham, First Cut: Conversations with Film Editors (Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1992), 86.
75
Vorkapich, “Film Montages Scripts.”
76
Ibid.
77
Vorkapich, interview for SMU Oral History.
78
Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (New York: Harper & Row,
1987), 16.
79
Friedrich, City of Nets, 33-34. According to Otto Friedrich, Irving Thalberg, Hollywood’s
wunderkind, tried to hire Arnold Schoenberg, the composer of Verklarte Nacht and Pierre
Lunaire, to write the score for The Good Earth, but Schoenberg’s demand for complete control
of the sound (including the actors’ dialogue) along with his asking price of $50,000 was too
steep for Thalberg, who nonetheless admired his chutzpah.
80
Margaret Herrick Library, Special Collections, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
Beverly Hills.
81
Vorkapich, interview for SMU Oral History. Vorkapich recounted how the montage sequences
for The Firefly cost $200,000.
82
Ibid.
83
Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941 (Los Angeles, CA: Sony
Pictures Home Entertainment, 2005) DVD. Vorkapich’s complete montage is contrasted against
MGM’s finished film version courtesy of Turner Entertainment Company.
84
Vorkapich, “The History of the Motion Picture.”

86

85
Ed Gibbons, “Montage Marches In,” International Photographer (October 1937), Box 1,
“Slavko Vorkapich Articles,” David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
86
Ibid.
87
Slavko Vorkapich. “Film Montages Scripts.”
88
Vorkapich, “The Meaning and Value of Montage” (21 September 1938).
89
Vorkapich, “The Motion Picture as an Art.”
90
Slavko Vorkapich, “Toward True Cinema,” Film Culture 19 (April 1959).
91
Edward Dmytryk to Slavko Vorkapich, 13 January 1938, Scrapbook 2, Box 2 David Shepard
Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
92
Scrapbook 2, Box 2 David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. In a letter to “Vorky,” Louis Clyde Stoumen, one of
Vorkapich’s former students, writes, “I know you’ve had in the past more than one melancholy
relationship with motion picture producers.” Despite these “melancholy relationships,” Stoumen
hoped to foster a positive producing relationship with Vorkapich and envisioned a market of film
students, professors, and enthusiasts for Vorkapich’s filmed lectures. In his role as proactive
producer, Stoumen corresponded with William Friedkin in 1974, writing, “He’ll need all the help
his friends and we former students, can give him.” Stoumen assured Vorkapich that Friedkin
would put up $50,000 to fund a series of ten 90-minute films. But when Stoumen wrote excitedly
to Friedkin about The National Endowment of the Arts pledging $25,000 to assist the project,
Friedkin later declined “at this time.” Undaunted, Stoumen exchanged missives with Daniel M.
Selznick in the fall of the following year about the possibility of getting MGM’s consent to
footage. Selznick responded by mentioning he had talked to Frank Davis the Vice-President in
charge of Legal Affairs for MGM and believes his long-standing relationship with Davis is the
leverage necessary to get the process started. In the brochure for an American Film Institute
Theater presentation of “Understanding Cinema,” William Friedkin described Vorkapich’s
lecture style: “Sometimes he’s hard to listen to, he’s stubborn, pedantic, unwavering in his
principles and his principles are often harder to accept than the flat, unpretentious manner in
which they’re delivered.” A note written by Vorkapich on the AFI Flyer reads, “At Webb’s
request (I assume) Friedkin wrote this test manual. At our only meeting August 8, 1973, when F.
Pledged $50,00 toward videotaping lectures, he promised to let me look at a rough cut of his film
‘after Labor Day”… never saw him again.” Vorkapich was understandably upset at Friedkin for
rescinding his financial pledge and took it out on the AFI manual, which he called “Lousy!”
93
Vorkapich, “The History of the Motion Picture.”
94
Vorkapich, interview for SMU Oral History.
95
Bruce Posner, “Commentaries,” Disc 3, Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film
1894-1941 (Los Angeles, CA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2005) DVD.
96
Vorkapich, “The History of the Motion Picture.”
97
Slavko Vorkapich, “Film Montages Scripts.”
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid.
100
Vorkapich, “Motion in Motion Pictures, Part Two.”
101
Vorkapich, “Motion in Motion Pictures, Part One.”
102
Frank Capra to John Hoffman, 1977, Box 1, “Biographical Information,” David Shepard
Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Capra

87

laments not being present at a memorial program celebrating Vorkapich’s life and work at the
Leo S. Bing Theater. Capra writes, “I certainly want the world to know how much I appreciated
your unique endowments to the cinema. You brought us something new, something imaginative
to the film; a magic that polished the dull films, and burnished the great ones.” In the letter,
Capra refers to Vorkapich as Vorkie.
103
James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde, 74.
104
Ibid.
105
Vorkapich, “Film Montages Scripts.”
106
Ibid.
107
Otis Ferguson, The New Republic (1 November 1939): 369. Box 2 David Shepard Collection,
School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
108
Ibid.
109
Slavko Vorkapich to Chas J. Chic, 6 June 1938, Scrapbook 2, Box 2 David Shepard
Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
110
Ibid.
111
Ibid.
112
Ibid.
113
Ibid.
114
December 29, 1938. Hollywood Reporter in Scrapbook 2 in Box 2 David Shepard Collection
USC.
115
Vorkapich, “The Meaning and Value of Montage,” (21 September 1938).
116
Cassandre is the pseudonym for the Ukranian-French Adolphe Jean Marie Mouron.
117
See Figures for one of Cassandre’s Dole advertisements.
118
Erik Nitsche to Slavko Vorkapich, 11 November 1938. Scrapbook 2, Box 2 David Shepard
Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
119
Ibid.
120
Ibid.
121
Ibid.
122
Ibid.
123
Vorkapich, “The History of the Motion Picture.”
124
Ibid.
125
Ibid.
126
Ibid.
127
Ibid.
128
Ibid.
129
Ibid.
130
Ibid.
131
Ibid.
132
Slavko Vorkapich to Tom Brandon, 7 March 1963, Box 1, “Biographical Information,” David
Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Vorkapich wrote to Brandon of Brandon Films, Inc. inquiring about using films from his film
library for lectures at MoMA.
133
Later in life, Vorkapich dreamed of creating a teaching film interspersed with film clips. One
of Vorkapich’s former USC students, Louis Clyde Stoumen, who later taught film at UCLA,
gave Vorkapich a photomontage depicting four editors looking into an early Moviola. Stoumen

88

double-exposed a small picture of Vorkapich lecturing into the bottom right corner of the 8x11
photo, suggesting Vorkapich’s legacy as a teacher and practitioner. The photomontage also
conveys Stoumen’s staunch support of Vorkapich’s idea to create a series of teaching films
comprised of his lectures and punctuated with film clips. See Figures for the Stoumen’s
photomontage.
134
Vorkapich, “Montage - A Look Into the Future.”
135
The New York Times Encyclopedia of Film 1937-40, Edited by Gene Brown and Harry M.
Geduld (New York: New York Times Company, 1984), Box 1, “Slavko Vorkapich Articles,”
David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los
Angeles.
136
Ibid.
137
Ibid.
138
Vorkapich, “The History of the Motion Picture.”
139
Prelinger Archive, Millions of Us, accessed September 12, 2013. http://archive.org/
details/millions_of_us. The twenty minute labor film Millions of Us (Jack Smith and Tina
Taylor, 1936) employs effective use of montage and demonstrates the legacy of German
Expressionism and Soviet montage.
140
New Theatre (Spetember 1936). Box 2, “Slavko Vorkapich Folders,” David Shepard
Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
141
The Newspicture Weekly (16 December 1936). Box 2, “Slavko Vorkapich Folders,” David
Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
142
Vorkapich, “Cinematics.”
143
Vorkapich, “Motion in Motion Pictures.”
144
Vorkapich, “Cinematics.”

89

Chapter 4.
Infiltrating the Studio System: Don Siegel at Warner Bros.

“Slavko Vorkapich looked like a montage slightly tilted.”
1

Introduction
Descending into the rabbit hole of montage often leads to a sense of propinquity.
Nowhere is this more literal than the actual collision of bodies that took place in 1939, when Don
Siegel was working under the special effects guru Byron Haskin at Warner Bros. While Hal
Wallis was responsible for giving Siegel his first job at Warner Bros., it was Haskin who steered
Siegel towards montage. Haskin convinced Siegel montage could be more than “something
slapped together for a lapse of time.”
2
Haskin explained to Siegel,
The director shoots a few inconsequential shots of principal players, let’s say walking.
The editor gets some stock close shots of feet walking. They dump the film on one of my
optical printers, who mishmashes it into a montage. He doesn’t even know what he’s
supposed to be getting across, and couldn’t care less.
3

In contrast, Haskin recognized an opportunity for the Special Effects Department at Warner
Bros. to assume control of producing the studio’s montages. Before Siegel could start, however,
Haskin commanded he pay homage to the king of montages, Slavko Vorkapich.
Venturing off Warner Bros. Burbank lot and proceeding south to MGM’s Culver City
location, Siegel was struck by how “Slavko Vorkapich looked like a montage slightly tilted. He
was pedantic and took himself and montages very seriously. I listened, looked and absorbed.”
4

This recollection of their encounter comes from Siegel’s autobiography, A Siegel Film. Written
partly in dialogue form and tending towards exaggeration, Siegel’s colorful version of the
meeting does corresponds with Vorkapich’s theories of montage. Siegel came away impressed
by Vorkapich’s belief in how the juxtaposition and superimposition of images could evoke an
intellectual response in the viewer. For Vorkapich, montage worked best when it was more than
the sum of its parts. He lectured to Siegel, “The use of symbolism stirs the imagination of the
viewer. One can show the invisible or intangible by means of visible impressions. The whole
film can be made more vivid and given more pace by the proper use of montage technique.”
5

Vorkapich’s merging of optical effects and quick editing impressed Siegel, who found himself
drawn to the symbolism inherent in Vorkapich’s montages. In his description of the montages

90

Vorkapich screened for him, Siegel writes, “Superimpositions were everywhere. The
photography was at times exquisite, at other moments, phantasmagoric, somewhat obtuse and
confusing. But the overall effect, the quick staccato cuts, was exciting.”
6
In using the term
“staccato,” Siegel echoes Vorkapich’s analogy of musical composition to convey the shortened
duration of each image in his montages. In musical notation, staccato notes are followed by a
moment of silence. The infinitesimal pause after each note allows the next note to punctuate the
brief silence. In montage, the images are the notes and the cuts the silence — only in
conversation with each other does the entire piece start to take shape.
Similarly, juxtaposing Vorkapich and Siegel is like slotting in the corner pieces of the
puzzle of montage within classical Hollywood cinema; the meeting between Siegel and
Vorkapich as an entertaining transitional montage with rapid-fire cuts of two larger-than-life
personalities bonding over an optical printer. The transitional aspect is especially important
because the meeting takes place towards the end of Vorkapich’s career within the studios and at
the beginning of Siegel’s. Vorkapich, the artiste, passing the torch to Siegel, the ambitious studio
player. Siegel likened Vorkapich’s montages to dream sequences with haphazardly associative
images conjuring an obtuse phantasmagoria.
7
Ultimately, the encounter with Vorkapich inspired
two feverish dreams in Siegel’s mind: the promise of further creative control and a position of
greater power at Warner Bros. Siegel, who had already worked shooting inserts and in the film
library as an assistant editor, was immediately struck by the possibilities of montage. Familiar
with the personalities and inter-workings of the film library, the editing room, and insert
department, Siegel was perfectly suited to bring this knowledge to bear on montages. He saw
how Vorkapich transformed a series of stock shots and original footage shot by the director of
photography into a sequence capable of transcending the “mundane film as a whole.”
8
Montage
was a way for Siegel to apply the knowledge he had already gleaned working in various
departments at Warner Bros. and gain creative control over something new. No longer would
Tenny Wright be able to complain about Siegel’s second-unit shooting, montage was going to be
Siegel’s mandate to write, direct, and edit. The tensions between “A” players in the classical
studio system and the “B” montage director precluded a copacetic relationship; however, over
the course of his early career at Warner Bros., Siegel successfully leveraged his knowledge of
montage to achieve the formation of a montage department under his control and, eventually, his
dream of directing.

91

Cambridge, Ping-Pong, and Inserts: Siegel’s Start
Born October 26, 1912, Siegel grew up in a predominantly middle-class Jewish
neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. His parents, Sam and Anne Siegel, who had toured as a
vaudeville comedic/musical act moved the family from Chicago to New York and finally to
London, where Sam Siegel had gotten a job with the Parker Holiday Company. Siegel acquired
an English accent, a proficiency in ping-pong, and a degree from Cambridge where, as a self-
professed atheist, he studied the New Testament. After a brief stint as a drummer on an ocean
liner, Siegel arrived in Los Angeles in 1934. He got in touch with his uncle Jack Saper, a film
editor for Warner Bros., who introduced him to Hal Wallis, then production head of Warner
Bros. Despite Siegel’s inexperience, Wallis gave him a job in 1934 as a film librarian
assembling, marking, and organizing stock shots used in various pictures. Eventually Siegel’s
boss at the film library, DeLeon Anthony, recommended Siegel for a job as an assistant editor
with Warren Lowe. Siegel, however, spent most of his time chasing women, playing tennis and
ping-pong, and a little time with the Contemporary Theater acting.
9

Bored with his duties as an assistant editor, Siegel applied for a position as the assistant
head of the insert department housed within Special Effects. Siegel felt it would be “great to
have control of a camera unit, no matter how small.”
10
When Warren Lowe convinced Siegel to
apply for a job in the insert department, Byron “Bun” Haskin
11
was the Head of Special Effects
and Robert “Bobby” Agnew, the former child star, was Unit Manager. Haskin and Agnew were
looking for someone to shoot inserts – close-ups such as an article in a newspaper or a wrench
turning a bolt. If the director did not shoot the insert on set, the editor would send a snip of film
to the insert department and explain what was needed. A prop man provided the prop for the
insert and Siegel shot on Stage 5 with the camera operator Archie Dalzell, who shot as a first
cameraman without the union’s knowledge. When they shot outside with actors or stuntmen the
union would require a first cameraman to accompany Dalzell.
12
Siegel quickly realized he could
manipulate directors into giving him more responsibility by convincing directors he would save
them time. Siegel recollected, “Any shot the director was too lazy to shoot automatically became
an insert.”
13
It was in the insert department shooting close-ups, working with stars, and
overseeing an entire camera crew that Siegel fell in love with working in the movies.
Siegel’s transition into the insert department coincided with a busy time for the Special
Effects Department. During the late 30s through 1940s, Special Effects operated as a studio

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within a studio. In an interview with Stuart Kaminsky in Don Siegel: Director, Haskin described
the Warner Bros method of troubleshooting as relying heavily on Special Effects. Haskin felt the
studio solved many of their problems in the late 1930s by saying, “Let’s throw it into Stage 5.
We were busy. We became a picture company within a picture company. We rescued films,
embellished them and we were completely autonomous with laboratories, cutting rooms and our
own sound department.” (Kaminsky 28) Haskin and Siegel often joked they could shoot their
own independent feature with Warner Bros. biggest stars on Stage 5 simply by convincing
producers to send down Davis, Cagney, Robinson, and Muni for “second-unit shots.”
14
Haskin
recalled, “Late in the 1930s strikes began to delay things and we started to do all the second
units. Making a Warner Bros. picture was a cinch for a director during the studio’s heyday. Mike
Curtiz would start to do something, and we’d say: ‘We’ll do that,’ and that was it.”
15
Here
Haskin is referring to Warner’s workhorse director, Michael Curtiz,
16
the Hungarian whose
unusual way with the English language made for some infamous quotes.
17
While Curtiz might
have been happy for the help, Siegel’s clandestine forays into second-unit work were not always
received kindly. Tenny Wright, the production manager of the studio and, according to Siegel, a
“former boxer and a tough guy with a foul tongue” reprimanded Siegel for shooting a scene of
Joan Blondell for the director Lloyd Bacon.
18
This encounter spurred Siegel to complain to
Haskin he was sick of begging directors for work. In response, Haskin asked him if he knew
anything about montage. His advice to Siegel was, “When you read a script, and you read them
all, whenever a montage is called for – like a ten-year lapse of time, a boy and a girl falling in
love, a train wreck, etc. – rewrite it and shoot it. Nobody will know what you’re doing except
yourself and maybe me. I’ll even let you have Bob Burks
19
, who is fantastic at photographing
anything in special effects.”
20
But first, Haskin suggested Siegel visit Slavko Vorkapich at MGM
to learn from Vorkapich, who was known for his use of symbolism within montage sequences.

Becoming a Champ at Montages
Armed with a new enthusiasm for juxtaposition, superimposition, symbolism, and large
sheets of lined paper commandeered from Vorkapich’s cutting room, Siegel was ready to
exercise his mandate to write, edit, and direct. Although at first, this mandate was entirely self-
appointed. Siegel recalled, “With no-one at the studio even being aware of what I was doing, I
would write montages… Nobody really knew what I was doing because the indication in the

93

script would be that there was a lapse of time of 10 years or there would be a man looking for
work and not getting it.”
21
This is where Siegel, Burks, and Jim Leicester, who Siegel recruited
as assistant editor, stepped in. With the lined paper Siegel had swiped from Vorkapich’s cutting
room, the team sketched blueprints for the finished montage by marking the footage of each shot
required.
22
Together with Leicester and Burks, they developed a plan for constructing montages
in the following manner: “Each line of the montage paper represented one foot of film. We
carefully drew each shot to show its length clearly. The dissolves going in and out were indicated
exactly. We drew in superimpositions along the shot or shots it was superimposed over.
Sometimes the montage sheets were 3 feet wide and 5 feet long. We could read and understand
them as a composer reads his musical score.”
23
The analogy between montage and music is
particularly apt. A well-executed montage could be judged by its rhythm and pace, just like a
piece of music. Siegel, along with Leicester and Burks, was orchestrating a change in the way
Warner Bros. produced pictures, and their actions reverberated throughout the studio. Siegel
“would give the lined sheet to the optical printer, who would have to do it exactly as drawn on
the lined sheet.”
24
However, Siegel was in unchartered territory, pushing at the rigid boundaries
dictating studio workflow, which often resulted in antagonism. As Siegel remembered, “The
assistant editor at the optical printer would pay no attention to what I wanted and he’d use his
own inimitable, dreadful style. I would look at what he’d done, check it against my work sheet,
and find that he hadn’t followed the footage guidelines.”
25
Nevertheless, Siegel was invigorated,
his job exciting. As montage director, Siegel worked directly with the studio’s stars. There he
was in his early 20s, telling Cagney, Bogart, Huston, and March what to do when they came to
Stage 5.
In addition, montage allowed him to be innovative and original. Describing his work
Siegel says, “As soon as I took over montage, I got the scripts and began to rewrite the montage
sequences. I would even do terrible, filthy things that were unheard of in montage, like using
sound. As I became successful, the montage became more and more complicated. I’d
superimpose feet over doors opening, show giant ticker tape machines falling on Wall Street,
have guns melting.”
26
As he would do later as a B-movie director, Siegel took advantage of the
lack of oversight by studio heads to be creative and efficient. Furthermore, montage was a
technique Siegel believed in because it forced him to devise ingenious sequences, and it also
enervated viewers. Siegel describes, “Montage gives credit to the audience, is creative, does not

94

assume the average viewer’s mental age is 12. We used symbols. The pace was fantastic, and we
attempted to do the montage in the style of the picture we were shooting.”
27
Like a ghostwriter
penning an autobiography or a painter forging a Picasso, Siegel wanted the montage to fit
seamlessly with the aesthetic choices of the picture as a whole. This was certainly in line with the
ethos of Warner Bros. where turning in a wildly different montage sequence would have resulted
in the dissolution of the montage department. Siegel was savvy enough to realize this but also
self-assured and impatient enough to demand respect for the work he was doing. Slowly but
surely, Siegel’s montage work began to be recognized in a formal way.

Warner Club News and Legitimizing the Work of Stage 5
An article entitled “The Impossible Becomes Possible” by Fred Terzo and George Fenaja
in the September 1939 issue of the Warner Club News reads like an upbeat advertisement for the
Special Effects Department housed on Stage 5. Terzo and Fenaja outline what Special Effects
could do for Warner Club readers, “who are charged with the task of turning out Warner Bros’
fine pictures and who might not be familiar” with the work of the Special Effects Department.
The article describes the responsibilities and inner workings of the Department of Special Effects
as directed by Haskin and Agnew. According to Terzo and Fenaja, the department makes “all
process shots, miniatures, matte shots, glass shots, art titles, fades, dissolves, inserts, montages
and many straight production shots.” In other words, except for sound and casting, Stage 5 was a
fully functioning studio churning out footage for almost every picture released. Echoing the
theme of the impossible becoming possible, the article details the cost-saving expediency of
using the department for shooting chase sequences and utilizing miniatures for long shots. In
particular, Terzo and Fenaja include a technically detailed description of how the Special Effects
Department built a miniature amusement pier for sequences in the Paul Muni drama We Are Not
Alone (1939). Throughout the article, there is an emphasis on the money to be saved by utilizing
Stage 5 with descriptions of their work as efficient and quick.
The article also conveys the organization of the Department of Special Effects, which
oversaw the Glass Department, the Optical Department, the Insert Department, and the Montage
Department. These various subdivisions worked together to produce anything ongoing
productions demanded. The Optical Room was responsible for turning out dissolves, fades, and
other trick shots and featured a new optical printer, which took two years to build and cost

95

$20,000. The optical printer was built in-house by the Optical Department and Camera Machine
Shop with the expressed purpose of turning out effects in one print rather than two. The new
printer saved floor space, which made it possible to add a second machine in the same space
previously occupied by the old machine.
Terzo and Fenaja’s article is also the first mention of the Montage Department in the
Warner Club News. They refer to the Montage Department as under the supervision of Siegel, a
“Ping Pong Champ, who is also a champ on Montages.” They go on to describe how Siegel “is
responsible to Mr. Haskin for cuts establishing time lapses and otherwise creative atmosphere
with a minimum of footage – from what we’ve seen of his work we would say it is in very
capable hands.” Besides articulating Siegel’s relationship to the Montage Department, this quote
shows how montages were formally integrated into the hierarchy of the studio beginning in
1939. The article closes with a pithy plug for Stage 5: “the Special Effects done by this
department are always of a character to justify our pride in our boss and our department, and our
Motto: ‘If it’s trick photography you want, we do the best for less.’” While this article from 1939
highlights the presence of the montage department from the perspective of those working within
the Department of Special Effects, that same year, neither credit sequence for The Roaring
Twenties
28
(Raoul Walsh, 1939) or Confessions of a Nazi Spy
29
(Anatole Litvak, 1939) mention
Don Siegel.
However, the cutting file for The Roaring Twenties at the Warner Bros. archive does
highlight how integral debates about the montages were to the production of the film. In
addition, a behind-the-scenes look at two conversations involving montage point to the
connection between film and social mores of the time. The first example reflects concerns about
filmic violence. In an Inter-Office Communication from July 19, 1939, Walter MacEwen of the
Story Department writes to Wallis about a controversy brewing over the use of machine guns in
The Roaring Twenties. MacEwen writes, “At a meeting with Sam Bischoff some time ago, Breen
apparently indicated some sort of approval of the use of machine guns in the montages for this
picture, but he never confirmed it in writing – and when Tenny Wright raised the issue again
because of his specific instructions not to provide machine guns for any crime picture, I called
Breen for a letter.”
30
MacEwen also informs Wallis that Bischoff is confident they can use the
machine guns because of “the way they will be handled impressionistically in montages.”
31
The
second example exposes fears about explicit sexuality in film. In an Inter-Office Communication

96

from July 24, 1939, Bischoff writes to Wallis over Priscilla Lane’s objections to Cagney’s
character, Eddie Bartlett, buying her clothes. Lane worried her fans would balk at her character
accepting clothes from a man. Bischoff writes, “Of course I know that you don’t care what she or
her fans think, but on the other hand, there may be something to what she says, and I think it
might be better that the clothes he is buying should be for her to wear in the café or in her work
as an entertainer.”
32

Throughout August of 1939, Wallis and Bischoff discussed the montages for the film and
provided Haskin with very specific instructions. On August 2, 1939, Wallis writes to Bischoff,
“One very important thing that still has to be written and figured, is the time lapse to be covered
by a montage to cover Cagney’s downfall after the stock market crash.”
33
Wallis complained to
Haskin that the montages were taking too long to complete. This is a sentiment he voiced on
August 5, 1939 when he asks Haskin to “please put all possible speed behind the preparing of
montages for The Roaring Twenties.”
34
Wallis mentions the commentator’s voice will be
recorded in the back of the montages and he wants them completed by the time the picture is
finished. Then on August 16, 1939, Wallis complains to Haskin that he has not seen any of the
montages for a picture with a release date of October. Wallis writes, “As you know, [the
montages] are very important in the story-telling of this particular picture, and unless they are
right when we see them and if we happen to have to make any of them over, we are going to be
seriously delayed.”
35
Wallis adds that most of the montages were in the script when it came out,
and he expresses frustration over why they are taking so long. Since the film whirls through “the
dizziest decade in American history,”
36
it fell on the montage sequences to help move the film
along, encapsulating entire years at a time.
While Wallis complained about the montages interfering with his production schedule, he
also offered suggestions about content. On August 18, 1939 Wallis advised Haskin that Cagney
should be dressed down in the montage where he hocks his cuff links. This theme is reiterated in
another Inter-Office Communication from Wallis to Haskin on August 23, 1939, which reads,
“In making the montage showing Cagney’s disintegration, be sure that through the progress of
the montage he gets shabbier so that at the finish we see him in a worn suit, cap and flannel shirt.
This is so that when the audience sees him after the montage the shock is not so great and we
have built up or rather down to his fall.”
37
Comments about content came from Walsh as well,
who wrote Wallis on September 12, 1939, “I think you can eliminate the scene where Jimmy

97

takes Pricilla into the room and shows her where they make the liquor. To me the montage in
front of this scene shows how liquor was made.”
38
The conversations around the montages
suggest that after they were delivered by the Montage Department, how they were used was
determined by the producers and implemented by the editor. For example, Wallis writes to the
editor Jack Killifer on September 12, 1939, “On this new montage of Cagney looking for a job,
we want to end it where the commentator’s voice ends, and don’t go into the last little scene
where the girl says ‘Sorry, nothing today,’ and Cagney says ‘Thanks again.’
39
This suggests the
montages were always in danger of ending up on the cutting room floor.
Both Haskin and Siegel are nonchalant in their recollections about working on The
Roaring Twenties. Haskin received credit for the Special Effects of the film in the title sequence
and talked about the film in an Oral History by the Directors Guild of America, “Siegel was my
montage director at the time. On Roaring Twenties, he and I alternated – there were so many to
do. About six or eight major montages for the period/era changes in the story.”
40
Siegel
described the montages as “boring” and characterized them as full of “whirling papers, newsreel
shots, narration announcing the end of World War I” or another world event.
41
Frustrated by the
lack of creativity of these montages, Siegel decided without clearing it with anyone but Haskin
“to do the Wall Street crash using symbolism to get over the disaster; not using newspaper
headlines or newsreel shots, and, if possible, no narration.”
42
Siegel recalled, “We built a huge
ticker-tape machine, which spewed tape over hordes of people trying to climb steps to reach the
machine looming over them. We had wind machines blowing full blast against the sprawling
mob, forcing them tumbling, sliding and falling. It was exciting to shoot and somewhat scary
too. Haskin pointed out that not only did we not have any money to pay for the shots I was
making, but no one, including the director and producer (Wallis and Warner), had the slightest
clue what we were doing.”
43
Siegel was relieved to find that Wallis liked it, and Walsh and
Hellinger, the man credited with the Original Story, agreed.
This disjuncture between Siegel’s description of his montage work and his lack of
inclusion within the production decisions is also apparent on Confessions of a Nazi Spy.
44
The
Special Effects were again credited solely to Haskin, but in his autobiography Siegel reminisces
about rigging an airplane board from the roof of a building so he and Dalzell could shoot Nazi
propaganda pamphlets fluttering down onto the street. Rather than bother with a permit or studio
approval, Siegel and Dalzell haphazardly inched out onto the board and littered Burbank with

98

Nazi propaganda to capture shots of the angry reactions of surprised pedestrians below. For
dissolves in the film, Siegel used a traveling matte shot of goose-stepping Nazi legs, which bring
to mind Dmytryk’s observation about Hollywood montages as moving collages. The Pressbook
for the film highlights a collage aesthetic as it reveals how the studio sold the film as a look at
the underground menace of the Nazi spy in America. One spread entitled “Thanks for Opening
our Eyes” contains a collage of letters received from audience members who wrote to Warner
Bros praising the film. This collage was carefully edited and does not include any letters from
the “Crank Letters” file in the archives, which lambasts Jack Warner for anti-German
propaganda. By 1940, Siegel was begging Warner to let him direct but Warner felt directors
were a dime a dozen and besides he got Siegel on the cheap. In response, Siegel started shooting
more second-unit work for inclusion in his montages.

“Strike up that band! Yell out the news!”
45
Siegel and the Four Horsemen Impress
Shortly after Confessions of a Nazi Spy criticized American isolationism, Warner Bros
released Knute Rockne (Lloyd Bacon, 1940) an ode to America’s gridiron love. At Rockne’s
passing, Will Rogers eulogized, “Notre Dame was your address, but every gridiron in America
was your home.”
46
Siegel’s montages amplify the action in the film, showing montage’s ability
to make a game exciting before the days of instant replay and slow motion. Today, football on
television is one continuous montage but this was 1940, thirteen years before instant replay
would confuse some viewers into thinking Army scored twice in a December 1963 game against
Navy. Early in the film, Rockne’s father expounds on the opportunities Knute would have in
America. Not just by ascribing to hard-work, discipline, and thrift, but by being tough. The Titles
Department had some tough decisions to make as well, and while the film’s title credits list both
Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen and those actors who portrayed them
47
, it lacks any specific
mention of Don Siegel. Instead, it attributes Special Effects to Byron Haskin. However, Siegel
discussed the montages in his autobiography, and specifically the challenge of capturing Notre
Dame’s athletic and technical skill at football. He wanted to highlight Notre Dame’s famous
backfield, the Four Horsemen – James Crowley, Elmer Layden, Donald Miller and Harry
Stuhldreher – as they went through their intricate and balletic formations. Siegel’s goal was to
emphasize their speed and grace under pressure. Siegel orchestrated a complicated montage
designed to show the proficiency of the Four Horsemen during an actual game. Siegel placed the

99

football directly into the matte box and covered the lens so the image appeared black. “When the
ball was thrown away from the camera, it fell into the arms of a running back, who was
immediately tackled.”
48
Siegel then cut to a shot of a Notre Dame player falling onto a camera,
which was totally blacked out and transformed into the back of a Notre Dame player as he runs
away from the camera and toward his ultimate goal, the end zone. “As he ran across the goal
line, we saw him fall to the ground and, in a closer shot, fight his way towards another camera,
blacking it out. Then we came to a most difficult shot. From the blackout we saw a close shot of
a football boot kicking a ball towards the goalposts. From that, we went on a high parallel behind
the goalposts. Below was a Notre Dame player drop-kicking the football over the goalposts and,
hopefully, into the matte box, blacking it out” (Siegel 61). The technical director on the film was
Nick Lukats, who had played for Notre Dame and was tasked with kicking an expertly placed
drop kick into the camera. According to Siegel, it took fifty-eight takes but finally the football hit
the lens and blacked out the camera. The number of takes, although probably exaggerated,
speaks to how little direct oversight Siegel experienced. At a time when Jack Warner would
personally send notes to his directors about wasting film with ten takes
49
, fifty-eight would have
made Warner apoplectic. The montage scenes are so effective at conveying the action on the
field they appear in the film’s trailer.
Revised changes to the script on March 19, 1940 detail two montage sequences, but it’s
unclear from the script changes whether they describe a montage already created by Haskin and
Siegel or if this was given to the Department of Special Effects originally. There is a description
of the montages used to encapsulate Notre Dame’s seasons in 1917, 1918, and 1919 with
Rockne, played by Pat O’Brien, and George Gipp, famously portrayed by Ronald Reagan,
scoring touchdowns. The script reads, “The Great American Public has found its first popular
hero of sport, and we HEAR THE CROWDS ROARING his name – ‘Gipp!’ ‘Gipp!’ ‘Gipp!’”
50

The script also mentions a montage encapsulating the Rockne family journey from Norway to
Chicago: “Over a background-effect of the Atlantic Ocean, blending into the skyline of New
York, then Chicago, as those cities appeared in the 1890’s” with a superimposed title about hard-
working immigrants following a “new road of equality and opportunity” to America.
51
Haskin,
who changed the way the title department assigned credit, paved Siegel’s road of opportunity. In
the Directors Guild Oral History, Haskin claimed, “When I took over the department, I tried to

100

break the pattern of the department taking screen credit for special effects camera work… I
didn’t want credit for work I didn’t do. But it had become automatic in the title department.”
52

“The fair-haired Montage expert and rhumba dancer” carves a space for montage.
The congenial atmosphere fostered by the Special Effects Department is conveyed in
Joseph Westheimer’s May and November 1940 columns for the Warner Club News. In both
articles Westheimer adopts an air of jocularity and singles out Siegel for laughs. In May 1940,
under Jottings, Westheimer reports, “The fair-haired Montage expert and rhumba dancer, Don
Siegel, notified the bank after losing his check book, and also stopped payment on all checks.
Chum Bob Burks found said book and Don resumed business at the old stand without taking the
bank into his confidence – soon our favorite ping pong player was hauled in for forging his own
name.”
53
The November story recounts Siegel’s adventures registering for the draft stating it
“conclusively proves that all practical jokers have a mustache.”
54
Westheimer tells the story of
Siegel visiting his polling place with “his not unusual air of complete confidence and super
superiority”
55
to register for the draft. When asked, he told the woman helping him fill out the
forms that he was thirty-six, which she informed him was too old. “Whereupon Don loudly
proclaimed that he would stand on his constitutional rights as a patriotic citizen and demanded
the right to register.” When he told the woman to write that he was twenty-seven she was
horrified and told him this would open him to prosecution for perjury; Siegel told her he would
take his chances and was reluctantly registered. Westheimer reports there was nothing to worry
about aside from “Don’s grandstanding” because he was actually twenty-seven.
56

Besides keeping the readers of the Warner Club News abreast of all relationships,
marriages, births, and practical jokes happening on Stage 5, Westheimer would praise the
accomplishments of his colleagues. For example, in a May 1940 column, Westheimer dissected
the intricacies of the firing equipment on the miniature boats for the Sea Hawk. The July 1941
column is especially pertinent, as Westheimer writes,
“It has been said that Don Siegel is a genius without talent. If this is true one may be sure that
the latter part refers to his news-making ability. At last, however, this month he enters the
domain of headlines with the transfer of his offices to larger quarters above the Technical
office. The Montage Department now has an Executive office (housing Mr. Siegel) an

101

Assistant Executive office (housing Mr. DuBrul) a cutting room for Mr. Leicester, and an
outer office for Assistant Director Fred Taylor and Prop Man Pat Patterson.”
57

Westheimer’s description highlights how the organization of the Montage Department mimicked
Special Effects. Like a series of Russian nesting dolls, the Montage Department was essentially a
studio within a studio within a studio. In addition, the Montage Department’s move into new
offices validates the formal recognition of the Montage Department taking place apart from
Special Effects.
This new recognition is established in Blues in the Night (Anatole Litvak, 1941), which
marks the first film Siegel is integrated into the production process officially and given title
credits for his montage work. Various documents related to the film mention Siegel explicitly,
including Inter-Office Communications, notes from the Research Department
58
, and the
Production Notes. There is an especially detailed Inter-Office Communication dated July 9, 1941
from Wright to Wallis about confusion over the montages for New Orleans Blues.
59
The letter
details the difficulty in getting the different departments to work together. Wright writes,
In answer to your letter asking me why, after you had OK’d the first two Montages for
the above picture to Don Siegel, he didn’t go ahead and shoot them, for your information he
took these Montages to Blanke and Litvak to show them that he had gotten your OK, and
Blanke told him not to go ahead with these two Montages, but to prepare the third, as what
developed in the third might have some bearing on the first two. Since that time, Siegel has
tried to see Blanke many, many times so that he could go ahead on the first two Montages,
but Blanke told him not to do this, but we would have to do the third one first.
This is quite a routine, and I would suggest that you get Blanke and Siegel in your office
and settle it once and for all, that after you have OK’d Montages then Siegel is to go ahead
and shoot them and not show them to Directors or Supervisors, as this is what causes all the
confusion.
I have told Siegel not to figure writing any long, involved Montages where we use the
cast for a week, as per your instructions, so when you have the two of them in your office
Siegel is going to take up with you the matter of the third Montage to get the idea that YOU
want.

102

The reason this confusion all started is because I keep after the different departments to
get work done, and Siegel came into my office last night in desperation to get me to move in
on this Montage situation so that he could go ahead.”
60

This letter exposes the difficulty Siegel faced in 1941 with an ill-defined chain of command.
Wright displaces the blame for unfinished montages Wallis directed at Siegel onto Litvak and
Associate Producer Henry Blanke. The last two paragraphs offer Wright’s indirect critique of
directors and supervisors for throwing wrenches in what he feels should be a well-oiled
production line and suggest how Siegel felt comfortable going over Litvak and Blanke in order
to get the work done. The letter also conveys how Siegel’s Montage Department is responsible
for working with other departments to achieve a successful finished picture.
Another conversation surrounding Blues in the Night references the use of found footage
often implemented in montage. In an Inter-office communication from August 29, 1941,
61

DeLeon Anthony contacts Wallis about Fox Legal Department’s refusal to sell footage from a
Fox Film Library short called Modern Dixie.
62
Anthony was worried they might not get access to
the stock footage because of fears over how African-Americans would be represented. Anthony
insinuates Siegel already has film stock to work with but is worried about Fox signing off on its
inclusion in the finished film. That same day, Wallis sends a telegraph message to Wilk asking
him, “Will you please contact Truman Talley point out to him all we want is 70 or 80 feet of
cotton growing, cypress swamps farming in the south, etc. for use in montages in our picture
New Orleans Blues.”
63
Wallis goes on to say the “Negroes portrayed in film will not be
identifiable but in any case willing give Fox News legal release for use of footage in question.”
64

For Anthony and Wallis it was imperative to get the Fox Film Library’s release of stock shots of
Southern plantations and anxiety over the issue of African-American representation was
unfounded.
Siegel’s official integration into the production process results in more explicit oversight
from Wallis. On September 5, 1941, Siegel sends an Inter-Office Communication to Wallis
about the timeline for finishing two montages for Blues in the Night. Siegel writes,
I understand from Owen Marks that you gave your O.K. on the ‘Travel’ montage. This is
the montage showing the various members of the band hitchhiking and playing their
different instruments. Mr. Litvak wants me to take out the shot of Pat Lane singing. This
is a very short flash, which I shot with sound in case you want to hear her voice. I feel we

103

should at least see her singing in order to establish her part in the band. If you want this
shot out of the montage it will necessitate remaking the montage optically – a delay of
two days. For the montage following the jail sequence I have all the stock scenes.
Yesterday I shot the close shots of negroes working which we shall use in
superimposition. Mr. Forbstein just informed me that I can’t have the music before next
Wednesday. This means we shall have the montage out two days later – a week from
Friday.”
65

Siegel’s letter showcases the shooting experience he gained in charge of montages. His appeal to
Wallis to preserve a shot of Priscilla Lane singing is accompanied by his threat of a delay if
Wallis forces Siegel to eliminate the shot. Siegel also mentions shooting close-ups of African-
Americans for superimposition over the stock scenes from Fox.
While Siegel was encountering increased oversight in practical ways, his description of
the actual montage process demonstrates his continued creative freedom. For the film, Siegel
was tasked with showing how Richard Whorf as jazz pianist Jigger Pine was losing his ability to
play. Siegel focused on the five musicians who formed a jazz quintet around the piano player.
“Each finger of a hand represented a musician. In montages we showed the ‘hand’ in split screen,
playing their music against a map of the States as the ‘hand’ traveled across the map.”
66
To
convey the pianist’s waning ability, Siegel had a piano built with keys made of marshmallows.
When Jigger struck the keyboard his fingers stuck to the keys effectively immobilizing his
playing; representing the mental and physical challenges facing the pianist. While Haskin loved
the montages when he saw them, he was worried because both Litvak and Wallis had clauses in
their contract stating they each should be the first to see the montages. Haskin and Siegel’s
ingenious solution was to make a duplicate print and screen at the same time, albeit in separate
projection rooms, the finished montages to Litvak and Wallis. After the separate screenings both
men simultaneously demanded the other see the montage, unaware this had already taken place.
“Wallis instructed Haskin to have Litvak see the montages as soon as possible. Litvak thought
that, when convenient, I should run with Wallis” (Siegel 64-5). Siegel learned there were
creative ways to work around the strictures of the studio and took to heart Litvak’s criticism of
the montage, in which he advocated for decisive camera movement. Litvak argued Siegel should
have shot someone walking past the poster to create a reason for the camera movement through a
dolly or a pan.

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The Production Notes for Blues in the Night also reflect Siegel’s formal role in the
production process. Robert S. Taplinger, Publicity Director, writes, “After a month’s search, 44
extra and bit players resembling Betty Field were obtained for a series of Montage shots which
will give the effect on the screen of forty-four Betty Fields.”
67
Taplinger extols the work that
went into the picture, writing, “During two weeks of production, Litvak became a roving director
and supervised four separate units at four different locations. Priscilla Lane, Carson, Kazan,
Halop and Whitney worked in the studio’s train shed. The montage department photographed
Richard Whorf. Wally Ford worked in a rain sequence. Betty Field recorded two numbers in the
recording room.”
68
While Taplinger emphasizes Litvak’s role as director, he also refers obliquely
to the work Siegel describes shooting with Whorf at the marshmallow piano. Siegel’s increasing
prestige within the lot was also noted outside the lot in The Hollywood Reporter, which praised
“the imaginative montage by Don Siegel” on October 30, 1941, in its review of the “strange and
interesting combination of hot music and straight melodrama” that is Blues in the Night. On the
same day, Variety also mentions “Don Siegel’s montages are effective.”
69
Perhaps Siegel’s
innovative use of marshmallows impressed the reviewers.

“I would just as soon see him go through the whole picture without wearing a hat.”
70

In Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage, Umberto Eco calls the film “a very
modest aesthetic achievement” in comparison to the films of Sergei Eisenstein. Rather than
dismissing Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942), however, Eco explains why he finds it “a great
example of cinematic discourse, a palimpsest for the future students of twentieth-century
religiosity, a paramount laboratory for semiotic research in textual strategies” and moreover, a
cult film.
71
As a palimpsest, the film also reveals the trust Hal Wallis placed in Don Siegel to
execute a competent montage. From his consternation over Humphrey Bogart in hats to his
tweaking of the first and last scenes of the film, Wallis was instrumental in overseeing the
production of Casablanca. His vision and influence over the film is indicative of the importance
of the producer in the studio system. An Inter-Office Communication from Tenny Wright to Carl
Jules Weyl, the film’s art director, outlines how the producer was the ultimate authority during
this time.
72
If Weyl needed approval, clarified Wright, he should seek out Curtiz first and then
move up the hierarchy to Wallis.

105

After seeing editor Owen Marks’ rough cut, Wallis decided to finesse the beginning and
ending of the film. In addition, he assigned to Siegel the film’s opening montage of a globe
spinning and refugees crossing a map of the world.
73
Wallis wrote to Siegel in an Inter-Office
Communication from August 1, 1942, “For the opening of the picture, immediately preceding
the montage of the refugees, we would like to have a spinning globe – an unusual, interesting
shot, sketchily lighted. As the globe’s spinning slackens and stops, the camera zooms up to the
general vicinity of our locale, and at that point you can dissolve to your montage. Will you
please discuss this with Mike Curtiz before you shoot it.”
74
The memo refers explicitly to Siegel
shooting footage for the montage that ends up in the film, which started as an unproduced play
entitled Everybody Comes to Rick’s.
75
Jack Warner purchased the play with an eye to casting
George Raft as Rick and Hedy Lamarr as Ilsa.
76
After Raft declined the role, Warner briefly
considered Dennis Morgan for Rick, Anne Sheridan for Ilsa, and Ronald Reagan as Victor
Laszlo, the Czech underground leader. This trio was announced in a press release in January
1942.
77

Initially the screenplay was assigned to the Epstein twins, Julius and Philip, who were
also eventually tasked with getting David O. Selznick to loan Ingrid Bergman to Warner Bros.
Although the Epstein brothers visited Selznick before writing the script, their assurances that
“it’s a lot of junk like Algiers” supposedly won him over.
78
While the play originally featured the
tough American, Rick Blaine, aided by Sam, a black piano player, Wallis was so impressed after
seeing Hazel Scott perform at the Uptown Cafe Society in New York that he wrote Trilling about
changing the role of Sam to a woman. In a conversation across Inter-Office Communications in
early February 1942, Wallis and Steve Trilling traded thoughts on which female African-
American singers could play Sam. Trilling suggested Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horn, who he
described as “an excellent talent - a very pretty light colored girl” although he also expressed
consternation over why MGM “would want to sign her for a term.”
79
Despite Wallis’s desire to
pursue Scott, they ultimately cast Dooley Wilson on loan from Paramount at $500 a week for
seven weeks.
80
Peter Lorre, who although owned by Warner Bros., was on loan to Universal and
had to be retrieved at $1,750 per week.
81
When the Epstein twins were put to work on Frank
Capra’s Why We Fight series, Warner assigned Howard Koch to finish the script. Curtiz started
shooting before the production had a scripted ending and Koch was later surprised to find the
Epstein brothers, recently returned from Washington D.C., also churning out pages for the

106

project.
82
Curtiz continued pulling pages from different directions; this chaos may have
ultimately helped Casablanca as Bergman was unsure how to play her feelings for Rick and
Victor.
83
After principal shooting was complete, Wallis realized the film needed a better start and
finish. This confusion over how to end the film was reflected in the two different last lines
recorded by Bogart. In an Inter-Office-Communication on August 7, Wallis asked Owen Marks
to record Bogart saying, “Luis, I might have known you’d mix your patriotism with a little
larceny.”
84
However, in an IOC two weeks later Wallis told Curtiz, “The new line to be spoken
by Bogart when we get him is as follows:
Rick:
OUR expenses – (pause) – Luis, I think this is the beginning of a
beautiful friendship.
85

Just as Rick’s last line acknowledges a newfound faith in Captain Renault, Casablanca marks
the moment when Warner Bros. officially recognized Siegel in his capacity as head of the
montage department. On June 15, 1942, a Change Payroll Notice issued for Don Siegel switched
his $135.00 per week plus $65.00 bonus rate from the Special Effects Department to the
Montage Department and from Technical to General Payroll.
86

Casablanca may or may not have served as the germinating point of a prank so wild two
men have been given credit for the dastardly deed while others have refuted it actually took
place. On the fifth day of filming, May 29, 1942, word reached the cast that John Barrymore had
died after an appearance on Rudy Vallee’s radio show. Barrymore’s funeral was held in East Los
Angeles on June 2, 1942. Lorre, Heinreid, and Bogart concocted a bizarre scheme to kidnap the
deceased John Barrymore from the funeral home and prop him up at Errol Flynn’s house. In his
autobiography, Heinreid admits to giving Lorre money for bribing the funeral home but denies
laying in wait to see Flynn’s shocked reaction. However, in his autobiography My Wicked,
Wicked Ways, Flynn fingers Raoul Walsh as the ringleader of the whole charade.
87
Looking
back at Casablanca’s daily production and progress reports, Bogart started work at 1:45pm on
June 1 and 9:00am on June 2, and Lorre started at 9:30am on both days. If they were architects
of the prank, their nocturnal activities would certainly have made for long shooting days. Walsh
recounts his version of the story in the documentary The Men Who Made the Movies (Richard
Schickel, 1973) and Gene Fowler claims to have maintained vigil over Barrymore’s body the
night before the funeral.

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The grandest story of the naughty “Nineties” becomes the gayest picture of the fighting
“Forties”!
88

One adventure of the “fighting forties” director Raoul Walsh unequivocally was in charge
of was Gentleman Jim, which follows the conventional narrative of a protagonist whose desires
catalyze the story. Jim Corbett, played by Errol Flynn, wants to achieve success in the boxing
ring. The overall editing of the film emphasizes Corbett’s love of the sport as pure and untainted
by base economic concerns although all the obstacles he faces stem from his working-class Irish
roots. These include Corbett’s transparent attempts to conceal his lower-class status at the
Olympic Club, the discrimination Corbett and his friend Walter Lowrie (Jack Carson) experience
at the hands of the elitist Olympic Club members, and the seemingly insurmountable sum of
money the Corbett camp must raise to meet John L. Sullivan’s (Ward Bond) purse. As a light-
hearted Horatio Alger story centered on the real-life figure of “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, all it
takes to make it, according to Father Burke (Arthur Shields), is “the right hand of God and the
help of a very good left.” One of the more entertaining themes of the film is the development of
the contentious Corbett family dynamic. All three of the Corbett brothers are amateur pugilists
and any perceived slight is an excuse to head to the barn. The editing by Jack Killifer highlights
the humor in the Corbett definition of conflict resolution by foregrounding a character yelling,
“The Corbetts are at it again!” before each fight. The comedy maintains its blithe tone by playing
every scene for laughs. Even boxing’s unruly past – boxers fighting with steel pipes clenched in
their fists – becomes a moment of humorous exposition.
For the most part, the montages by Don Siegel in Gentleman Jim adhere to classical
Hollywood conventions in their compression of information and time. While the primary
narrative function of the montages is to convey the passage of time and the corresponding
changes in the characters’ lives, they also highlight the creativity of Siegel’s approach. Three of
the montages are particularly striking. The training sequence montage initially feels like a
haphazard collection of shots of Corbett jabbing and dancing around the ring. However, it soon
becomes clear they embody Corbett’s strengths as a boxer. The challenge facing was how to
express Corbett’s character through a training montage. The solution is a series of close-ups of
Corbett’s feet hopping, skipping and setting up to deliver a punch interspersed with shots of
Corbett throwing jabs and punches. Finally, Corbett is shown smoothing out his hair, suggesting
a self-conscious habit born out of not quite belonging. The training montage joins the

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components that make Corbett a successful fighter and, in Siegel’s hands, becomes the filmic
expression of hard work and skill (unsurprisingly, Flynn looks good too!).
After Corbett’s illegal fight at the wharf, a montage encapsulates the progression of
Corbett’s career. Shots of a moving train dissolve into newspaper headlines, which are
superimposed with crowds of boxing fans. While they resemble other montages and the
compression of time, they call attention to the way montage breaks with continuity editing
patterns. The montage sequence chafes against the overall classical paradigm of invisible
seamless transitions by assertively, energetically calling attention to its editing. In the montage
detailing Corbett’s progression through the boxing ranks, Siegel assembles a rapid cutting style
dominated by dynamic movement within the frame of the shot. Siegel’s editing also challenges
the spatial orientation reinforced by classical continuity editing. David Bordwell writes about
continuity editing, “From shot to shot, tonality, movement, and the center of compositional
interest shift enough to be distinguishable but not enough to be disturbing.”
89
Although Siegel’s
montages are not “disturbing,” they do evoke Viktor Shklovsky’s concept ostranenie or
defamiliarization. In Siegel’s montage, the audience is invited to perceive everyday objects – a
train, a newspaper – in unfamiliar ways. This defamiliarization enhances the viewer’s perception
of the scene. The train wheels charging forward are no longer just pieces of machinery; they
symbolize Corbett traveling all over the country and also his progress in the ring. As an
interlude, which stands out stylistically because of its rapid-fire juxtaposition of shots of train
wheels, excited fans, and rotating newspaper headlines, the montage also disrupts the spatial
orientation maintained throughout the rest of the film. In fact, it invites the viewer to refocus him
or herself within the space of the montage. Usually, this space is unmoored from the conventions
of crosscutting and eyeline matches to present an expressive, subjective space. This is apparent
in the first part of Siegel’s montage. However, in the second half the acceleration of clips
suddenly stops and pauses in a bar for a quick debate between Corbett’s manager, Billy Delaney
(William Frawley), and a patron skeptical of Corbett’s caliber. The patron grudgingly admits
Corbett’s skill against his last opponent but points to a still photograph of boxer Charlie Mitchell
on the wall of the bar as a “real” threat. The camera slowly moves in for a close-up of the still
photograph when suddenly, Siegel’s editing breaks through the static image and the viewer is
suddenly plunged into the ring mid-fight. After Corbett delivers another crowd-stunning

109

knockout, the film freezes on his features and the camera slowly pulls out to reveal Corbett as the
new photograph on the wall of the bar where Delaney collects money from side-bets.
While this scene is elegant and exciting, it takes dramatic license with history around two
issues - when Corbett actually fought and the degree to which they were staged. On p.115 of the
Final Script this montage with its repeated use of newspaper headlines is called “Corbett’s Rise
to Fistic Fame,” and the script reads:
The exact details of this MONTAGE will be worked out in detail with the Special Effects
boys, but the purpose is to dramatize briefly and colorfully Corbett’s rise in the boxing
ranks of America. CORBETT KNOCKS OUT KILRAIN IN 6 ROUNDS – AL DALY
IN 3 – MIKE McGUINNESS IN 4 – CHARLIE MITCHELL IN 8 – then DRAWS
WITH THE GREAT PETER JACKSON, greatest of all negro fighters, in 61! These
fights are dramatized with newspaper and Police Gazette headlines, perhaps INTERCUT
with FLASH SHOTS or SUPERIMPOSED SHOTS of Corbett fighting and the roar of
crowds (STOCK). We see photographs of Corbett’s opponents on the canvas, knocked
out, and photographs of Corbett with admiring crowds, receiving big purses, etc. There
should not be too much actual fighting in this MONTAGE.
90

While the details depended on the “Special Effects boys,” Producer Robert Buckner requested
the Research Department on July 7, 1942 to generate a list of Corbett’s fights leading up to the
Sullivan fight. These fights were to be encapsulated in a montage and the Head of the Research
Department, Herman Lissauer, informed Buckner that there was only one real fight between the
time Corbett fought Jack Kilrain and the fight against Sullivan. In contrast, “the montage – as
written in the script – includes the fight with Charley Mitchell which did not occur until 1894 –
two years after the Sullivan fight. Only by taking dramatic license could that fight be included in
this montage.”
91
Lissauer continues, pointing out the other fights during this time were
exhibitions or “carefully fixed by Corbett so that he couldn’t lose. Such a fight was that with
Mike McGuinness… Mike McGuinness is actually a fictional name used by Corbett in his
autobiography as he had been threatened by the lawyer of the original McGuinness.”
92

Regardless of his reservations, Lissauer provided Buckner with a list of seven fights for the
montage on July 9, 1942. Lissauer writes, “Most of these were exhibitions – many of them faked,
but they should serve to build the montages you want.”
93
As the finished montage shows, the
actual timeline and staged quality of Corbett’s fights was disregarded in favor of dramatizing his

110

rise to prominence. The loose approach to historical accuracy in the film was noticed by The
Philadelphia Inquirer on November 26, 1942, which writes, “unless you’re a sports fan and a
stickler for unadorned truth, Vincent Lawrence and Horace McCoy (screenwriters) have put
together a better-than-average prizefight yarn that gives muscular, handsome Mr. Flynn ample
scope for his talents.”
Another montage punctuates Corbett’s highly anticipated fight with Sullivan. The scenes
quickly transition from the space of the boxing ring to the fans waiting eagerly to learn of the
outcome of the fight. The importance of the boxing match’s result is emphasized by the depiction
of fans all over the country waiting eagerly. Every socioeconomic walk of life is represented and
each new group is accented with dissolve shots of telephone poles. The montage stresses the
power of technology to connect the nation at the same time, and as the images in the montage
change, the clicking of the telegraph operators unifies the interlude. In their statement on sound
film, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov argue for the contrapuntal use of sound. While the
aural sound of the telegraph clicking does stem from the visual image at the start of the montage,
it also embodies what Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov viewed as the enormous power of
sound when approached as a “new montage element (as a factor divorced from the visual
image).”
94
The sound of the telegraph clicking drives the entire montage, adding a sense of
urgency and immediacy to the broadcast of the fight reports.

Hollywood and D.C. Mix Politics and Propaganda
The cheerful pugilism at the heart of Gentleman Jim in 1942 contrasts with the somber
and didactic tone of Mission to Moscow (Michael Curtiz, 1943) based on the book by Joseph E.
Davies, Ambassador to Russia from 1936 to 1938. Siegel shared credit with Leicester for the
montages in the credit titles and the records from the film indicate the increasingly active role the
Montage Department played throughout the film’s production process.
95
The compelling context
surrounding the production and reception of Mission to Moscow (Michael Curtiz, 1943)
represents the intersection of international politics, popular culture, and wartime diplomacy. The
film, an uncritical adaptation of Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph E. Davies
eponymous book, reflects Davies’ embrace of Soviet-American relations as a way to win the war
and ensure a stable peace. In fact, despite a denial by White House officials that any such
meeting ever occurred, Jack Warner had insisted in his 1965 ghostwritten memoirs that President

111

Roosevelt implored him in a secret meeting to make the film.
96
Regardless of which high-
ranking Washington player encouraged Warner, then a lieutenant colonel assigned to public
relations, the film certainly embodies the recommendations contained within the “Government
Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry” issued by the Office of War Information
(OWI). Given to studios in June 1942, this OWI manual called on the studios to include pro-
Allied and pro-Soviet themes in upcoming releases. Mission to Moscow begins with a prologue
where Davies speaks directly to the camera and by extension to viewers about Soviet leaders and
their commitment to world peace. In her book Running Time: Films from the Cold War, Nora
Sayre discerns that “in no other film have I seen so many spinning globes. Again and again,
world leaders pensively twirl the spheres while asserting that peace (or war) is possible.”
97

Aside from its pro-Stalin stance, Mission to Moscow showcases the increasing
importance of Siegel and the Montage Department within the studio.
98
The Montage Department
was integrated into the production process early, which is reflected in the Research Department’s
careful accounting of who asked for information and when. The increased attention the Montage
Department received at this time stems from two factors. First, the good work Siegel and his
team churned out for the previous three years was finally achieving recognition beyond Special
Effects. Second, the film’s subject matter and setting were perfect for the aesthetics of montage.
More than any other technique, Russian film is associated with the practice of montage. The
films of Eisenstein, Kuleshov, Pudovkin, and Vertov were familiar to American filmmakers and
mimicking the style of Russian montage lent the film a sense of aesthetic authenticity. Siegel was
in the perfect position to capitalize on this fact looking to increase recognition for his department
and prestige for himself. This is clear from the attention his work received from heads of other
departments, the film’s producer, Robert Buckner, its director, Michael Curtiz, and even Jack
and Harry Warner.
Siegel’s interactions with Herman Lissauer, the Head of the Research Department,
suggest that Siegel and company were slowly being accepted as just another cog in the
production machine. An Inter-Office Communication from December 28, 1942 from Lissauer to
“Siegel and Leicester – Montage Dept” cautions against depicting mastheads from real
newspapers, Paris Soir and London Daily Mail, in one of the montages. Lissauer suggests
changing the names because of a sentence in the script, “The newspapers are lying to us,” and it
was studio policy not to use mastheads of newspapers without their permission.
99
Lissauer

112

communicates constantly with Siegel about the montages for Mission to Moscow throughout
January and February. On January 8, 1943 there is an Inter-Office Communication from Lissauer
to Siegel regarding the Parliamentary scene and the proper procedure in which the House comes
to Order.
100
Another Inter-Office Communication from January 22, 1943 reads,
I would like to emphasize the importance of not designating the Senator as coming from
any state in particular. The Chairman should simply say, “The Chair recognized the
Senator”, even if this is not the exact form used in the Senate. But I am afraid that if you
designate the state, you will do two things: 1. You will identify the Senator, which we
want to avoid. 2. You may run into difficulties with the Censorship Board of the state
(New Jersey) and there may be delay in getting the picture exhibited in that state. I repeat
this merely because I think it is important.
101

Lissaeur refers to montages explicitly in an Inter-Office Communication from January 28 and 29
where he references “Montage: European Tour Page C” and “Montage Scene 250-259.” He also
provides small corrections, like pointing out that Delbos was misspelled throughout and noting
the mistake in the phrase “As Von Ribbentrop and Stalin’s signatures are affixed,” as Stalin was
present but Molotov actually signed the non-aggression pact. Aside from direct communication
between Siegel and Lissauer, other members of the Montage Department were keeping the
Research Department busy as well.
Siegel’s integration into the production process is clear from an increase in appearances
in Inter-Office Communications regarding the picture. On January 21, 1943 producer Robert
Buckner wrote to Jack L. Warner and ccd Tenny Wright, Steve Trilling, and Don Siegel. In the
memo, Buckner outlines what needs to be completed for the picture with an emphasis on the
montages. The copy of this memo in the archives includes a hand-written Siegel or S in a circle
after Buckner’s points about montages.
102
For example: Point 5 reads “The Industrial Tour
Montage, an important montage to cover Davies’ inspection of Soviet resources; also includes
brief scenes with dialogue between Davies and Soviet workers, American engineers. This is
being worked out in careful detail with Siegel;” Point 7 reads “The Isolationist Montage, an
extremely important montage now being worked out in minute detail. Siegel picked up today
some shots for this in the House of Representatives set;” Point 8 says “Montage of America
listening to the President’s quarantine speech, as in script;” Point 9 reads “Montage of Davies
tour of European capitols just before his return to America; visits to Paderewski in Poland,

113

Schussnig in Austria, Benes in Czechoslovakia. Brief scenes in offices;” and Point 11 outlines
“Shooting Walter Huston’s section of all montages; mentioned here in view of Huston’s date to
report to Goldwyn for another picture.” This was important to stay abreast of when they were
shooting Huston since montages operated independently from the principal cinematography.
Point 12 reads “Sound track of Huston’s voice to cover all montages in which he does not
personally appear;” and Point 13 confesses “Exact final shots and dialogue of the picture, to be
decided upon after conference. Koch and I have definite ideas on this and will present them;”
and finally Point 14 mentions “Special Effects, already taken up with Roy Davidson and work
begun; map for montage at end, miniature of League of Nations, Pearl Harbor bombing, etc.
Other possible special effect requirements will be determined when all montages are detailed in
final form.”
103
Buckner closes his letter by highlighting the role of montage in the finished film,
The vital importance to the final picture of this work remaining to be done must not be
underestimated or hastily pressured. The montages carry an enormous amount of the
story itself and its total effectiveness is largely dependent upon their being perfect. The
documentary nature of the scenes already shot demand smooth connections and the clear
exposition of political points, which only these montages can carry across. Every shot,
line of dialogue, key, miniature, and special effect in these montages is being prepared in
exacting detail for their absolute necessity and nothing more. When they are submitted
with a budget to the Production Department they will be a blueprint for what is essential
to the final picture, and these are being prepared with all possible speed.
104

Buckner’s plea to Warner and Wright elevates Siegel’s role in the production process by calling
his work “essential to the final picture” and insinuating he should be given leeway in terms of
budgeting as well.
105

The following month, in February, various members of the Montage Department fact-
checked information, including Leicester’s inquiry about the “source and complete verse from
bible which contains beating swords into plough shares.” The Research Department responded
that the phrase comes from Isaiah Chapter 2 Verse 4 – “… nation shall not lift up sword against
nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
106
The Montage department also borrowed a
copy of the book Mission to Moscow and asked who accompanied Davies on the stand when he
made a speech at Madison Square Garden.
107
Leicester submitted a German and Russian version
of the nonaggression pact for checking on February 12, 1943 and the next day, Lissauer asked

114

Pat Patterson of the Montage Department to go over the Russian-German nonaggression pact
with Mr. Jay Leyda.
Leyda was hired as a technical advisor on the film in a roundabout way: Ambassador
Litvinov suggested to Davies that Warner Bros. get in touch with Artkino Pictures, Inc. in New
York to obtain more recent film from Russia. In turn, Nicholas Napoli, the representative of
Artkino, offered all their film material and the technical assistance of a qualified associate - Jay
Leyda - in a letter to Davies.
108
Leyda’s contract was for $150 a week for six weeks, including
round-trip railroad fare.
109
Aside from technical advising, primarily for the Research Department,
Leyda provided certain stills from Sovfoto.
110
His duties for the Research Department involved
correcting cast lists,
111
suggesting the film adopt titles like Premier Molotov instead of difficult
given names like Vyacheslav Molotov, and the translation of Russian passages.
112
Leyda’s
consultation on the Russian-German nonaggression pact exposed translation errors. Thus
Lissauer sent a curt Inter-Office Communication on February 15, 1943 to Siegel, which reads “I
learn that in the Montage involving the German and Russian versions of the
NONAGGRESSION TREATY, Earle Hayes has made a number of mistakes in spelling and in
text, and if there is the slightest likelihood that any part of this will be legible, these mistakes
should by all means be corrected.”
113

In contrast to the abrasive tone of most of Lissauer’s missives, his letter to Davies on
February 3, 1943 is effusive.
114
Rather than simply send Davies a copy of his book with
autographs from those involved in the production, Lissauer writes a letter which reads, “I
consider it a great privilege to have had a part in the work on this motion picture which will, I
anticipate, have a markedly beneficial effect upon American public sentiment towards our great
ally Russia. Your book, it seems to me, is one of the soundest and most important works of the
period.”
115
This moment calls attention to the turmoil lingering under the surface of the film
industry over Communism, loyalty, and patriotism. Just three years earlier, in July 1940, the
Warner Club News reported on an address by President Harry M. Warner to over five thousand
employees gathered in the carpenter shop. Warner proclaimed, “We don’t want anyone in our
employ who belongs to any Bund…. Neither do we want any Communists, Fascists, Nazis or
other un-American believers.”
116

His speech also included a plea to weed out enemies from within the business in order to
be prepared for an enemy from without. Warner cautioned, “If there are any enemies among you

115

– enemies that affect your job, your company, your faith or your country, you should know them.
Weed them out. In union there is strength. Don’t let anybody say anything about anybody’s faith
as long as that is a Christian faith.”
117
Warner further mentioned Arthur Cornelius of the FBI
who would “gladly look into” any “misled” workers.
118
In response to the meeting an article
entitled “3,411 Strong” responded, “We must act and continue to act. This does not mean that we
must go out and prosecute and persecute. But instead to teach and lead those who are slightly
‘pink’ into the right way of thinking and acting for GOD and COUNTRY.”
119
The article calls
on Warner Club Members to support democracy just like the studio, announcing, “Just as Warner
Brothers gave to the motion picture world ‘Juarez,’ a purely propaganda picture to show the
Mexican again that there was an idol in his history who fought for the principles of democracy –
as they also gave to the people of this country ‘The Confessions of a Nazi Spy’ to point out to all
of us the danger of the enemies within; and as they continue to give to the nation and its public
schools those remarkable patriotic shorts – not for profit but for the good they accomplish, so
must we carry on, in our own meager way, the story of Americanism.”
120
Three years later,
Americanism would be conflated with support for Russia, then still an ally. All three films -
Mission to Moscow, Juarez, and Confessions of a Nazi Spy exemplify Warner Bros. foray into
politics, which often resulted in a clash between fact and fiction.
The impetus to clear everything ultimately with Jack Warner is apparent from an Inter-
Office Communication from Robert Buckner on February 5, 1943. Buckner writes, “Dear J.L.
Herewith, as promised, the ending of Mission to Moscow. I believe it’s an excellent job, which
contains every element we wanted to have and also satisfies everything, which was on Davies’
mind. Don Siegel is equally enthused as I about it and says he can stage it with great dramatic
effect. He will take this ending, if it meets with your approval, and do his breakdown in full
detail. He has described it to me and it sounds excellent. I will appreciate your reaction to it as
soon as possible.”
121
Siegel’s desire for increased responsibility is discernible between the lines
of this memo. Not only is Siegel handling the montages throughout the film, now he is actually
shooting the film’s ending. Buckner also obliquely refers to Davies, who commented on the
film’s progress throughout its entire production. Davies even went so far as to send a Western
Union Wire suggesting the use of a “male Cossack chorus in the ending as it would be most
effective.”
122
On February 9, 1943 J.L. Warner wrote to Messrs. Trilling, Buckner, Forbstein,
and Siegel, “Please be at my office at 6:00 o’clock Wednesday for a short conference on the

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montage finish for Mission to Moscow.”
123
Buckner sent an Inter-Office Communication on
February 16, 1943 to Jack Warner regarding the ending in the map room scene. Buckner
recounts a discussion with Siegel, who assured Buckner he could film the scene without using
Oscar Homolka or Walter Huston, and Buckner asks for J.L.’s approval. He ends by saying “The
Montages are coming along in great shape and very fast.”
124
This memo emphasizes aspects of
the montages that Warner would approve of including the efficiency with which they were being
completed and Siegel’s ability to work around calling Homolka and Huston back for a day of
work. The story file includes a revised continuity for the film’s ending from March 9, 1943. The
last scene intercuts from the map room between the large map and stock shots of the Nazi army
in retreat as Davies intones the defense of Moscow by the Red Army paid for time – “Time for
the Fascist tide to shatter its strength against the iron wall of human freedom.”
125

Harry Warner’s comments about the film further reveal the importance placed on the
montages in Mission to Moscow and the increasing recognition the Montage Department
received within the studio. The political ramifications of Mission to Moscow were at the
forefront of Harry Warner’s mind when he made a list of suggestions focused solely on the
montages on March 20, 1943. His recommendations include the depiction of the German army as
too strong and commented, “Too much German might in montages first half of film, particularly
opening scenes in Berlin prior to the Schacht scenes when Davies first arrives in Germany.”
126
In
general Warner felt there was “too much German might displayed throughout the picture.”
127

Warner worried the American army looked weak in contrast. Warner’s concerns about the
montages stretched from a large-scale worry - the American army looking weak in comparison to
the Germans - to small-scale issues. Specifically, Warner requested “a small cut in montage of
long trucking shot with Germans heiling Hitler coming to an officer in brown shirt and hat.”
128

Warner wanted the person eliminated from the scene because he claimed to have noticed the
person in stock shots and other pictures.
129
In response, there is a note
130
typed into the
document, which reads, “We feel this is possibly one of our stage scenes and he might mean an
actor used in Siegel’s montage. H.M. was vague and we will have to run with him to spot this
particular shot.”
131
This annotation to Warner’s suggestions is particularly interesting because it
attributes Siegel as responsible for the montages. While the Germans could not be portrayed as
too strong, Warner was perturbed because the American Bund members looked too soft. Warner
felt the Bund members should come across as nefarious and hoped the production could “get the

117

stock shot from Capra’s “Nazis Strike Back” in which we see Bund members beating up heckler
at Fritz Kuhn Madison Square Garden meeting.”
132
The annotated response considers this
impossible from a technical standpoint. Not only would it be hard to match the timing of the film
to the stock shot but they “would have to hold the entire section to make action clear where our
stock shot is merely a three or four foot flash.”
133
Finally, Warner was concerned about the
isolationist montage, which he felt did not do enough to “build up the isolationist speakers
opposing Davies.”
134
Instead Warner wanted someone to reference “the Soviet Air Force being
weak and inadequate.”
135
In 1943, Davies exchanged letters with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Press
Secretary, Steve T. Early, concerning how the film’s perpetuation of amicable Soviet-American
relations would result in victory and mentions the especially enthusiastic work Harry Warner
was doing to convey this message.
136

In retrospect, despite the film’s adherence to its source material, its lackluster reception
hints at the coming conflict of the Cold War. While Mission to Moscow embraced the mandate of
the OWI’s “Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry,” and is
unabashedly pro-Soviet, the film was met with critical condemnation. The Nation and The New
Republic both panned the film, arguing the pervasive use of stock shots in the film, which were
culled from Moscow-made films, represented a tacit endorsement of communism. In particular,
the film failed to address Russia’s relationship with Poland, Joseph Stalin’s purges, and the
Moscow Trials. Dr. Sidney Hook of New York University wrote: “What we are witnessing in
Mission to Moscow is a propaganda buildup for conducting purges and frame-ups in this country
on the Moscow style. It is a blow to democratic unity in America and effectively plays into
Goebbels’ hands.”
137
This sentiment was echoed in a letter to The New York Times dated May 6,
1943, from the philosopher John Dewey and Suzanne La Follette. Their letter lambasts the film’s
distortion of history writing, “The film Mission to Moscow is the first instance in our country of
totalitarian propaganda for mass consumption - a propaganda which falsifies history through
distortion, omission or pure invention of facts, and whose effect can only be to confuse the
public in its thought and its loyalties.”
138
Dewey and La Follette state the inaccuracies are
“alarming in a film presented as factual and documentary and introducing living historical
personalities.”
139
One personality unable to defend himself, since he was assassinated on Stalin’s
orders three years earlier, was Leon Trotsky. During the film’s pre-production, there arose a
debate about whether to portray Trotsky in Adolph Hitler’s pay. A letter from Trotsky’s widow,

118

Natalia Trotsky, urging them to change this plot point, complicated this decision.
140
On October
21, 1942, R.J. Obringer wrote to Morris Ebenstein in Warner Bros. New York that “Presumably
Col. Warner is willing to take the risk, somewhat along the lines of the risk involved when we
made “Confessions of a Nazi Spy”. Buckner claims this matter is one of the high dramatic scenes
of the picture and would materially affect the script by its deletion.”
141
On November 13, 1942,
Ebenstein warned Obringer the Trotsky sympathizers were planning to attack the picture to
examine in public the question of Trotsky’s guilt.
142
In addition, Ebenstein sketched out the
possibility of Mrs. Trotsky suing for libel.
143
Ultimately, Mission to Moscow links Trotsky with
Hitler, playing into the reasons critics attacked the film.
The press scion William Randolph Hearst also printed the letter by Professor Dewey and
Suzanne LaFollette as a presentation of the facts obscured by the film. Hearst argued this was the
democratic thing to do, defend American democracy against Bolshevism.
144
In response, Warner
sent a telegram to Hearst stating, “Warner Bros is not in politics. We made the picture as a
contribution to the war effort… Far from advocating communism we show the purge trials in a
manner that will make most Americans shake hands with themselves that our legal procedure is
so different and so much fairer. Naturally we have no objection to legitimate criticism but to
condemn a picture on basis of an attack by Trotsky partisans seems a startling thing for papers to
do. Trotsky’s gospel was revolution not only in Russia but throughout the world.”
145
Fans of the
film counseled Warner to ignore the film’s unfavorable press. One supporter wrote to Warner,
“The large and overwhelming majority of Americans despise Hearst and have not the least
regard for his views and opinions.”
146
This letter further mentioned that Orson Welles’ Citizen
Kane did not suffer because Hearst panned it. Other letter writers echoed this sentiment calling
Hearst pro-Nazi and referring to Mission to Moscow as a weapon against fifth column
propaganda emanating within the United States.
147
This was a belief shared by the lyricist Yip
Harburg
148
, who wrote personally to Jack Warner on MGM letterhead on May 19, 1943, “I’m
even more appreciative of your effort because you are the only Studio that is doing more than
making just the greatest pictures in the industry. You are doing something for mankind.”
149

Harburg signed his missive “Not a Communist.”
150
To which Warner responded, “Not only not a
Communist but as the late Will Rogers said ‘my folks did not come over on the Mayflower –
they met it.”
151
Ironically, eight years later Harburg would be blacklisted for suspected sympathy
with the American Communist Party.
152

119

Dat ol Debbil Montage
Unlike the embarrassment that was Mission to Moscow, This is the Army (Michael Curtiz,
1943) represented Warner Bros. doing its part for the war effort in an uncontroversial way. It
played on the anxieties of a war film but avoided any gore in favor of unabashed patriotism.
Released in August, This is the Army was based on Irving Berlin’s stage show “This is the Army:
A Soldier Show in Two Acts” of 1942. In December of 1942, Jack L. Warner, who was now
addressed as Colonel in Inter-Office Communications
153
, and producer Hal Wallis
154
sent the
Epstein brothers, Julius and Philip, to Detroit to see the show and converse with Berlin.
155
Wallis
had already raised the possibility of a film in a series of telegraphs to Berlin care of the Book
Cadillac Hotel in Detroit.
156
Warner’s relationship with the Epstein brothers was famously
contentious but they were adept at adaptations leading the charge on the screenplay for
Casablanca from the play Everybody Comes to Ricks. Warner gave the Epstein brothers’ names
to HUAC in 1952 and on a HUAC questionnaire the brothers responded to the query of whether
they ever belonged to a subversive organization with “Yes. Warner Bros.”
157

For the film, Colonel Warner requisitioned Lt. Ronald Reagan back from training at Fort
Roach to star along with George Murphy and Joan Leslie. This was a request the military was
happy to comply with and a great deal of correspondence in regards to This is the Army
demonstrates the cooperation between Hollywood and Washington D.C. around the war effort.
This synergy is established in a telegraph from Warner to the War Department Bureau of Public
Relations
158
requesting permission for Reagan to appear as a narrator in a fifteen-minute program
on the Blue Network for a Veterans Foreign Wars annual program.
159
The War Department
Bureau of Public Relations also screened the film and found nothing objectionable to the national
release or export of the film, Latin and South American countries excluded.
160
The War
Department asked Warner Bros. if they could use the sound track for a film entitled “War Comes
to America.”
161
The reissue of the film by the “God Bless America” Fund Trustees Herbert
Bayard Swope, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Gene Tunney, raised $7,000,000 in licensing fees for the
treasury of the Army Emergency Relief, which was set up to alleviate the hardship suffered by
families of the men of the Service.
162
Apart from patriotic fervor and business acumen, part of
Berlin’s excitement over the proposed film was due to the plans to shoot in Technicolor. A
Western Union Wire on October 2, 1942 from Wilk and Ebenstein to Warner explains Berlin
163

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is “a very practical man because he says if there are difficulties getting Technicolor cameras and
machines he agrees picture is to be made in black and white but he is relying upon you to do best
you can under circumstances in view of your conferences with him in which you assured him
you would use Technicolor.”
164
Since Technicolor took longer to process, every department
working on the film would feel the time crunch including the montage department.
Transforming Berlin’s show from stage to screen was eventually assigned to
screenwriters Casey Robinson and Claude Binyon and on November 13, 1942, Wallis informed
Robinson of his displeasure with the changes to the montage. Presumably Curtiz agreed as
Wallis writes, “Mike, too, feels that we should get a better idea for this – something that can be
done cleverly and with a lot less footage. The thing that I am afraid of in the Montage is that we
are not going to be able to get stock shots in Technicolor for the World Events portions.
Consequently, everything would have to be staged, including the historical events – and this
automatically rules the whole idea out. Will you give this some thought, and in the meantime I
will put the script through with changes and a not indicating that there will be a Montage to
cover the time lapse from 1918 to 1939.”
165
Here Wallis voices his fear that the montage as
originally written would be cost prohibitive. His memo highlights the important role stock
footage played in keeping costs down especially in montages encapsulating a great deal of time.
For Wallis, the new technology of Technicolor was wreaking havoc on a straightforward
compression of time montage. In response, Robinson proposes a more expressive montage to
Wallis on November 18, 1942. Robinson writes, “In reference to dat ol’ debbil Montage, Scene
65, is this idea to replace it too screwy?”
166
What follows is a description of a montage covering
the escalation of tension from 1919-1939. Robinson uses the dove in flight as a metaphor for
peace as the sky it flies against slowly darkens and grows stormy symbolizing the increasing
hostility of world events: “Thunder and lightning. The dove flies frantically whirling and darting,
vainly trying to find a place to light.”
167
This is followed by an announcer’s voice discussing
world events leading up to World War I. Robinson’s idea echoes the symbolism of Vorkapich’s
work. It’s unclear from these two memos whether Curtiz, Robinson, Siegel and Wallis were on
the same page. However, the reliance on stock footage to cut down on costs was reiterated in an
Inter-Office Communication Wallis writes to Lee Anthony. Wallis tells Anthony, “For our
picture “THIS IS THE ARMY”, we will have several sequences in Army camps and several
montages where we need long shots of masses of tanks, men marching, airplanes, etc., as

121

photographed and used in the Hollingshead Service shorts. Mike Curtiz is anxious to begin
selecting suitable material for our picture, and I will appreciate it if you will consult with Mike
some time next week, run some of the stuff you have with him in order to get his ideas, so that
we can begin to plan on just what we will use from stock and what we will have to shoot.”
168

This memo reveals how concerns over cost were solved by the careful selection of the
appropriate stock footage.
While the place of Siegel and his montage department is murky throughout these memos,
the title credits do include “Montages by Don Siegel and James Leicester.”
169
However, the
Second Unit Staff and Cast List for the film does not mention either Siegel or Leicester
suggesting their montage work was considered separate from the first and second units.
170
The
Weekly Production Costs for the film contains no category specifically for montage but instead
called for $21,822.74 for Trick, Miniature, and Glass shots.
171
These costs must have been
attributed to the Processing Department, which handled technical effects and glass shots, trick
camera, mechanical and optical scenes. While there is no budget specifically for montage, Siegel
is referred to as a Director of Montages in a 1942 Change Payroll Notice. Additionally, in a 1943
letter from W.G. Wallace to R.J. Obringer, Wallace asks about exercising Siegel’s option in the
Montage Department proving that when it came to finances, the Montage Department was
considered it’s own entity in 1943.
172
In other respects too montage work was treated as just one
more cog in the machine of the picture. This is demonstrated by an April 8, 1943 query from
Leicester to the Research Department about the exact date of the German invasion of Poland. As
with every other question fielded by Research, Herman Lissauer primly responded with an Inter-
Office Communication saying “This is to confirm information given by telephone: The date
Germany invaded Poland was September 1, 1939.”
173
Although Siegel was making a name for
himself on the lot, many still considered the Montage Department in conjunction with Special
Effects. For example, Harold McCord
174
sent an Inter-Office Communication to Byron Haskin
on May 17, 1943, which reads, “As you know, we have our work cut out for us to meet a July 23
release date on THIS IS THE ARMY. This means that all montages, glass shots, etc., must be
finished and cut into the picture by no later than June 15, as Technicolor takes longer to get
prints away than our black and white pictures.” As the film’s August release date neared, there is
an interesting memo suggesting how montages were often used as “a fix” when scenes from a
film were proving problematic. In a Western Union Wire from New York on July 19, 1943,

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Warner writes to Wallis about complaints over “I Wish This is a Long War so I can Get in It.”
Warner’s wire reads, “Believe we can paint this dialogue out and let scene remain. See if this
cannot be done. Know we cannot replace this scene and do montage over or we would never get
this picture opened.”
175
Here Warner expresses a tendency to see montages as a technique
capable of fixing scenes that were not working right, but dismisses the montage solution because
of a lack of time.
One number that needed no fixing was the exemplary “What the Well-Dressed Man in
Harlem Will Wear” featuring Sgt. Joe Louis. The boxer, who was commandeered by the military
to elevate esprit de corps through his work in the Special Services Division, performed with a
group of African-American soldiers and even squeezed in a few rounds with a punching bag. The
Daily Variety singled out the Louis number while the Negro Press Bureau
176
wrote to Wallis
commending him on his “outstanding production.” Lawrence F. La Mar of the Negro Press
Bureau finished his letter with, “More power to you in all your efforts.”
177
Besides receiving
positive reviews for the inclusion of boxer Joe Louis, The Daily Variety review lists “Montages
by James Leicester and Don Siegel” under Cast and Crew. In addition, the review mentions how
“Montages cover tour of the show to various cities throughout the country, and at this point,
footage picks up a few story threads to keep things welded together.”
178
Although it’s not exactly
glowing praise, it suggests reviewers were knowledgeable of the versatile role montages were
expected to play in classical Hollywood.

The Golden Rule of the Montage Department… Brevity in Entertainment
As opposed to Vorkapich’s montages, which drew attention to themselves, Siegel’s
department was more concerned with integrating the montages into the narrative flow. Reading
through the articles of the Warner Club News consistently exposes the lot as an overwhelmingly
masculine space in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Many of the writers even dedicate half their
columns to surmising about the women their colleagues are chasing or dating. For example, the
February 1943 Special Effects column by Towne D. Hayes muses, “Why were the kewpie dolls
on Don Siegel’s Christmas tree half red heads and half blondes?”
179
Casual objectification aside,
the Warner Club News is an invaluable resource in discerning the evolving role of Don Siegel
and the montage department within Warner Bros. The Montage Department, and especially
Siegel, were foregrounded in an article entitled “Montage” in the August 1943 Warner Club

123

News, which provides a few clues as to why Siegel was successful setting up his own
independent department. The August cover of the Warner Club News is a photomontage with the
word “montage” written diagonally in bold flourishes.
180
Underneath is a film strip with each
square filled with pictures of the men who made up the montage department including from left
to right: Fred Tyler, assistant director, Weldon Patterson, first Property man, Don Siegel
directing Gary Cooper in the mob and train wreck scenes of Saratoga Trunk, Jim Leicester, co-
director and montage writer, and Bill Du Brul, cutter pictured with his Moviola.
181
The middle
frame of the film strip reads “Don Siegel Presents” and the film negative is overlaid on top of the
Warner Brothers logo mimicking the superimposition the department often used. Within the
newsletter is the article itself, which is “by the Department” and accompanied by six illustrative
photos of the montages for This Is The Army, Mark Twain, Mission to Moscow, Devotion (Curtis
Bernhardt, 1946), and Saratoga Trunk (Sam Wood, 1945).
For readers unfamiliar with the term montage, the article defines the French word as
“building up, mounting, or putting together.”
182
However, they quickly amend this definition by
clarifying what montage means to Warner Bros. Specifically, “Montage as we understand it is
best described in the words of Hal Wallis as ‘a sequence told as briefly and crisply and
entertainingly as possible.’ This definition received on a casual inter-office communication has
become the golden rule of the Montage Department.”
183
Although the “golden rule” was be brief
and entertaining, the article reveals how the department followed one other guideline.
Principally, the seamless integration of their montages into the finished productions. The article
explains, “The word Montage has been associated for so long with super-imposition that the
majority of picture people, as well as the public do not recognize the average straight forward
Montage for what it is. This is no great sorrow to the Montage Department as our object is to
make a Montage flow so harmoniously with the tempo of the picture that the audience is not
aware of any change of pace. The greatest compliments that we have been paid have been by this
lack of recognition of our work.”
184
Thus, even if the article is part public relations exercise, it
demonstrates how the montage department strove to replicate the invisible editing prized during
the classical era.
The article also provides some clues about how the department fits into the studio
structure. For example, a hierarchy is revealed with Hal Wallis dictating demands, Byron Haskin
mentoring the department, but also Siegel firmly established as the head in charge of the

124

department. The article even credits Siegel with constructing Warner Bros. first montage.
“Legend has it that Don, while in charge of the Insert Department, became impatient to see his
work completed and edited it himself thereby completing the first individually constructed
montage on the lot. It was an instant success and the practice was continued.”
185
This is
distinguished from the way Slavko Vorkapich worked. Rather than the one-man approach
favored by Vorkapich, Siegel utilized a whole team when he was given a montage assignment.
As recounted in the article, “Montage had already been specialized in by Vorkopitch, Ball
Busch, and others, but had always been considered a one man project. Don Siegel changed all
that. It is not certain whether this was a pre-meditated conclusion or a force of circumstance, but
whichever it was he has achieved an organization which is capable of pooling its various talents
into an individual perspective.”
186
In this quote, the article refers to Siegel assembling a
department that mimics the specialized division of labor in the studio as a whole.
Taking a cue from Special Effects, Siegel recreated a studio within the studio.
Emphasizing the multiple talents mobilized to bring a montage to fruition, the article highlights
the haphazard process of Siegel assembling a team:
The personnel of this organization came into the Montage field casually and without
premeditation. Fred Tyler was loaned by the Production Department for a brief interval,
which has extended itself over a 5-year period. Jim Leicester entered the field when Don
Siegel stopped by his cutting room to borrow a flange. They began a discussion about
Montage, which has lasted for better than four years. Pat Patterson took time out between
Dieterle productions to prop a Montage Unit. Three years later Pat asked, ‘What ever became
of Dieterle anyway?’ Bill Du Brul erstwhile cutter for the eastern studios took a quick visit to
California. His wife and family followed him West when Bill failed to return. He had gotten
tangled up in the Montage Department.”
187

In case any directors or producers reading the Warner Club News wanted to utilize the talents of
the montage department’s diverse team, the article includes a description of their working
process. Reinforcing the sense of a studio within a studio, the article outlines, “When such a
sequence is indicated in a script a continuity complete with dialogue is written by the Montage
Department and when accepted by the producer is scheduled and budgeted in the same manner
as an individual production. This is necessary since 75 per cent of Montage work involves
principals.”
188
Not only did montage provide Siegel with the leeway to direct and edit his own

125

interludes, but it also afforded him the opportunity to shoot with studio stars. The article
continues, “After the action is shot, it is then edited and transferred to an optical sheet. Here
honorable mention should be made of Russ Collings, optical room chief, who greets the
appearance of the optical sheet with the enthusiastic moan, ‘What! Another blankety blank
Montage?’ He then cooperates by turning out optical work superior to any other in the industry.
The optical print is then shown to the producer, and when accepted is inserted into the picture as
a unit.”
189
While the article does not reflect on the compression of time and space montage
achieves within the diegesis, it does refer to time in more pragmatic terms. Particularly in a
discussion of how much footage a montage usually comprised in the film, “A conception of the
amount of work done can be realized when the total Montage footage in such productions as
“Twain” and “Moscow” ran from 1500 to 2500 feet.”
190
This encompasses several montage
sequences, which tended to be anywhere from 50 to 200 feet in length.
191
Here the article
emphasizes the overall importance of the montage department in terms of total montage footage
included in certain pictures. The article closes with a good-natured poke at Wallis as it
proclaims, “If this article seems brief, we refer you to Mr. Wallis’ definition of a Montage.”
192

The Golden Rule of Biopics… As Many Montages as Possible!
One of the films ostensibly containing over a thousand feet of montage footage was the
biopic The True Adventures of Mark Twain (Irving Rapper, 1944) starring Fredric March and
Alexis Smith. A fictional account of Samuel Clemens, whose long life coincided with two
appearances of Halley’s Comet, necessitated the compression of time and space afforded by
montage.
193
As a result, Siegel and the Montage Department played a prominent role
constructing montages to encapsulate highlights from Mark Twain’s escapades. A June 17, 1942
word count lists six separate montages including a “Jumping Frog Montage,” a “Tom Sawyer
Montage,” a “National Progress 1877-1887 Montage,” a “Bankruptcy Montage,” a “Whirlpool
Montage,” and a “World Tour Montage.”
194
With so many montages to create, there was an
understandable reliance on stock footage as a cost-cutting device and to authentically evoke
Twain’s life. For example, The “National Progress Montage” captures Twain’s ill-fated
investment in James W. Paige’s typesetting machine, the Paige Compositer. The final script
describes the interlude, “In this montage no one is seen actually to speak. The SOUND TRACK
is entirely independent of the screen. Everything but Mark Twain and the typesetter are supposed

126

to evolve from film stock.”
195
Proposed images for the montage include Mark Twain’s hand
writing furiously, a shot of General Grant delivering a speech, shots of power lines and telegraph
lines, and shots of Paige working over a typesetter. The way the montage is described is through
shots listed on the left hand side of the page a. b. c. etc. and voiceovers described on the right
hand side. The most interesting moment symbolically occurs in scene h. and i. As Twain’s racing
pen appears, Twain recites, “So I scribble, scribble, to feed a mechanical stork’s neck that won’t
even lay eggs.”
196
The pen racing symbolizes Twain churning out work to stay afloat financially
while feeling stymied by not having the time to write something serious.
197
The typesetter is
depicted as a “row of silly looking steel storks behaving absurdly”
198
and the script includes a
drawing of a three-headed mechanical stork.
Figuring out how to contextualize Twain’s life in images began with research by Siegel
and his team. On June 9, 1942, Jim Leicester requested “Events showing progress in Industrial
Sciences, Arts, etc. between 1877-1887 in U.S.A.”
199
The Research Department supplied the
montage department with a list including 1877, the first date a telephone was installed in a home;
1879 the first street light; 1883 for railroad signals; and 1886; the Statue of Liberty unveiled.
200

On September 1, 1942, Leicester asked for images of printing presses of 1895 and received one
clip from files. The “World Tour of Mark Twain” montage, which transforms two years of
speaking engagements into a brief interlude, also drew heavily from stock footage. An early
script reads, “We see Mark Twain speak against far-scattered world background from stock, and
hear fragments of the lines with which he won the world; playing the transitions over applause,
laughter, and cheering. In the course of his superhuman feat of conquest and endurance, Mark
Twain tires and ages under the all but impossible strain; but the bright unbeatable blaze of his
spirit survives to the very end.”
201
Besides condensing time, the montages serve as transitions
from one period of Twain’s life to the next. This is the case during the “Bankruptcy Montage,”
where the transcript “prepared by Don Siegel and James Leicester”
202
uses quick dissolves,
superimposition and voiceover to evoke Twain’s bankruptcy. The montage conveys Twain’s
subjective state after deciding to publish and market Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir. The mounting
pressure of unpaid bills and Twain’s descent into debt is symbolized by Twain turning the leaves
of the book like he’s shuffling a flurry of bills.
203

In perhaps the most colorfully named montage, “Jumping Frog,” Siegel was asked to
reference the Civil War without offending the South. A detailed Inter-Office Communication

127

from Herman Lissauer to producer Jesse L. Lasky on June 11, 1942, weighs in on the notes made
by Mr. Beymer on the script. “In relation to Mr. Siegel’s JUMPING FROG montage: In scene 3
of the montage – “UNION TROOPS ROUTED AT MANASSAS”, Mr. Beymer’s suggestion
that Manassas should not be used is legitimate in that it is but the Southern name for the Battle of
Bull Run already used in scene 1. Beymer suggests the battle of Fredericksburg instead. If this is
used the headline could still read the same “UNION TROOPS ROUTED AT
FREDRICKSBURG.” In scene 7, Beymer suggests that Sherman and Atlanta are sore points
with Southerners and had best not be mentioned. He suggests RICHMOND EVACUATED
instead. If this is used, it would have to be Scene 8, allowing GRANT AND LEE ETC. to
become scene 7, since the surrender of Richmond came after the Battle of the Wilderness.
Otherwise the montage jibes with Beymer’s suggestions except for Brandy Station, which still
seems all right to us.”
204

In response, Siegel changed Scene No. 3, switched scenes 7 and 8, and used “Richmond
Evacuated” so as to accommodate Southern sentiments. A flurry of correspondence in July 1942
established concerns over using the names of extant businesses in the montage. R.J. Obringer
and Lasky wanted to eliminate the need for considerable correspondence clearing rights and
asked Lissauer to suggest fictitious names for newspapers to Siegel. On July 16, 1942, Siegel
received a list including newspaper names pertaining to St Louis, San Francisco, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and New Orleans.
205
Two days later, Lissauer sent Siegel the subsidiary headlines to
accompany the “Jumping Frog” montage. Accompanying the communication was a series of
pages that correspond with the montage scene numbers including “the main headlines as now
contained in the script or in that memo, and apropos sub-heads as well as the beginning of a
likely text for the body of the news items.”
206
The jumping frog contest Twain captured in “The
Jumping Frog of Calaveras” was re-enacted for the film and forty-seven frogs hailing from
Angels Camp, California, were brought to Hollywood with their handler/technical adviser Alfred
Jermy, chairman of the Angels Camp Frog Jubilee. According to the production notes, in a trial
heat for the film jump, staged in accordance with Angels Camp rules, a husky frog cut loose with
a mighty leap of 15 feet, 10 ¾ inches exceeding the previous world record by three quarters of an
inch.
207
However, Jermy deemed the jump unofficial and thus exempt for consideration in the
record books.
208

128

It is only fitting that The True Adventures of Mark Twain was the sight of many tall tales
including one that pits Siegel against Jack Warner. In Stuart Kaminsky’s Don Siegel: Director,
Leicester reminisced about working as Siegel’s editor and screenwriter. For one montage for The
True Adventures of Mark Twain,
Siegel had found five camels, took their picture in dozens of poses, printed the pictures,
cut them out and mounted them on a camshaft to have them move. Then he set up a scene
with Fredric March projected on a miniature screen on a miniature minaret. As the
camera pulled back it picked up the camels and came through a cut-out crowd of Arabs to
stop at two of the five real actors who turned to each other and laughed at Mark Twain’s
joke.
209

Supposedly when Jack Warner saw the sequence, “he blew his stack,” said Leicester.
210
Warner
was angry because “He thought hundreds of extras had been hired and he blamed Don for
wasting a fortune.”
211
Siegel’s ingenuity actually saved Warner a fortune on the picture, which
would have been financially and logistically impossible to complete without the use of montage.

Devotion to a Trunkful of Junk
Although Saratoga Trunk and Devotion were released in 1945 and 1946 respectively,
their inclusion in the Warner Club News article suggests the montage department began work on
the two pictures before August of 1943. The main titles for both films include a “Montages by”
credit for Don Siegel.
212
Both films follow realistic narratives punctuated by montages that
compress time. Saratoga Trunk is particularly interesting because of the problems surrounding
its reception. Adapted from a book by Edna Ferber, Casey Robinson’s script quickly generated
controversy. Whereas Joseph Breen of the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America,
Inc. objected to the scene where Clint (Gary Cooper) dines in Clio’s (Ingrid Bergman) apartment
without his coat on suggesting they are living together. “Such a flavor, of course, is unacceptable
from the standpoint of the Production Code, and hence could not be approved,” wrote Breen in
one of many letters lamenting the illicit sex alluded to in the script.
213
Further problems arose in
April 1943, when a discussion amongst Lissauer, Obringer, and Wallis revolved around whether
Southern sentiment would resent the negro servant Angelique eating with her maid as it appears
in the script. Obringer first writes, “People of the Southern states may very strongly resent the
inference that colored people are permitted to co-mingle with white people in restaurants and

129

public places, and, above all, it is not unlikely that the proprietors of the Begue restaurant will
attempt some claim of libel based on the argument that the reputation of their restaurant and their
business is materially damaged and held in disrepute.”
214
Obringer later writes, “In checking, I
also find that the State of Louisiana does have a civil rights law which restricts discrimination on
account of race or color but I also find that the practice in the State is contrary to the law.”
215

Wallis responds with “everything has been shot and that unless they tell us definitely that we are
in trouble we would not want to retake it, as it will mean considerable expense… In view of that
fact and the fact that our Begue’s is shown in a period some 75 years ago, I do not see that the
present operators could prove that we were damaging their reputation.”
216
Wallis let the scene
stand primarily because it would be financially cumbersome to replace it, however, the trouble
over the film’s treatment of race were not over.
The film’s publicity clippings include the December 1, 1945 issue of The Daily Worker.
In a review of the film, author David Platt condemns Saratoga Trunk’s portrayal of African
Americans and especially Angelique. He writes, “Gary Cooper almost breaks the Negro maid’s
arm off in an attempt to find out why she dislikes him. After this revolting incident they become
good friends. Insult is added to injury by having Flora Robson, a white actress, play the part of
the Negro maid. Everything that’s wrong with Hollywood is in this trunkful of junk.”
217
The
Daily Worker issue also includes a piece entitled “Aftermath on the Studio Strike.” The column
announces, “Film Front hears that Warner Bros. are through making “liberal” pictures. Jack L.
Warner, vice-president of the tear-gas studio is reported to have told friends that he was the
“victim of a gigantic communist conspiracy.” He said he would never make another “liberal”
picture, “since liberalism was just a disguise for communist propaganda.” This from a character
who was violently redbaited for producing “Mission to Moscow” and “Action in the North
Atlantic.” Warner is also reported to have said he was going to “vote Republican” from now on.
Home at last! Buy why stop there? Why not put out a sequel to “Confessions of a Nazi Spy”
saying it was all a mistake, that Warner Bros. were the ‘victim of a gigantic communist
conspiracy?’ Isn’t that what Hitler and his gang told the world every time they used tear gas and
mustard gas against anyone who uttered a decent thought? If ‘liberalism’ is just a mask for
‘communist propaganda,’ then Hitlerism must be God’s gift to American monopoly. Isn’t that
what Jack Warner is trying to say?”
218

130

Conclusion
While Siegel may not have entered the studio system nursing a secret desire to direct, his
trajectory reveals an ambitiousness and hunger for control and recognition that precluded his
happiness with being a lifer in Special Effects. In Siegel’s own words, the origination of his
desire to be a director comes from working on a montage with James Cagney for Yankee Doodle
Dandy (Michael Curtiz, 1942). Siegel had planned out the shot but Cagney wasn’t comfortable
and suggested something different, which Siegel felt was much better. When Siegel admitted to
Cagney he felt stupid for not thinking of it, Cagney laughed and reassured him by saying “What
do you think it’s like working for Mike Curtiz?”
219
Cagney was convinced Curtiz never planned
out his shots. This exchange planted the seeds of a new ambition in Siegel, to be a director.
220

This was a logical step since by 1942, Siegel was already joking that as head of the montage
department, he “actually had more film in Warner Bros pictures at that time than any other
director.”
221
Star in the Night, released in 1945, was the “first large piece of film that I did totally
on my own,” says Siegel. He chose to do the modern parable on the birth of Christ primarily to
annoy Jack Warner. Siegel had been sure Warner would not allow him to do the picture, that
being Jewish, he would veto it. Warner liked the idea.” Shot in five days, the film won an
Academy Award.
Schooled at the Warner Bros of Raoul Walsh and Howard Hawks, Siegel was familiar
with scenes of action and violence. As a director, his films are often tense, violent and packed
with action. Byron Haskin, Head of Special Effects, who went on to direct in the 1940s and 50s,
felt Siegel’s second unit work taught him how to say things clearly, to finish each action you
begin with, and to introduce him to cinematic violence. According to Haskin, Siegel learned to
work autonomously as early as 1939 on his montage work for Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring
Twenties. “Don spent eight or ten weeks on it with all sorts of wild, symbolic things like Wall
Street melting. It was cartoon-type graphic, Andy Warhol shit. We managed to keep Walsh and
the producer from seeing any of it and we started mounting a bill far over anything that had been
estimated.”
222
Thankfully for Siegel and Haskin, Wallis liked the montages. Siegel also
ruminated on how comfortable he was working without supervision. Siegel recollected, “During
my tenure at Warner Bros. as Head of the Montage Department, the studio became trained to
look upon those situation in the script that called for montage, whether it was spelt out or not, as
being my problem. I would take the script and write the montages. They wouldn’t dare mess with

131

my scripts because they were always very complicated. Where it ran 1 line in the script, my
montage might run 5 pages. Of course, it was a most marvelous way to learn about films,
because I made endless, endless mistakes just experimenting with no supervision.”
223
A feeling
of experimentation and an economy of imagery are apparent in Siegel’s later directorial work.
His pictures often feel like B pictures even when big stars are involved. Siegel’s
background in editing is demonstrated by his concise style with the sparse editing lending each
film a sense of forward momentum. Siegel was trained in efficient storytelling and his films
convey a lot of information with imagery in a short amount of time. Siegel presents the narrative
economically and just as he did as a montage director, Siegel strove for creativity and efficiency.
This economy with images attracted French New Wave directors and Jean-Luc Godard named a
character after Siegel. Siegel excelled at making B movies, his montage work prepared him for
the experiences of a B-movie director, who worked in a less constrained atmosphere because he
dealt with smaller budgets thus garnering less attention from studio heads. Peter Bogdonavitch
asserts, “Siegel has managed, often against stifling odds, to bring distinction and a disquieting
ambiguity as well as a unified viewpoint to assignments which, in other hands, could easily have
been routine.”
224
Siegel, musing about the legacy of his montage work to Stuart Kaminsky,
maintained, “I think the good influence it has on my work today is that I don’t strain with the
camera now. In fact I try very hard not to do exercises in camera technique except when they are
directly helping me tell the story.”
225

Although I do not have a clear-cut answer for why the montage department disappeared
from the studio system structure, research suggests the answer can be found in a combination of
the following theories. At MGM and Warner Bros., the departure of Vorkapich and Siegel left a
power vacuum other studio players could exploit. There was never a clear place in the studio
hierarchy for montage specialists. While Vorkapich joined the Editor’s Guild, Siegel entered the
Director’s Guild despite the Guild’s recalcitrance over new members. Both men made a name for
themselves as montage directors, but there was not a system in place to replace them upon their
departure. As the articles of the Warner Club News demonstrate, Siegel proved himself a force to
be reckoned with at Warner Bros. and there was no love lost between the montage department
and the editing department. A situation Siegel acknowledged in his anecdote about assistant
editors ignoring his guidelines prior to manipulating the footage on the optical printer.
226
Then
again, the decline of the designated montage department coincided with a general decline in the

132

stature of the studios post World War II. This was a period when independent companies
specializing in various aspects of filmmaking gained traction within the industry. These specialty
companies were attractive financially because they could be hired as independent contractors and
did not need a long term contract. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the decline of the
segregated montage department corresponded with the rise of television.

1
Don Siegel, A Don Siegel Film: An Autobiography (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), 56.
2
Ibid., 56.
3
Ibid., 56.
4
Ibid., 56.
5
Ibid., 57.
6
Ibid., 57.
7
Ibid., 57.
8
Ibid., 57.
9
Stuart Kaminsky, Don Siegel, Director (Philadelphia: Curtis Books, 1974), 35.
10
Alan Lovell, Don Siegel: American Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 1975), 50.
11
Byron Haskin started working in Special Effects in the 1930s and went on to direct in the
1940s and 50s, most notably I Walk Alone (1948), Burt Lancaster’s first starring role, and
Disney’s Treasure Island (1950).
12
Siegel, A Don Siegel Film, 53.
13
Lovell, Don Siegel, American Cinema, 50.
14
Kaminsky, Don Siegel, Director, 33.
15
Kaminsky, Don Siegel, Director, 29.
16
Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (New York: Harper & Row,
1987), 132. Curtiz ended up making seventy-four pictures for Warners. Supposedly, when he
first arrived on American shores from Hungary he was grateful for the flags and fireworks
welcoming him, until Harry Warner informed him it was the fourth of July.
17
Ibid., 133. David Nevin borrowed a Michael Curtizism after he shouted for a herd of riderless
horses, “Bring on the empty horses!” on the set of The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1936.
18
Siegel, , A Don Siegel Film, 55.
19
Worked his way up through the ranks at Warner Bros. and later became Alfred Hitchcock’s
favorite Director of Photography.
20
Siegel, A Don Siegel Film, 56.
21
Lovell, Don Siegel, American Cinema, 51.
22
Siegel, Don Siegel, American Cinema, 57.
23
Ibid., 57.
24
Ibid., 57.
25
Kaminsky, Don Siegel, Director, 26.
26
Ibid., 26.

133

27
Ibid., 26.
28
Folder 2878, Serial F000476, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
29
File 2871, Serial F015505, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
30
Folder 2360, Serial F000483, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid.
36
Calendar of Roaring Twenties Publicity 689, Serial F000487, Warner Bros. Archives, School
of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
37
Folder 2360, Serial F000483, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.
40
Byron Haskin, Interview, A Directors Guild of America Oral History: Byron Haskin,
Joe Adamson (Metuchen and London: The Directors Guild of America and Scarecrow Press,
Inc., 1984).
41
Don Siegel, A Siegel Film, 60.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
44
The film is based on articles in the L.A. Times and the Los Angeles Examiner from October 6
and 7, 1939 about ties between the Los Angeles bund and the Nazi party in Germany reported to
the Dies committee in Washington D.C. Highlights of the articles include the reports of Neal
Howard Ness, who admitted visiting German boats in Los Angeles with Hermann Schwinn, head
of the Pacific Coast bund, who exchanged “sealed envelopes” with the German stormtroopers.
The Legal file also contains a copy of the sworn testimony of Neal Ness, who answered
questions on September 28, 1939 in the County of Alameda. In the sworn statement, Ness talks
about an exchange student at USC named Prince von Lippe who was a member of the Bund.
Lippe was the contact man at USC for the Bund and the German Consulate, in charge of all
German exchange students. On page 51 of the statement, Ness recalls how Lippe “was very
proud of the fact that he was an important link in Germany’s propaganda machinery in Southern
California.” Ness discussed spreading Nazi propaganda at the universities on the West Coast on
February 26, 1936 with Prince Lippe. Lippe associated with Dr. Von Koerber, dean of the
Oriental Department, and Dr. Kleinsmith, professors who knew of Lippe’s connection to the
Friends of New Germany and permitted Lippe to write essays on the Hitler Youth Movement to
serve as propaganda for the Nazi Party among the students at the university. Lippe had also met
Mr. Robert Meyer, representative of Agfa films in the area.
45
“Knute Rockne Trailer,” YouTube, accessed September 3, 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ7RAIOzRME.
46
File 2248A, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles. The quote is from Will Rogers.

134

47
Nick Lukats, Kane Richmond, William Marshall, and William Byrne.
48
Don Siegel, A Siegel Film, 61.
49
F015514, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles. In a note from Jack Warner to Michael Curtiz, while working on
Mission to Moscow, Warner complains (on November 11 and 19)

about the number of takes
Curtiz is shooting. The letter on November 11 reads, “Dear Mike, You cannot take 10 takes. You
know there is a war on, Mike, and you must conserve film, so why don’t you do this?” Curtiz’s
response on November 20 closes with the line “Jack, of our 130,000,000 Americans, I am
foremost in the desire to win this war.”
50
File 2248A, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.
51
Ibid.
52
Byron Haskin, Interview, A Directors Guild of America Oral History: Byron Haskin,
Joe Adamson (Metuchen and London: The Directors Guild of America and Scarecrow Press,
Inc., 1984).
53
Warner Club News, May 1940, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles.
54
Warner Club News, November 1940, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
55
Ibid.
56
Ibid.
57
Warner Club News, July 1941, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles.
58
File 1010, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles. In “Research Department Notes” there is a record of Siegel asking the
name of a diagnosis for a disturbed mental condition and Research came back with “nicotine
acid-intramusculary in right hip, high caloric diet.”
59
The film was originally called Hot Nocturne, then New Orleans Blues, then Blues in the Night.
60
File 1974, Special Serial F015445, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
61
Baiano and Terzo, “Baiano Wins Tennis Championship,” Warner Club News, August 1941,
Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los
Angeles. On August 17, 1941, Siegel was putting his ping-pong skills to the test on the tennis
courts. The Warner Club News August 1941 Issue contains an article about the Warner Club
Tennis Tournament. Of note is the article’s referance to Don Siegel, Director Montages. Only
slightly less interesting, is the fact that Siegel lost in the first round of the singles and lost a hard
fought match in the finals of the doubles round.
62
File 1974, Special Serial F015445, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Anthony writes, “I can’t understand why it’s
legal for them to release Negro scenes in a short and illegal for us in a feature. Possibly they’re
getting ethical and want to be assured the Negro race is properly represented by us – which they
are. I’d handle this but it’s a rush and believe you can get a quicker and more satisfactory reply. I
have a dupe for the montage boys taken from release print so am only in a hurry for okay to use.”
63
Ibid.
64
Ibid.

135

65
Ibid.
66
Don Siegel, A Siegel Film, 64.
67
File 682, Special, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid.
70
In an Inter-Office Communication from May 21, 1942, Hal Wallis watched the dailies for
Casablanca and wrote to director Michael Curtiz with concerns over Bogart wearing a hat.
71
Umberto Eco, Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage
72
May 21, 1942.
73
Aljean Harmetz, Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca - Bogart,
Bergman, and World War II (New York: Hyperion, 1992).
74
File 1881A, Serial F005186-001, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles. This Inter-Office Communication was CC’d to
Michael Curtiz and Tenny Wright as well.
75
Friedrich, City of Nets, 133-139.
76
File 1881A, F005189-001, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. As late as April 2, 1942, Warner asked Wallis about Raft in an
Inter-Office Communication but Wallis stuck to his belief that Humphrey Bogart should play
Rick.
77
File 683, F000750, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles. A Hollywood news release from January 7, 1942, mentions Ann
Sheridan, Ronald Reagan and Dennis Morgan will star as the trio in Casablanca.
78
Friedrich, City of Nets, 136. Algiers was the 1938 Walter Wanger produced remake of the
French film Pepe le Moko directed by John Cromwell and starring Charles Boyer and Hedy
Lamarr.
79
File 1881A F005189-001, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. From an Inter-Office Communication to Wallis from Trilling
on February 7, 1942.
80
Harmetz, Round Up the Usual Suspects, 128 and 141-142. The sound was recorded onstage
and although Dooley Wilson was a professional drummer he wasn’t adept playing the piano.
Instead he would pretend to play as another actor who had tested for the role of Sam, Elliot
Carpenter, sat offscreen where Wilson could see his hand movements. Paramount pocketed $150
a week for Wilson’s work.
81
Friedrich, City of Nets, 136. Friedrich says $2,750 per week but Dooley’s contract reads
$1,750 per week.
82
Wallis also called on writer Casey Robinson to work on Paul Henreid’s role as Laszlo.
83
In City of Nets, Otto Friedrich argues, “It may be, in fact, that the unhappiness of the whole
cast was what made Casablanca such a triumph.”
84
File 1881A, Serial F005186-001, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
85
Ibid.
86
Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los
Angeles.

136

87
Errol Flynn, My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn (New York: Cooper
Square Press, 1959), 304-306.
88
“Gentleman Jim Trailer,” YouTube, accessed on August 5, 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTZIjUa-Jzg.
89
David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristen Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema:
Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Routledge, 1985), 55.
90
File 2196, Story – Final Script, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles.
91
File 1012B, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.
92
Ibid.
93
Ibid.
94
Pudovkin, Vsevolod. Film Technique and Film Acting London (New York: Vision Press,
1968), 259.
95
Legal File 12691, F002522, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
96
Friedrich, City of Nets, 154 and 313.
97
Nora Sayre, Running Time: Films from the Cold War (Ann Arbor: Bantam Doubleday Dell
Publishing Group, 1982).
98
Legal File 12691, F002522, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. The archive also contains an entertaining signed letter to
Warner Bros from Lily Norwood, who later adopted the moniker Cyd Charisse. In the letter,
Norwood consents to Warner Bros use all of the scenes in which she appeared dancing for
Mission to Moscow. She was paid $500.00 for one week of work.
99
Folder 2785, F002526, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
100
Research File 1015, F015474, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles.
101
Ibid. Inter-Office Communication from January 22, 1943 from Lissauer to Siegel.
102
F015514, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.
103
Ibid.
104
Ibid.
105
Ibid.
106
Research File 1015, F002525, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles.
107
Ibid.
108
Folder 2785, F002526, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. Letter dated July 10, 1942.
109
Picture File 2808, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.
110
Ibid.
111
Leyda corrects the cast list in an Inter-Office Communication on March 3, 1943 to Miss
Orbison of the Publicity Department and Herman Lissauer.

137

112
Research File 1015, F002525, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles.
113
Ibid.
114
There is also a funny letter from Lissauer to Mrs. Curtiz asking her to check her bookshelves
for six books that Michael Curtiz borrowed from the research department. Research File 1015
F002525, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles.
115
Research File 1015, F002525, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles.
116
Warner Club News, July 1940, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles.
117
Ibid.
118
Ibid.
119
Ibid.
120
Ibid.
121
Folder 2785, F002526, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
122
Folder 2085, F002528, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. Western Union Wire on March 20, 1943.
123
Ibid.
124
Folder 2785, F002526, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
125
Folder 2085, Story File, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
126
A copy of the Harry Warner comments appear in File 2785 F002526 as well as File 2085
F002528, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles.
127
File 2785, F002526 as well as File 2085, F002528, Warner Bros. Archives, School of
Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
128
Ibid.
129
Ibid.
130
It’s unclear who annotated Warner’s suggestions.
131
File 2785, F002526 as well as File 2085, F002528, Warner Bros. Archives, School of
Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
132
Ibid.
133
Ibid.
134
Ibid.
135
Ibid.
136
Joseph E. Davies to Stephen T. Early, January 6, 1943, Davies Files box 3, Early Papers,
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York, http://www.journalofamericanhistory
.org/teaching/2001_09/sources/daviesletter.html, accessed November 1, 2012.
137
Folder 2085, F002527, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
138
John Dewey and Suzanne La Follette, “Several Faults Are Found in ‘Mission to Moscow’
Film,” The New York Times, May 9, 1943, Sec. 4, 8.

138

139
Ibid.
140
Picture File 2808, F015477, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. The letter was from Albert Goldman, Attorney on behalf of
Natalia Trotsky.
141
Ibid.
142
Folder 2785 F002526, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. Interesting letter from a Trotsky supporter decries Hollywood
as propaganda and suggests Warner Bros. interview Professor John Dewey to get a different
opinion than Davies.
143
Ibid.
144
Folder 2085, F002527, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
145
Folder 2085, F002527, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.Telegram on May 21, 1943, from Jack Warner to William
Randolph Hearst.
146
Ibid. From a letter dated May 30, 1943, from Louis G. Reynolds, M.D. to Jack Warner.
147
Ibid.
148
The lyricist Yip Harburg won the 1939 Oscar with composer Harold Arlen for Best Music,
Original Song for The Wizard of Oz.
149
Folder 2085, F002527, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
150
Ibid.
151
Ibid.
152
During his blacklist, Yip Harburg wrote the musical Jamaica, featuring Lena Horne.
153
File 2881, F015020, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
154
File 2304, F015057, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. Throughout the film’s production, Wallis was pestered by
multiple postcards from the Gene Autry Friendship Club urging him to get Autry into the picture
and use him as a Warner Bros star.
155
Folder 6 of 9, F015059, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. A Western Union wire on December 23, 1942 from Julie aka
Julius Epstein to Hal Wallis says, “Arrived in Detroit had conference with Berlin pray for us =
Julie.” In a telegraph response dated December 28, 1942, Hal Wallis writes, “Both Mike and I
are praying for you. Lighting candles tonight and Mike going to shule. Hope you both not too
battle scarred when you finish conferences. Please wire or phone me at home over weekend as
naturally anxious to know how matters proceeding. Merry Christmas to you both if that is
possible. Regards.”
156
Ibid.
157
Ibid.
158
Folder 3 of 9, File 2304 F015057, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Although the War Department Bureau of Public
Relations was happy with the film, on March 31, 1943, Joseph Breen objected to the line “But
never give all to a soldier” stating it is “sex suggestiveness.”

139

159
File 2304, F015057, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
160
File 2881, F015019, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. Letter from Curtis Mitchell Colonel A.U.S. Chief, Pictorial
Branch and Allyn Butterfield Executive Motion Picture Board of Review sent to Warner on July
31, 1943.
161
Legal Picture File, F002700, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
162
File 2881, F015019, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
163
Ibid. Berlin weighed in on the production throughout even complaining when he discovered
singer Katie Smith was uncredited.
164
File 2881, F015020, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
165
File 2304 F015060, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.
166
Ibid.
167
Ibid.
168
Ibid.
169
Legal Picture File, F002700, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. The credit titles as of May 5, 1943, for Irving Berlin’s This is
the Army in Technicolor include Montages by Siegel and Leicester.
170
File 2881, F015018, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
171
Legal Picture, File F002700, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
172
Box 2849, Legal Files, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
173
Research File 1018, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
174
Hal McCord was an editor at Warner Bros. and worked on The Jazz Singer amongst other
films.
175
File 2304, F015057, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
176
File 2304, F015057, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. Letter on August 18, 1943 From Lawrence F. La Mar of the
Negro Press Bureau located on East 32
nd
Street in Los Angeles, CA. The Negro Press Bureau
was the “News and Photo Service to Negro Newspapers, Periodicals the World Over,” founded
in 1933 and providing the Chicago Defender, the N.Y. Amsterdam News and the L.A. Sentinel
amongst others.
177
Ibid.
178
Ibid. Daily Variety from Thursday July 29, 1943.
179
Warner Club News, August 1941-July 1943, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic
Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 14.

140

180
See Figures for the Warner Club News August 1943 Cover featuring the Montage
Department.
181
Warner Club News, August 1943, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
182
Ibid.
183
Ibid.
184
Ibid.
185
Ibid.
186
Ibid.
187
Ibid.
188
Ibid.
189
Ibid.
190
Ibid.
191
Ibid.
192
Ibid.
193
Folder 685, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles. Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemens was born in 1835 and died April 21,
1910.
194
File 1714, Story Misc., Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles. The June 17, 1942 word count details 200 words in the Frog-
War Montage, pages 121-3 of the Tom Sawyer Montage have 75 words, the Progress Montage
on pages 149-151 included 255 words, the Whirlpool Montage on page 168 had 100 words, and
the World tour montage on page 175 included 500 words with the film as a whole totaling
14,925 words.
195
Alan LeMay, The True Adventures of Mark Twain, Final Script June 12, 1942, 149 line 355.
This version is slightly different than the script from May 12, 1942, which includes a slightly
longer and more extended National Progress montage with an added shot of a shelf of Twain’s
books tipping over and dissolving into a heap of stock certificates that blow away in the wind.
196
Page 149. The True Adventures of Mark Twain.
197
File 1714, Story Misc., Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
198
Alan LeMay, The True Adventures of Mark Twain, Final Script June 12, 1942, 149.
199
File 1010, The Adventures of Mark Twain Research File, 1 of 5, Warner Bros. Archives,
School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
200
Ibid.
201
Alan LeMay, The True Adventures of Mark Twain, Script August 29, 1942, 175 line 405.
202
This was written on the upper left-hand corner of the page.
203
File 1714, Story Misc., Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
204
File 1010, The Adventures of Mark Twain Research File, 3 of 5, Warner Bros. Archives,
School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
205
File 1010, The Adventures of Mark Twain Research File, 2 of 5, Warner Bros. Archives,
School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
206
Ibid.

141

207
File 1010, The Adventures of Mark Twain Research File, 1 of 5, Warner Bros. Archives,
School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Contains Production
Notes by Alex Evelove.
208
Ibid.
209
Kaminsky, Don Siegel: Director, 41-42.
210
Ibid.
211
Ibid.
212
File 1017, 2 of 2 for Saratoga Trunk and Folder 2871, Picture File for Devotion, Warner
Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. The
Devotion credit includes James Leicester.
213
File 2249, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles. Letter from July 22, 1943, by Joseph Breen to J.L. Warner.
214
File 1017, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.
215
Ibid.
216
Ibid.
217
File 686, Publicity Clips, Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.
218
Ibid.
219
Kaminsky, Don Siegel: Director, 27.
220
Ibid.
221
Ibid.
222
Ibid., 29.
223
Lovell, Don Siegel, American Cinema, 51.
224
Kaminsky, Don Siegel: Director, 7.
225
Lovell, Don Siegel, American Cinema, 51.
226
Kaminsky, Don Siegel: Director, 26.

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Chapter 5.
MTV Killed the Soviet Star:
Music Television and the Propagation of a Montage Aesthetic

Introduction
In retrospect, the rise of music videos on television seems preordained. However, a look
at the rise of MTV reveals how a continuous flow of music videos was actually quite
improbable. Furthermore, it never would have happened without the proliferation of home
recording devices and cable. MTV’s place in the evolving cable industry of the early 1980s
illuminates what challenges and changes cable brought to television. As a fledging media outlet
when the legendary adman George Lois crafted the shrewd “I Want My MTV” campaign, MTV
encouraged cable subscribers to demand the expansion of MTV’s reach and demonstrated the
cable channel’s ability to exploit teens and young adults. Playing on a desire for choice, MTV
conflated citizenship with consumerism. Elaborated in this chapter are several canonical
moments in the evolution of music television as analyzed through the lens of iconic music video
montages of the past thirty years. I privilege case studies in the history of televisual montage that
occur during periods of technological innovation, market restructuring, and challenges to
traditional representational practices.
Each of the following canonical moments reveals how music television developed and
propagated a montage aesthetic on television. MTV’s ascendancy was accompanied by a flurry
of scholarship on the music video form as exemplary of postmodern pastiche. While montages of
the classical Hollywood era were modernist interventions into realist films, music video
montages of the 1980s and 1990s embodied postmodernism on television. An awareness of
visual culture is necessary in order to analyze the complex borrowings apparent in music videos.
Inspired by the success of music videos, narrative television appropriated a montage aesthetic.
Emblematic of this embrace is postmodernism’s pastel poster child, Miami Vice. Eventually,
musicians who were women and minorities challenged the predominantly white patriarchal space
of MTV. Female pop divas like Madonna experimented with their image throughout their music
video oeuvres while hip-hop artists carved a niche separate from disco and rock programming.
The popularity of hip-hop and R&B videos set the stage for a long form video, R. Kelly’s
Trapped In The Closet, which blurred the boundaries between broadcasting and the Internet. The
remixing of R. Kelly’s “soap opera cum sex farce”
1
by video artist Michael Bell-Smith elevated

143

Trapped In The Closet into gallery art. While the broadcast networks struggle to retain viewers,
credit sequences highlight how television has most recently taken up the mantle of montage in
service of cable distinguishing itself as “quality television.” Beyond the landscape of television,
montage is significant as a lens for analyzing contemporary visual culture.
The story of MTV is inextricably intertwined with the rise of cable in the United States
and abroad. Without cable, it is impossible to envision the advent of a twenty-four hour music
video channel. This is partly because, from the networks perspective, rock and roll was not a
natural fit with television. Ever since The Ed Sullivan Show framed Elvis Presley from the waist
up (those hips whoa!) the broadcast networks were leery of rock and roll’s rebellious energy.
While the networks appealed to a mass audience in their programming choices, rock and roll in
the late 1970s was decidedly niche. MTV, however, as part of the first wave of cable channels
broadcast in the U.S., needed to appeal to a niche demographic to stake its claim to viewers and
advertising dollars. By targeting teens and young adults, MTV believed they could attract
advertisers to their channel to exploit a hitherto untapped market. Their brand identity was pure
rock and roll, all rebellion and irreverence. Throughout the 1980s, American consumers rapidly
adopted cable with more than 50% of homes signing up by the end of the decade.
2
Examining the
formation of MTV highlights three important aspects of the cable industry: Madison Avenue
grew to love cable; those channels on the air first through satellite distribution and traditional
broadcasting had the best chance of success; and American cable network content had the
potential to dominate television screens globally. Before MTV became infamous for its reality
television fare, the channel was synonymous for fast moving images set to music. At its infancy,
however, MTV’s programming was undetermined. Instead, an all-day music channel was the
dream of a few executives who possessed experience working in radio and television and
recognized cable’s potential for broadening content choices on television.
Stretching back further than the 1970s, however, there is a long history of short musical
media, often categorized as proto-MTV, leading up to the arrival of the cable music channel.
Music video’s antecedents include Vaudeville’s illustrated songs, Vitaphone film shorts from the
1920s and 1930s, Panoram Soundies in the 1940s, post WWII Scopitone films in the 1950s,
avant-garde films such as Bruce Conner’s Cosmic Ray (1961), Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising
(1963), Nam June Paik’s Beatles Electroniques (1966-69) and performance based films such as
the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night (Richard Lester, 1964) and Help! (Richard Lester, 1965),

144

Monterey Pop (D. A. Pennebaker, 1968), Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, 1970) and Gimme
Shelter (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin, 1970). The legacy of the
Hollywood musical is also apparent in videos today. In particular, Busby Berkeley musicals of
the thirties, such as 42
nd
Street (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) and Footlight Parade
(1933), where Berkeley arranged precisely choreographed musical numbers. These exist within
the larger narrative as stage shows but also function as appealing visual spectacles in their own
right. This is due, in part, to the interaction between the performers and the music. As precursors
of performance music videos, Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night deserves special attention because of
its stylistic black and white cinematography and its incorporation of hits like “A Hard Day's
Night,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and “She Loves You.” These filmed numbers are embedded
within the narrative and set the stage for later performance music videos. A Hard Day’s Night is
also important because of its intended audience and irreverent mode of address. The film’s novel
use of camera techniques and cinéma vérité style captured the Beatles blithely singing their way
from Liverpool to London. “Taking the piss” out of the older generation, the band is harassed
throughout their journey by Paul McCartney’s grandfather (played by Wilfrid Brambell) “a
villain, a real mixer.”
3
E. Ann Kaplan writes in Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television,
Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture, “The British Youth responded with glee to the Beatles,
who finally introduced joy, exuberance, and fun into the traumatized post-World-War-II British
landscape.”
4
The Beatles’ ebullience did not conform to the rules of stuffy, class-conscious
British society. In the scene in the train compartment with the British businessman, the Beatles
not only poke fun at class conventions and an older generation, but they also draw attention to
the medium by suddenly appearing outside the train. This reflexive, cheeky scene both speaks to
and for youth culture, commenting on everyday life as part of youth culture.
Beatlemania in the 1960s spurred television executives to recognize audience desire to
see rock and roll on television and music shows debuted on both sides of the Atlantic. There was
Top of the Pops, Ready Steady Go!, and Oh Boy in Britain and Shindig!, Hullabaloo, Album
Tracks, and the previously running American Bandstand in America. Starting in the mid-1960s,
record companies began to produce promotional clips to air on these shows when bands could
not make a live appearance. Promotional clips assisted the transnational flow of music and
musicians across national boundaries. Television shows were happy to get the clips and record
companies were even more excited about the financial potential of the clips. From the

145

perspective of the record company, the promotional clips resulted in more exposure for their acts,
and by extension, more record sales. The 1970s saw an increase in musicians approaching the
promotional video clips creatively. Musicians such as the Beatles, Queen, The Who, the Rolling
Stones, Devo, Todd Rundgren, David Bowie, Michael Nesmith, and Blondie were all
experimenting with promo clips. These 1970s proto-MTV productions were innovative because
they moved away from the band-in-the-studio lip-synching concept favored by the record
companies. Instead, musicians dreamt up exuberant promotional films like the Beatles’ Penny
Lane, and Strawberry Fields Forever directed by Peter Goldman
5
or outrageous, fantastical
situations like the Stones’ 1967 spoof of the Oscar Wilde trial for We Love You with Mick Jagger
as Wilde and Keith Richards as the Marquis of Queensbury. Bowie, in particular, established the
form’s potential with his 1972 clip for Space Oddity. For MoMA curator Barbara London, Space
Oddity demonstrated music video could be “a kind of privatized conduit for rock-star fame,
superseding rock magazines as the place where fans could connect with their idols.”
6

The ability of innovative promo clips to drive record sales was proven by Queen’s
“Bohemian Rhapsody” directed by Bruce Gowers in 1975. When the song reached No. 30 on the
British charts the promo clip was featured on Top of the Pops. After this broadcast of Top of the
Pops, “Bohemian Rhapsody” shot from No. 30 to Britain’s Top 5 on the charts.
7
Proving
exposure is the best sales tool, the answer to Queen’s “Is this the real life / Is this just fantasy?”
was a resounding yes as audiences bought the record after viewing its corresponding promotional
clip. Eventually, MTV’s success at attracting audiences convinced artists to advertise themselves
through music videos designed to sell LPs, cassette tapes, and CDs. Tune into MTV today and a
plethora of reality shows espouse the very different idea that video can save the festering career
of the former (if only briefly) radio star. My, how programming choices have changed! And yet,
the very basic form that spurred the formation of MTV remains a constant. Music videos, in all
their various incarnations, are still a source of consternation for cultural critics and citizens alike.
Informed and intelligent writing on the genre tends to be primarily concerned with defining the
form of music videos and determining their social and artistic merits. Historically, theorists have
come to music videos from one of three positions; the film studies approach that concentrates on
the visual, the paradigm of postmodernism, and detailed textual analysis interested in issues of
production and consumption. Writers Blaine Allan, John Fiske, Murray Forman, Andrew
Goodwin, Lynne Joyrich, E. Ann Kaplan and Tricia Rose laid the theoretical groundwork for

146

future generations of music video scholars. Despite their potential differences, scholars who
write about music videos are ultimately all interested in proving to music video’s detractors that
the form, as a complex collision of visual and aural elements and an amalgamation of formal
influences, is worthy of critical attention. In the David E. James essay “Avant-Garde Film and
Music Video: A View From Zurich,” James interrogates how avant-garde film and music video
are mutually exclusive for “avant-garde film is the dream of socialism” and “music television is
either partly responsible for or synchronous with the final demise of this revolution.”
8

Popclips Popularize the Form: “Hopin’ to Promote a Dream Somewhere Along the Way”
9

In 1977, Michael Nesmith, a former member of The Monkees, released his eighth studio
album as a solo singer/songwriter called From a Radio Engine to the Photon Wing. Nesmith’s
European record company, in an attempt to popularize From a Radio Engine to the Photon Wing,
suggested filming a promotional video for the song “Rio.” At that time, European weekly chart
shows on television, such as Top of the Pops in Britain, were a better place for showcasing new
music than radio.
10
For $25,000, Nesmith and director William Dear dreamed up a surrealistic
universe inhabited by Nesmith and three women dressed like Carmen Miranda. Positioning
Nesmith in an intergalactic setting, the camera’s slow descent past Nesmith with the ladies
creates the illusion of a human Halley’s comet blasting into space. Even after they’ve left the
frame, Earth slowly recedes suggesting the comet’s continued progress. Suddenly, a
superimposed image spins clockwise blurring the stars and evoking a record rotating on a
turntable out of the galactic scene. A wipe slowly brings Nesmith, donning a cowboy hat
embellished with stars into the frame. The imagery of Nesmith and the Carmen Mirandas
untethered to the Earth as well as the celestial focus of the video recalls Slavko Vorkapich’s
interludes for What Price Hollywood? In contrast to Vorkapich’s interludes, which emphasize
fame’s fickleness, the “Rio” clip draws on the contingent nature of slapstick in its spectacular,
enjoyable silliness. At one point, Nesmith struggles to reunite his foot, clad in a red sock, with an
all-white shoe and later his dancing partner runs towards the camera and out of the frame only to
drop unannounced from the sky into Nesmith’s waiting arms an instant later. The video’s end
playfully contemplated fame in its reveal that Nesmith, as a grip on set, imagined the whole
thing. In comparison to other promo clips of the late 1970s, which were inexpensively produced
performance videos of musicians lip-synching, it’s no wonder Nesmith’s fantastical “Rio”

147

inspired London record company executives to give him a standing ovation.
11
While on tour
promoting From a Radio Engine to the Photon Wing, Nesmith discovered Australians called
music video clips “popclips.” Besides highlighting the global nature of the recording industry,
the international spread and success of “popclips” demonstrated there was a large market for
music videos.
Believing fans would eventually collect “popclips” and play them repeatedly just like
records, Nesmith made another video in 1979 for the song “Cruisin” from his album Infinite
Rider on the Big Dogma. “Cruisin” parenthetically titled “Lucy and Ramona and Sunset Sam”
tells the story of Lucy from Compton, Ramona from Brooklyn, and Sunset Sam from the
Arizona desert all trying to make their way in Los Angeles. The “Cruisin” popclip alternates
between depicting the narrative of Lucy, Ramona, and Sam cruisin’ Hollywood and a close-up of
Nesmith lip-synching. The video, equal parts sincere and dream factory, is quintessentially L.A.
Shots of Lucy and Ramona, “with their blemish free complexions,”
12
donning silver winged
roller-skates to carouse down Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard. During their travels they meet
Sunset Sam, a bodybuilder played by the wrestler Steve Strong.
13
Sunset Sam, who looks like he
just finished several hundred reps of bicep curls, represents Venice Beach culture of the late
1970s with his red bodybuilding bikini clinging tightly to his golden, oiled loins. Venice Beach’s
most famous boardwalk musician, the roller-skating-turban-wearing-guitar-playing Harry Perry,
also has a cameo in the video for “Cruisin.” Primitive video effects distort the imagery and add
to the surrealistic spin Nesmith puts on Hollywood, especially when the Hollywood sign changes
neon colors. Although the video has more of a narrative arc than “Rio,” it retains the self-
reflective wit Nesmith demonstrated in his first “popclip.” Opening with a close-up of a man’s
bare legs as he pulls on red bikini underwear, the camera pushes in and tilts up into dangerous
territory, but instead of revealing male genitalia; a bright backlight obscures the view. The scene
quickly changes to fingers tying roller-skate laces and the man slathering body oil over his flexed
biceps. Once Nesmith starts singing and the video takes on a narrative dimension, it becomes
clear these quick cuts in the beginning are Lucy, Ramona, and Sam as they prepare for “cruisin
thru the jungles of L.A. / Hopin’ to promote a dream somewhere along the way.”
14

One sequence of the video, which replicates the imaginary geography of earlier
montages, links shots of Lucy and Ramona roller-skating through various different streets of
L.A. This element of Criuisin, which became a staple of later music videos, is what Blaine Allan

148

in “Music Television” explains as “spatial incoherence.”
15
The camera moves freely, unburdened
by the constraints of the human eye. Allan affirms, “From one shot to the next, the musicians
may appear in different costumes, different lighting and visual styles, different hairstyles, or
totally different locations, yet they continue to appear to be performing the same song without
any corresponding aural changes. In fact, the music video has made such extreme visual
discontinuity, married to the aural continuity of the music itself, one of the most characteristic
parts of its stylistic stock-in-trade.”
16
The video constructs the feeling of one continuous journey
even though the shots feature disparate areas of the city shot at different times during the day.
With arms joyfully linked in the California sun, the ladies skate towards the camera with the
now-shuttered Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard in the background. Suddenly, the scene
switches to night and Lucy and Ramona are skating in front of the marquee of the Pussycat
Theater on Hill Street advertising the adult film The Ecstasy Girls (Gary Graver, 1979). Quasi-
mystical elements suffuse the video and the song, referencing obliquely the city’s history with
new religious movements.
Despite the visual brilliance of “Rio” and “Cruisin,” there was no place to show these
clips on American television. Initially undaunted, Nesmith and his former manager, Jerry
Perenchio, created a pilot for a half-hour show entitled Popclips and shopped it at the National
Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) convention in 1979.
17
The NATPE
convention is an annual gathering where producers and syndicators attempt to sell their shows to
stations around the country. Unfortunately, Popclips failed to generate enough interest at the
convention forcing Nesmith to contact Warner Records executive, Jac Holzman. In turn,
Holzman connected Nesmith with John Lack, who was at the recently formed Warner AMEX
Satellite Entertainment Company (WASEC). As early as 1968, cable operators had preached
passionately about the content choices cable would create.
18
The biggest obstacle to this new
frontier was the Big Three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, who sued cable operators
and lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to impose strict regulations on
cable. Following a relaxation of regulations in 1972, major media players entered the cable
business, such as the Time Inc. backed Green Channel, which broadcast through underground
cable lines even before satellite distribution was in place.
19

In 1979, intrigued by cable’s possibilities, Bill Rassmussen started ESPN, Ted Turner
started CNN, and Warner Communications joined with American Express with the goal of

149

expanding into the cable universe. Warner/AMEX promptly divided into two divisions, Warner
AMEX Cable Communications (WACC) and WASEC. WACC would oversee acquisition of
cable franchises and run Qube, which programmed children’s shows, sporting events, talent
shows, and adult films in an effort to penetrate lucrative urban markets. In 1980, “with the
demand for HBO and other cable services greater than ever, many of America’s unwired cities
had once again begun soliciting franchise bids, and the big cable operators, WACC included,
were vigorously pursuing them.”
20
On the other hand, WASEC was envisioned as a
programming division in charge of further developing two channels inherited from WACC,
Nickelodeon and the Star Channel.
21
The former head of television and radio operations at CBS,
Jack Schneider, was hired as head of WASEC.
22
Schneider tasked his second in command, John
Lack, to develop several new channels organized around a coherent topic and targeting a specific
audience segment.
23
Lack, who was immediately excited about Popclips, had Nesmith make an
episode to broadcast on Nickelodeon to measure audience response in Columbus, Ohio. WASEC
had been experimenting with audience research to determine viewer’s tastes.
24
Although both
men were enthusiastic about Popclips, their visions diverged. What Nesmith delivered to Lack
was risqué for a kids’ channel and Lack preferred radio deejays to the comedians
25
Nesmith
used. Nesmith made the requisite changes Lack required and Popclips was a hit when it aired on
Nickelodeon in March of 1980. Its success strengthened Lack’s resolve that WASEC’s next
service should be an all music channel. However, when Lack tried to bring Nesmith on board for
the project, Nesmith declined. Not only was Nesmith busy working on the album Elephant Parts,
but he perceptively feared the music video medium he viewed as full of artistic possibilities
would be relegated, in corporate hands, to merely commercials for record companies.
26

MTV’s Beginnings: “Color me your color baby / Color me your car.”
27

Like an orchestra building to a roaring crescendo, the increasing numbers of promotional
clips made by musicians throughout the 1970s made the development of a twenty-four hour
music cable channel feel like a foregone conclusion. Although they were convinced, Schneider
and Lack of WASEC still had to sway the parent company, Warner/AMEX to invest $25 million
to start a twenty-four hour music channel.
28
Their confidence that Warner Communications
would finance the deal stems from a belief in corporate synergy, namely, the music channel
would help the company’s record label. The new service mimicked the same model as radio

150

where record labels provided stations with music for free in exchange for exposure. Not only
would the channel help Warner Records sell more records, but the content, the promotional video
clips, were acquired for free.
29
WASEC also convinced Warner Records its video department,
could exploit the commercial potential of promotional clips by packaging them for VCR and
Videodisc in the home. Finally, a music channel fit a corporate vision of cable narrowcasting
because advertisers, eager to tap the market of twelve to thirty-four year-olds, would flock to a
rock and roll channel appealing to a youth demographic.
As soon as Warner/AMEX approved the twenty-four hour music channel, WASEC
realized they were facing challenges unique to the nascent cable industry. For starters, the
proliferation of cable channels offering similar content convinced them they had to launch a fully
operational channel in six months. This was because getting on the air first was the most
effective way to eliminate the competition. By 1981, HBO was broadcasting Video Jukebox,
USA featured Night Flight, and other music video networks were on the horizon.
30
Although this
was before competition from the Internet and other digital technologies, WASEC wanted to be
first to grab viewers and advertising dollars in an increasingly fragmented media environment.
They were also facing technical issues shared by other cable networks in the early 1980s.
Specifically, they opted to build a new uplink for transmitting the channel’s signal to a satellite.
Rather than overburden the Buffalo facility servicing Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel,
WASEC constructed a brand new uplink on Long Island.
31
Another technical innovation
WASEC executives hoped to embrace was broadcasting the channel in stereo. From the 1950s to
the 1980s, an increased awareness of stereo and multichannel sound drove consumers to recreate
the cinema experience at home. In the October 2012 Journal of Sonic Studies, David Sedman
discusses how, “The consumer electronics industry took advantage of this growing awareness of
stereo and multichannel sound, as terms like “cable-ready” and “stereo-compatible” began to
appear on consumer electronic devices aimed at the growing home theater consumer
marketplace.”
32
WASEC understood telecasting in stereo would make their channel appeal to
both consumers concerned with the best aural experience and cable operators who could charge
for stereo hookups.
33
It also made sense to convert to stereo as the music videos were on stereo
videotape.
34
Lastly, WASEC executives could capitalize on stereo as a selling point for their
channel because they would emphasize optimal sound for the music in their promotional
materials. However WASEC not only had to attract viewers but advertisers as well. Tweaking

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the Field of Dreams (Phil Alden Robinson, 1989) mantra to “If we build it, they will come,”
WASEC decided to create a channel teens and young adults would identify with in order to
attract advertisers. Just like Blondie singing “color me your color” in “Call Me,” WASEC
wanted their channel to attract suitors willing to pay for a product. WASEC executives set out
painting their music channel in neon brushstrokes certain to capture a youth demographic.
35

Since television is a dual product marketplace, their suitors formed two very different groups.
One was the teens and young adults they hoped to court with a music channel that looked and
acted authentically rebellious. The other was advertisers eager to exploit the spending power of
those teens. If WASEC failed to attract the attention of teens and young adults, advertisers would
flee and MTV would fail.
Tensions between authenticity and capitalist motivations have always surrounded rock
and roll. MTV’s striving for authenticity, however, was not simply pecuniary, it was also
predicated on a desire to embody the irreverence of the music. Alongside programming videos
from New Wave bands like Blondie, WASEC executives designed MTV to be radically different
in content, attitude, and form. How to embody rock and roll’s rebellious energy? The answer, in
terms of programming, was simple. From its inception, television was organized around
regularly scheduled shows. In contrast, MTV exploded the industry standard rhetoric espousing
thirty, sixty, and ninety minute time slots in order to surprise viewers with one song after
another.
36
Akin to radio programming, with its constant stream of songs, MTV’s schedule was a
stark departure from the preordained time slots every television viewer in America had learned to
expect. Other than a Saturday night concert, Sunday night movie, and occasional rock-star
documentary, MTV premiered as a sort of visual radio with a continuous flow of music videos.
Besides establishing the channel’s rebelliousness, there was a practical reason to break from
regularly scheduled shows. Specifically, MTV did not have enough videos to fill up their airtime
let alone organize content into thematically coherent programming blocks. As an added bonus,
WASEC executives believed the flow of videos would appeal to Generation X, viewers who
grew up with the medium of television and took it for granted. In particular, they “theorized that
the older generation’s minds worked linearly, like print; but TV babies had brains that were non-
linear; like TV.”
37
Whereas the older generation would do one activity before moving onto the
next, MTV envisioned a younger generation simultaneously talking on the phone, reading a
book, and watching television. This idea aligns with how television was theorized as a distracted

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medium. Shows even started incorporating aural elements, such as the Law & Order gavel, to
draw viewer attention back to the show. The distracted television viewer was most often
conceptualized as a woman watching daytime television while simultaneously keeping her house
in order. Despite patriarchal fears that women would become so engrossed in television they
would neglect their household chores, programmers geared their daytime schedules around
women. This vision of a distracted viewer diverges from MTV’s idea about distracted viewing
by teenagers. From the outset, MTV conceptualized their viewers as distracted but saw
promotional music clips as capable of capturing the audience’s attention. Labeling teens and
young adults as thinking non-linearly is especially apropos in light of music video montages,
which encouraged the viewer to make sense of disparate images often arranged in an incoherent,
non-linear fashion. From this moment, it is possible to glance back at the montages of Vorkapich
and Siegel that were constructed non-linearly out of various pieces of footage as well as gaze
forward to the explosion of random and brief video memes, which comprise the cultural
miscellany dominating the Internet.
In line with MTV’s irreverent brand image, the music video chosen to open MTV’s
initial broadcast was the cheeky “Video Killed the Radio Star.”
38
In the video, which is a
performance punctuated by early video effects, the Buggles lip-synch “I’m lying awake intent at
tuning in on you,”
39
Ironically, only a couple of thousand people actually watched MTV at
midnight on August 1, 1981.
40
This was partly because the cable channel, “rewritten by machine
and new technology,”
41
was only rolled out to rural markets and was experiencing technical
difficulties. Like the Death Star, MTV’s Long Island uplink station was not yet fully operational.
During the opening broadcast, the MTV vee-jay segments aired completely out of order
destroying any sense of continuity between Mark Goodman, Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter, J.J.
Jackson, and Martha Quinn. The Buggles singing “Pictures came and broke your heart, put the
blame on VTR” (video tape recorder) was actually a prognostic first choice as the carefully
considered order of clips and commercials proved too much for the staff at the uplink facility
frantically trying to discern what was going to be played in the first hour and in what order.
42

Despite the chaotic nocturnal start, the channel’s first day on air succeeded in conveying a sense
of MTV as visual radio. Contributing to this feeling was a constant stream of videos often
without any graphic titles to identify the song title, artist, album title, and recording company.
The graphic titles also serve as a form of address to the viewer. In the lucid “Music Television,”

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Blaine Allan writes, “If music television is organized in such a way that viewers may tune in and
out or attend to the broadcast with only partial or distracted attention, then the broadcaster has
devised ways for viewers to continually reground themselves.”
43
Along with drawing attention
back to the program, graphic titles include the information that sells records. Without graphic
titles then, the succession of music videos resembled what Raymond Williams would call “a
single irresponsible flow of images and feelings.”
44
The decision to open MTV’s broadcast with
“Video Killed the Radio Star” exposes how the WASEC executives viewed what they were
doing as revolutionary in terms of the recording industry. As Allan asserts, “Recalling the
Hollywood myth that silent-era stars would not survive the transition to sound cinema, the title
seems to predict that television would supplant radio as the more important medium to the pop
music industry.”
45
Not every musician would initially benefit from the exposure afforded by
music videos on television.

Collision of Art and Commerce: “It doesn’t matter who’s wrong or who’s right”
Initially, for example, there was almost no space for black artists on MTV. While the
executives at MTV believed they were fomenting a channel dedicated to youth rebelliousness, it
was a rebellion comprised largely of white rockers. The first eighteen months on air, MTV
showcased only a handful of black artists including Joan Armatrading, Prince, Tina Turner, and
the Bus Boys, who loosely fit into MTV’s conception of rock music. Journalists and musicians
alike were beginning to criticize MTV, but none so vociferously as Rick James, who had just
scored a hit with his funk album Street Songs (1982). MTV passed on promotional clips for
“Superfreak” and “Give It to Me Baby.”
46
It would take the global success of Michael Jackson’s
album Thriller (1982) to usher in changes to MTV’s programming. Initially, though, MTV
resisted; even debating the merits of “Billie Jean,” which was climbing the Top 10 charts on its
way to number one and “Beat It,” which featured Eddie Van Halen’s virtuosic guitar solo and
was designed to appeal to album rock radio. Although they were unsure whether MTV would
play Jackson’s music and CBS decided not to finance the videos for “Billie Jean” and “Beat It,”
Jackson and Epic Records committed to both, investing $150,000 on the production for Beat It.
The video casts Jackson as a mystical power conquering the divisions between gang members
through the power of dance. When executives at MTV saw “Beat It,” they realized the powerful,
polished video had to go on air.
47
Additionally, the music video montage for “Beat It” represents

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the collision of art and commerce, which would come to dominate popular music’s relationship
with television.
As the music video production process standardized, two of its defining characteristics
were location shooting in Los Angeles and hiring a director housed at a commercial/music video
production company. Production houses maintained a roster of commercial/music video directors
effectively destroying any sense of boundaries between the two forms. Beat It established this
precedence and signals the calcification of art and commerce because it was written and directed
by a commercial director, Bob Giraldi. Giraldi, who had caught Jackson’s eye with a commercial
showing a white couple throwing a block party for children in their predominantly black
neighborhood, also directed commercials for Miller Lite’s “Tastes Great, Less Filling”
advertising campaign. In Beat It,
48
Giraldi constructed an exciting montage, which compresses
space in its depiction of simultaneous action. As two groups of gangs spill out of pool halls and
bars into the streets of Los Angeles, Jackson lip synchs, “The fire’s in their eyes and the words
are really clear.”
49
The switchblade fight and several other flourishes of the choreography by
Jackson and Broadway choreographer Michael Peters for Beat It reference West Side Story
(Robert Wise and Jerome Bass, 1961). Through quick cuts, Giraldi enlivens the action and
provides the viewer with multiple points of view. Jackson is conceived as a red-leather-jacket-
wearing mystic capable of transcending the two gangs differences and ensuring narrative
resolution. The members of the Los Angeles Crips and Bloods hired as extras add authenticity to
the video. Breaking up a switchblade fight, Jackson leads the professional dancers through an
acrobatic synchronized routine establishing mass choreography as a hallmark of Jackson’s music
video style.
The mass choreography also conjures Busby Berkeley musicals in its emphasis on the
physicality and synchronization of the performers in determining the finished look of the
sequence. In Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon, 1933), for example, the viewer derives pleasure by
watching groups of women become zippers unlocking and locking or flowers blooming, swaying
and turning assembly line of movements and patterns. From military drill marching to
synchronized swimming, these choreographed spectacles are predicated on the performers’
physical actions. The synchronized movement of the dancers brings to mind Siegfried
Kracauer’s writings on the mass ornament. Kracauer writes,

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The girl-units drill in order to produce an immense number of parallel lines, the goal
being to train the broadest mass of people in order to create a pattern of undreamed-of
dimensions. The end result is the ornament, whose closure is brought about by emptying
all the substantial constructs of their contents. (Kracauer, 77)
The women in the fantastic Berkeley musical numbers have no meaning as individuals; rather it
is their ability to work together to create “undreamed-of dimensions” that animates them. One of
the primary ways that the Berkeley musicals suggest Kracauer’s mass ornament is through the
use of the bird’s-eye view shot. The unfamiliar view afforded by this shot, where the camera is
positioned directly above the scene, further distances the viewer from the performers onscreen.
Towards the end of Beat It, the dancers are filmed from above, simultaneously recalling
Berkeley musicals and the mass ornament. The twist, of course, is the dancers are all male. As
their hips thrust and fingers snap in a choreographed spectacle, their lack of individuality
contrasts with Jackson, who, as the star of the video, dominates the center of the frame. To
accentuate Jackson, a single spotlight casts a glow around his lithe body. While the legacy of
Berkeley musicals is evident in this scene, the contemporary twist is that the male performers are
a multi-ethnic group dressed in street clothes. Commercial directors like Tim Newman, who
directed ZZ Top’s videos and Jay Dubin, who directed Billy Joel’s early 1980s videos were
attracted to the medium after seeing the creativity and production values of Beat It.
Beat It was also significant in the marriage of art and commerce because it was quickly
taken up by various advertising campaigns, including Pepsi commercials and even a National
Campaign Against Teen-age Drunk Driving public service announcement. President Ronald
Reagan even honored Michael Jackson at the White for his contribution to the Presidential
Commission on Drunk Driving. In 1984, Reagan told the crowd, “Michael Jackson is proof of
what a person can accomplish through a lifestyle free of alcohol or drug abuse. People young and
old respect that. And if Americans follow his example, we can face up to the problem of drinking
and driving, and we can, in Michael’s words, beat it.”
50
As an album, Thriller was historic for its
staggering sonic and visual success. Not only did the album sell over forty million copies, the
singles were repurposed in a myriad of commercials. The music videos drove sales of the album
and were sold as videocassettes leading Greil Marcus to wax poetically about Michael Jackson as
“capitalist demi-god.”
51
Beat It was also the first video played on NBC’s Friday Night Videos,
which premiered on July 29, 1983 as a music video compilation show designed to capture the

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youth demographic MTV was already tapping. Friday Night Videos was NBC’s attempt to
capitalize on MTV’s success since not all American homes were wired for cable. Thriller also
broadened the scope of music played on MTV. Jackson’s success as an artist broke down racial
barriers on the channel and eventually, MTV adopted genre curated programming such as YO!
MTV Raps, Headbangers Ball, Club MTV, and 120 Minutes. Each of these venues was a
location for encoding how a subculture looked, dressed, acted, and talked. In turn, viewers could
curate their own lives along the guidelines provided by the videos.

Miami Vice Showcases a Montage Aesthetic: “I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life”
The meteoric success of MTV and its popularization of music videos played a large role
in propagating a montage aesthetic on television. Emblematic of this process is the video for Phil
Collins’ In the Air Tonight, which also aired during MTV’s inaugural broadcast. Directed by
Stuart Orme, the video evokes German Expressionism and especially The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) with its stylized sets and jagged lines. Through superimposition
and video effects, Collins’ face in close-up is transformed into a canvas were water is projected
and later a distorted mask. In 1984, the song was featured in the pilot of Miami Vice; one of the
first times a pop song was foregrounded within a show’s narrative. Miami Vice was borne from a
combination of NBC Head, Brandon Tartikoff, scribbling “MTV cops” on a napkin and
showrunner Anthony Yerkovich researching Florida’s thriving drug trade. The confluence of
these two ideas resulted in the sartorial duo of James “Sonny” Crockett (Don Johnson) and
Ricardo “Rico” Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas). Tartikoff hoped to capitalize on the success of
MTV, which had quickly become a tastemaker for the youth demographic. The show’s pilot,
“Brother’s Keeper,” uses “In the Air Tonight” to evoke an atmosphere of unease as Crockett and
Tubbs make their way to avenge the death of Eddie Rivera (Jimmy Smits). The inclusion of “In
the Air Tonight” on Miami Vice exemplified a montage aesthetic seeping from MTV onto the
broadcast networks. Operating as a montage interlude, which condensed time and space, the
song’s driving rhythm suggests the pulsing heart of the city at night. Shots of Miami streetlights
reflected off the car’s jet-black hood and hubcaps are punctuated by Tubbs loading a shotgun and
Crockett calling his ex-wife.
Clive James praising Michael Mann, executive producer of Miami Vice, in his book
Cultural Amnesia, writes, “His years in the glossy sweatshop of Miami Vice gave him a feeling

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for compressed narrative and a mastery of pastel composition transferable to any setting,
including the morgue.”
52
Here James obliquely refers to the cop show’s reliance on montage as
an aesthetic and narrative device. In fact, along with decrying “no earth tones” to the show’s set
and costume departments, Mann pushed for a cinematic style and convinced Tartikoff for bigger
budgets to secure rights to popular music and to shoot extra footage for montages constructed to
those songs.
53
Mann also hired Edward James Olmos to play Lieutenant Martin Castillo and
composer Jan Hammer, who brought an edgy, synthesized sound to each episode. Montage
permeates the visual style of the police procedural including its opening credit sequence set to
the music of composer Jan Hammer. A rapid succession of images provides a glimpse into the
“good-life” in Miami: bikini-clad beauties, flamingoes, art deco architecture, the beach, jai alai,
and racetracks. A discordant note sounds at the end of the sequence as the scene switches to
Miami at night insinuating there’s a dark side to the city. Reminiscent of the Scarface (Brian De
Palma, 1983) montage set to “Take it to the Limit.” Signaling the convergence of Miami Vice
and MTV, both Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas launched recording careers with music
video singles that saw rotation on MTV.
54
Like MTV, the show was broadcast in stereo
appealing to early adopters. A large roster of musicians even guest-starred on the show
cementing the connection between Miami Vice and pop music. The show felt different than other
police procedurals like Hill Street Blues and Lou Grant because of its style. Not just the montage
aesthetic but also the casual chic fashion of Crockett in a t-shirt, jacket, and loafers and the
ethnically diverse cast. The pop culture revolution of Miami Vice was predicated on the show’s
sense of style. From pink ties to New Wave culture to a montage aesthetic, Miami Vice appealed
to the MTV generation. Solidifying the merger of Miami Vice and music video was NBC’s
decision to program the show before Friday Night Videos.
In her 1996 book Re-Viewing Reception: Television, Gender, and Postmodern Culture,
Lynne Joyrich discusses how the typical music video spectator is conceptualized as part of youth
culture. In general, Joyrich foregrounds gender and generational differences in a discussion about
television spectatorship. In terms of music videos, Joyrich makes the important point that they
are a form that appeals to “a culturally devalued but economically desirable audience” and as
such they “dissolve the distinction between program, product, and ad by serving... as their own
commercials.”
55
This was the case in Miami Vice, which incorporated pop music, musicians, and
television before synergy was a corporate strategy. At the same time, Joyrich notes that music

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video programming is often attacked for being “childish” and “infantile.”
56
It is precisely for
these reasons, according to Joyrich, that music television was worthy of study. Joyrich helped
establish that there was a strong relationship between the medium of music videos and a youth
audience. In her discussion on the portrayal of masculinity on Miami Vice, Joyrich emphasized
the connection between postmodernism, consumerism, and style. In her discussion, she borrowed
heavily on John Fiske’s analysis in Reading Television. Fiske and by extension Joyrich contend
that Miami Vice is heavily concerned with representing the hyper masculine detectives, Crockett
and Tubbs, through “the essentially liberating language of style.”
57
This set up an immediate
contradiction in that the male performer’s body becomes a spectacle, something pleasurable to
look at, something feminized and thus capable of destroying rigid notions of gender. Thus,
displaying an awareness of style “invites the viewer-consumer to construct his / her own image,
permits us the pleasure of making spectacles of ourselves as we toy with new meanings, and
rejects all traditional categories and the judgments they contain.”
58
“Real men wear pink” was
Crockett’s mantra and his uniform of Armani jacket, t-shirt, and loafers has become the
quintessential marker of eighties masculinity.

Postmodern and the Color Pink: “If they don’t give me proper credit / I just walk away.”
59

From Crockett’s pink ties to Florida’s pink flamingoes and pink art deco architecture,
Miami Vice, like many music videos from the same time period, is appreciated today as
quintessential eighties kitsch. Postmodernism and a flair for pink connected Miami Vice to an
iconic music video from 1985, Madonna’s Material Girl. E. Ann Kaplan, in arguably the first
book on music television, Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and
Consumer Culture, labeled Material Girl “the penultimate postmodern video.” Kaplan classifies
all music videos under one of five categories: “romantic,” “socially conscious,” “nihilist,”
“classical” and “post-modernist.”
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Within her schematic, a postmodernist video is defined by
pastiche, non-linear imagery, simulacra, and ambiguity. Kaplan highlights Material Girl as a
postmodernist text pointing to director Mary Lambert’s use of pastiche, the rapid shifting from
one diegetic space to another, and incoherent shot constructions. The most visible characteristic
of postmodernism Material Girl demonstrated was an intertextual relationship with Howard
Hawks’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Madonna recreated the scene where Lorelei Lee
(Monroe) performed “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” on the ocean liner lounge replete with

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a similar red set, pink dress, black fan, male dancers, and diamond accoutrements. As she
performs, Monroe is the object of desire for both Gus Esmond (Tommy Noonan), the male
spectator within the diegesis, and for the spectator watching the film. Material Girl reconfigured
the famous number recasting Madonna as a modern Monroe, the object of the gaze, but also an
active seductress. Kaplan described this dichotomy between passive object and active temptress
as distinguishing Madonna as “the new postmodern feminist heroine in her odd combination of
seductiveness and a gutsy sort of independence.”
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As Kaplan articulated, Material Girl does not inform the viewer of its attitude towards
the referenced text. Instead, all the music video offers is pastiche or “blank parody.” As Frederic
Jameson wrote in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture,
Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a
stylistic mask, speech in a dead language; but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry,
without parody’s ulterior motive, without the satirical impulse, without the laughter,
without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal compared to which
what is being imitated is rather comic.
62

Although Madonna’s Material Girl made use of costuming, set design, and spectatorial position
to refer to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, it did so in the interests of style rather than any sort of
narrative commentary. Material Girl set the stage for many videos to follow, which uncritically
reenact iconic film moments.
63
Hollywood musicals from the fifties such as the exuberant barn-
raising scene in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), the vibrant interaction between Louis
Armstrong and Bing Crosby in High Society (1956) and the energy of Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye
and Debbie Reynolds in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) informed the look of videos in general. These
iconic musical moments formed a visual framework admired, emulated and reworked. However,
oftentimes, “the main shots and use of diegetic spaces demonstrates the ways in which
conventions of the classic Hollywood film, which paradoxically provided the inspiration for the
video, are routinely violated.”
64
Interspersed with Madonna’s focus on material wealth within the
space of the performance, is a conflicting narrative about a director (Keith Carradine) wooing
Madonna with daisies and the promise of true love. The disorientation the spectator experiences
throughout the video is due to its “spatial incoherence” as Madonna continues to lip-synch
regardless of whether she is in the performance or narrative sections of the video. The
fetishization of Madonna lip-synching is what David E. James sees as “the key moment in

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enforcing the aesthetic and commercial closure that sustains the advertising function” of most
videos.
65
Throughout Material Girl, Madonna is foregrounded as the diva demanding attention
and the brazen spectacle of Madonna as Monroe helped elevate the singer to pop culture icon.
In response to music video scholarship, like Kaplan’s, grounded in the established
discourses of film studies, Andrew Goodwin lamented textual readings that privileged the visual
at the expense of the aural. Throughout the erudite Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music
Television and Popular Culture, Goodwin emphasized a need for scholars to address the role of
music in music television. Goodwin hoped to shift critical attention away from a focus on visual
aesthetics and towards an engagement with the aural properties of music videos. For Goodwin,
the references to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in Material Girl were irrelevant because Madonna’s
average viewer would be blind to the elements of pastiche. Instead, Goodwin wanted to highlight
music videos as the interaction between sound and image when he wrote, “The neglect of music
in music video analysis has been so pervasive that few writers seem to have noticed that a
cultural form centered on its aural component has been analyzed by critics without ears.”
66
Part
of the problem as Goodwin saw it was “the practice of constructing textual readings not on the
basis of a theorized relation between text and production, or between text and consumption, but
rather between text and theory.”
67
His insistence on contextualizing music videos socially,
institutionally, and economically is reiterated in Sound & Vision: The Music Video Reader edited
by Goodwin, Simon Frith and Lawrence Grossberg. Alongside thinking about the aural in
conjunction with the visual, each of these books shared concerns about the paradoxical way
music videos create spaces promoting “countercultural and antiestablishment points of view” yet
inherently fixed in the clutch of corporate power.
68

Cahiers du MTV? Rise of the Auteurs: “It’s the new weapon, weapon of choice”
69

It’s no coincidence MTV hoped to capitalize on Madonna’s star power by having her
perform “Like a Virgin” at the first annual Video Music Awards (VMAs) held in 1984 at the
Radio City Music Hall and broadcast live on the channel. The polished, carefully orchestrated,
and overly produced MTV Video Awards of later years were an unimagined dream when MTV
debuted its service. The early VMAs hastened the creation of music video auteurs out of both
directors and performers. Auteur theory, in contrast to the ideological approach, celebrates the
individual filmmaker and how their personal decisions, thoughts, and style manifest themselves

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in the material. Just as Francois Truffaut in Cahiers du cinema ascribed auteur theory to redeem
the art of film and filmmakers who were looked down upon by mainstream critics, the
establishment of the VMAs was a way for MTV to advocate music videos (and by extension, the
channel as a whole) were as important as other televisual forms. Not to mention, as MTV
rewarded music video auteurs, it instituted an awards show with the concurrent boost in ratings
and advertising dollars accompanying live television. Just as in film, the concept of a music
video auteur is both useful and misleading. On the one hand, it acknowledged the role of
performers and directors in shaping the look of the finished videos. On the other hand, it
downplayed the collaborative element of any production while ascribing control to artists in a
complicated media landscape where various corporate actors weigh in on the look and feel of the
videos. Certain female performers like Madonna, Whitney Houston, Björk, Missy Elliott,
Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga had enough clout to determine their personas across multiple videos.
These female musical personalities staked their claim to authorship based on exercising control
of the music and its corresponding imagery.
An interest in the work of male music video auteur/directors is at the heart of more recent
scholarship on music video. One example of a male director, Chris Cunningham, working in
concert with a female performer, Björk, dominates part of the beautifully illustrated Thirty
Frames Per Second: The Visionary Art of the Music Video. Almost every page is dominated by
intense color pictures, which offer a glimpse into the world of music video alongside interviews
with a number of auteur directors. In the Cunningham-directed All is Full of Love video, Björk
literally becomes the human-machine hybrid that according to Donna J. Haraway constitutes “a
machine/human construct that challenges dichotomies of identity and carves out new hybrid
spaces of being.”
70
Cunningham observes,
“With some music, the emotional impact is so strong that you’re busy experiencing the
emotion and not seeing pictures. But other tracks put images in your head and almost
have a sequential quality to them. I try to translate the emotional resonance of those songs
into pictures.”
71

The video lavishly shows a pair of robotic arms constructing a cyborg with the face of Björk.
The technologically advanced construction of the cyborg is visualized through a succession of
lush close-ups of Björk ’s body slowly being pieced together while sparks fly and milky water
flows over her joints. The natural elements add warmth to the realization of the perfect hybrid of

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female and machine, the cyborg. Towards the end of the video, the Björk cyborg is greeted by its
mirror image and the two kiss and embrace. The video blurs the line between humans and
machines as well as presenting an autoerotic world in which Björk’s visuals caress the listener as
the cyborgs caress each other.
Similar to Don Siegel, a crop of ambitious male music video directors made their mark
on the outskirts of the industry in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Concurrently, a slew
of scholarship and attention paid to these male directors resulted in Hollywood’s increased
awareness of male auteurs including David Fincher, Chris Cunningham, Spike Jonze, Michel
Gondry, Hype Williams, Mike Mills, Jonathan Glazer, and Mark Romanek. These men were
considered seminal in the articulation of music video because of the coherent visual style they
brought to each production. Their filmmaking prowess and technical innovation appealed to
viewers as much as the music. The release of Directors Label DVD compilations demanded
recognition for the directorial contributions and paved the way for these directors’ entre into
filmmaking. Treating music videos as highly polished director reels, they eventually moved into
feature film directing. Drawing on their experiences in music video, the rhythm and structure of
music in their films played a large role in determining the look of certain sequences. For
example, the montage of Jerry and Mike (Jack Black and Mos Def) remaking cult films in
Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind (2008) or David Fincher’s montage opening credit sequence
for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011). Set to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ version of
Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” featuring Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the disturbing
opening sequence alludes to key elements in the film, especially through the imagery’s violent
and unsettling integration of biology and technology. Much of the scholarship specifically
concerned with music videos and music television was written in the mid 1980s and early 90s.
The art form was brand new and influencing youth popular culture in exceptional ways. Now it
would be inconceivable to imagine a musician’s branding strategy without music videos. The
Internet allows viewers to act as curators, searching and watching music videos based on their
tastes rather than as a continuous flow as pioneered by early MTV. In addition to the branding of
musicians, music video directors are invested in creating a name for themselves.
Blaine Allan analyzed the Fatboy Slim video Weapon of Choice, with a focus on the
directorial style of Spike Jonze. Allan points out how Jonze’s experimentation with space evokes
the musical numbers in Singin’ in the Rain. Within the video, through the power of music and

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dance, an everyday space becomes an extraordinary dimension where rules of gravity do not
apply. While any video is collaborative, Weapon of Choice truly belongs to its protagonist,
Christopher Walken. Walken’s individualistic charisma is certainly one of the reasons the video
was so popular; cleaning house at the 2001 Video Music Awards with “Best” honors in Art
Direction, Breakthrough Video, Choreography, Cinematography, Direction and Editing.
72
The
video opens with a shot of Walken slumped in a chair, a nondescript executive rundown from
traveling and stuck in another nondescript hotel lobby late at night. Suddenly, the music starts
and Walken, piquing the viewer’s attention, glances off-screen, presumably towards the source
of the music. The next shot, an AM/FM radio atop a housecleaning cart, positions “Weapon of
Choice” as an element of the diegetic universe. The camera then returns to Walken who breaks
the fourth wall by staring directly at the audience with a look that demands attentive anticipation.
Walken surprises the viewer by unexpectedly transforming into a quirky vision of gracefulness
dancing and flying through the hotel’s elevators, lobby, and corridors. Walken’s transformation,
in turn, completely alters the audience’s sense of space. Initially, the hotel confines a beaten-
down Walken to a chair but as soon as he starts dancing, the space opens in new and unexpected
ways. Mirrored elevator doors become windows into infinity and the atmosphere of a two-story
atrium defies gravity. Allan writes,
Visually, there are few requirements or strict conventions in videos. In fact, part of the
force of music videos resides in their capacity to flout conventions and run contrary to
expectations. This is because video producers acknowledge the status of the television as
image, not exclusively a representation of the real world.
73

The climax of the video, Walken’s seamless leap into the atrium destroys any remaining sense of
the “real world” and invites the viewer into an extraordinary world where mundane moments are
full of creative possibilities. Weapon of Choice also demonstrates the role music videos play as
promotional tools. Despite attempts at classification, music videos are usually a convoluted
amalgamation of performance, narrative, and non-narrative elements. Unlike most videos, which
foreground a musician’s performance, the only time the Fatboy Slim is visible within the
diegesis is as a painting decorating one of the hotel’s walls. In fact, a greater sense of authorship
is bestowed on the director, Spike Jonze, and the protagonist, Christopher Walken, then on the
musician. The fantasy world of the video, however, would also not have been possible without

164

the aid of the editors, the aerial coordinators and the effects house that eliminated the wires from
the video.
Another recent publication on music videos, Carol Vernallis’ 2004 book Experiencing
Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context, takes great pains to insert musical concerns into
existing patterns of music video analysis. The majority of Experiencing Music Video focuses on
the music’s relationship to various aspects of videos such as editing, actors, settings, props,
costumes and time. Within her discussion on editing she addresses the dissolve as a fundamental
part of the music video work of Hype Williams. Vernallis discerns in the videos directed by
Williams the consistent use of “a slo-mo, low-angle, long tracking shot followed by a
dissolve.”
74
Regardless of whether the video is in black and white, such as Craig Mack’s Flava
In Ya Ear, or color, such as LL Cool J’s Doin It, the visual rhythm of the video is often
determined by slow fades. The dissolve is akin to visual rhyming as the gradual transition from
one image to another evinces excitement over the moment of transformation between the two. In
the slow blink of an eye, Williams takes the viewer from one image to the next, sometimes
within the delivery of one word. Rather than use the dissolve to signal a passing of a period of
time, Williams employs the technique stylistically to lend his videos a lethargic seductiveness.
Partly because of these slow fades, Vernallis suggests the performers are imbued with “a degree
of warmth, self-possession, and pride, regardless of circumstance.”
75
In Williams’ videos, and
even in his 1998 film Belly, the dissolve is utilized as a sensuous editing technique. “It’s virtue
lies in its power of suggestion; the soft almost imperceptible link it can imply between the two
shots momentarily married on the screen.”
76
The gradual change from one shot to another
occasions a moment when the two images are joined onscreen.
Vernallis, in her discussion of how the space of the video often reflects aural elements of
the song, commends director Michel Gondry for Daft Punk’s Around the World. Gondry plays
on the song’s lyrics to provide context for the images. As Vernallis suggests, “The music cannot
define the meaning of objects, but it can surely suggest the animating desire that characters bear
towards objects or others.”
77
The space is a confined black box with a multicolored background
that brings to mind flashing disco lights. The setting resembles an old-fashioned jukebox with
the record spinning inside. The dancing characters of the video – mummies, skeletons, bathing
beauties, b-boys and astronauts – represent different elements of the song: the bass is the b-boys,
the staccato chord progressions are the synchronized swimmers, and the manipulated "around the

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world" is the astronauts. The robotic astronauts, with their space suit costumes and jerky
movements, also resemble the band Devo in the video Whip It. Gondry’s video never leaves the
space of the jukebox but it still manages to fascinate the viewer. This is partly due to the song’s
progression, which actually choreographs the characters’ movements, and as the melodies build,
the dancers’ performances evolve. Throughout the video, the characters revolve around a fixed
center spot, which is revealed to be the center of a spinning record upon the completion of the
song. The repetition of the lyrics “around the world” is the “animating desire” that Vernallis talks
about and as the song fades, the lights dim and the jukebox switches off.
Vernallis argues persuasively that it is irresponsible to analyze music videos without
deconstructing the aural properties of the song in conjunction with the visual images. Yet in
concentrating on the aural and visual properties of music videos, she omits the actual business of
production. Just as films cannot be analyzed without a clear knowledge of the interplay between
budget, production team, writer, director and performer, music videos cannot be judged purely
by their end product. There is a need for analysis that looks specifically at the production history
of music videos. Many of the same production houses that are responsible for commercials also
produce music videos. In order to truly demonstrate the cross-fertilization that occurs between
videos and commercials, it is necessary to delve into the production histories of both mediums
that at the very least, determines their high production values. Although Vernallis throughout her
book focuses on male auteur directors, she utilizes the feminine pronoun to stand in for both
masculine and feminine. Thus “she” is both she and he and “hers” is both hers and his. This is
problematic because it suggests that women are participating to a greater extent in the wide range
of activities that the book encompasses. While it is true that women can and should be a part of
all aspects of music and music video pre-production, production and post-production; it is
important to be forthright about the status of their current participation. By using the feminine
pronoun, Vernallis effectively elides a conversation about where women are agents within the
realm of music videos.

Trapped in the Computer: “You’re not going to believe it but things get deeper as the story
goes on”
78

While Bell-Smith works in the idiom of montage across his oeuvre, three pieces in
particular articulate how montage remains a vital lens for examining visual culture. The first is

166

his remixing of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin into a hyper-kinetic piece entitled
Battleship Potemkin Dance Edits (2007). Reconfiguring Eisenstein’s film as danceable, Bell-
Smith speeds it up to 120 beats per minute. Even as the driving rhythm of the beat becomes
monotonous over the course of the twelve-minute video, Eisenstein’s filmmaking remains
affective. Over a couple of beers with Bell-Smith, he talked about wanting to “punk montage” in
Battleship Potemkin Dance Edits.
79
Drawing on the language of MTV (“You just got Punk’d”),
Bell-Smith envisioned the video while teaching a film editing class where he assigned a metric
montage assignment. As a demonstration, he set up markers to the beat of a song and cut the
footage according to the beat garnering collective amazement in the class. Impressed by the
reaction he received cutting on the beat, Bell-Smith decided to choose something everyone has
seen, the Odessa Steps sequence, and restructure the footage. Rather than downplay the power of
montage, his inversion highlights how montage is still relevant for considering how digital media
is always competing with other art forms. This competition for attention exposes the duality
between the art world and Internet culture.
Bell-Smith, in thinking about how to position himself in relationship to this duality,
envisioned the perspicacious Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet Synced and
Played Simultaneously (2005). When the first twelve chapters of Kelly’s hip-hopera debuted in
2005, Bell-Smith was intrigued by the conversation in music criticism around whether Kelly is a
genius or completely naive. Cognizant of the class and racial element of the conversation, Bell-
Smith was excited by how Trapped in the Closet dovetailed with Internet culture and its
interaction with mash-ups, DJ techniques, and fanboy/fangirl supercuts. Each chapter features
the same melodic theme and Bell-Smith realized he could capitalize on Kelly’s consistent beat
and progression by layering each chapter on top of the next. In doing so, Bell-Smith exposed the
genius of layering and created an entirely new surface layer seductively commingling with the
layered audio. Describing his piece as “not a music video and also just a music video,” Bell-
Smith explored how the principles of visual and sonic rhythm dictate the organization of
images.
80
Bell-Smith’s layering technique results in a barrage of visual and aural information.
This audiovisual density underscores how Kelly continually bombards the viewer with numerous
narrative revelations – Rufus is sleeping with Chuck, Cathy’s name is Mary, Gwendolyn is
sleeping with James, Twan was shot in the shoulder, Bridget is allergic to cherries, and Big Man
is the father.
81

167

Using montage to consider the audiovisual appeal of Trapped in the Closet, Bell-Smith’s
piece reveals how Vorkapich’s dream of temporal, rhythmic cutting may have been realized by a
figure who would appear alien to Vorkapich if he were alive today: R. Kelly. In fact, R. Kelly
himself has called Trapped in the Closet “an alien” and admitted, before unveiling Chapters 23-
33 to an audience in New York, “I’m glad to be one of the astronauts to take this trip to a place
unknown.”
82
Describing R. Kelly’s “place unknown” to the uninitiated is equivalent to speaking
Vulcan in a room full of Klingons. What is certain is the universal translator’s version of
Trapped in the Closet would emphasize how the piece both resonates with the tropes of hip-hop
(hyper-masculine, narcissistic, braggadocios, foregrounds sexual relationships) and subverts
them (melodramatic, embraces gay and lesbian characters). R. Kelly’s piece provides the
audience with a multitude of melodramatic cliffhangers to sustain their interest. An escalation of
events is accompanied by concurrent crescendos in the music.
Chapter 1 establishes the location of Chicago as the “L” train passes by and a time-lapsed
sky overlaid with the sound of birds chirping suggests dawn is breaking over the city. The
camera slowly pulls back, seamlessly transitioning from a view of the city to the interior of an
apartment bedroom where a fully clothed man sleeps soundly. Still moving seamlessly, the
camera pans across the bed and zeroes in on the closed closet door to the left of the bed. As the
camera pushes in towards the closet and the music builds, viewer suspense heightens. What lurks
in the mind of Kels and what does he have in store for the audience? R. Kelly’s opening shot
brings to mind Orson Welles’ long tracking shot at the start of Touch of Evil (1958). Perhaps it is
an inadvertent homage, but it evokes the ticking time bomb in Welles’ film. The viewer
intrinsically understands that whatever or whoever is behind the closet door will motivate the rest
of the narrative. What follows is an insane chain of events put in motion by the character of
Sylvester oversleeping. The camera, continuing its seamless path from the Chicago skyline to the
interior of the apartment, continues unhindered through the closet door and suddenly exposes R.
Kelly with eyes downcast. With exquisite dramatic effect, R. Kelly raises his eyes and breaking
the fourth wall, sings directly to the viewer, “Seven o’clock in the morning and the rays from the
sun wake me.”
83
This marks the first of innumerable “oh shit” moments in Trapped in the Closet.
By using the first person pronoun, R. Kelly establishes himself as a first person narrator. As
narrator, he describes the thought processes of the character Sylvester, who is navigating the
diegesis. When Sylvester attempts to extricate himself from his lover’s house because her

168

husband arrived home, R. Kelly/Sylvester sings “shit think, shit think, shit, quick put me in the
closet and now I’m in this darkest closet trying to figure out how I’m going to get my ass out this
crazy house.”
84
Despite what the title insinuates, this line quickly demonstrates R. Kelly’s
heterosexuality. He is not gay and “trapped in the closet,” or afraid to reveal his sexuality;
instead, he is literally, physically trapped in a closet to avoid an embarrassing confrontation.
At the denouement of several chapters of Trapped in the Closet, R. Kelly employs an
almost comical level of repetition to create suspense. Pushing the audience to the edge of their
seats with an exaggerated cliffhanger in Chapter 1, R. Kelly sings, “He walks up to the closet /
He comes up to the closet / Now he’s at the closet / Now he’s opening the closet.”
85
The anxiety
R. Kelly creates sonically stems from the audience’s awareness visually that Rufus,
Cathy/Mary’s husband, has no idea that Sylvester’s Beretta is pointed at his head. The first
Chapter ends with the viewer waiting breathlessly to discover whether Sylvester shoots Rufus. In
Chapter 2, rather than kill Rufus, Sylvester is shocked to learn that Rufus is metaphorically
“trapped in the closet.” The disclosure of Rufus’ homosexuality is occasioned as a moment of
surprise and betrayal and yet, it creates a space for a storyline involving a black man on the
“down low” to develop over the course of Trapped in the Closet.
As the story progresses, R. Kelly blurs the distinction between a first person and an
omniscient narrator by divulging information about the other characters populating Trapped in
the Closet. Playing with his status as a first person and omniscient narrator symbolizes Trapped
in the Closet’s sophistication on two levels. First, it reinforces R. Kelly as an egotistical narrator
and performer both within and outside of the diegesis. While the narrator has access to
Sylvester’s thoughts because he is Sylvester, he is also untethered to that character and privy to
information Sylvester knows nothing about. This casts suspicion on the reliability of the narrator
but also reminds the viewer of R. Kelly’s superhuman powers. He actually does know everything
going on with the characters and storylines of Trapped in the Closet because, as writer, singer,
and co-director, he created the universe! Second, blurring the boundaries between first person
and omniscient narrator allows R. Kelly to self-reflexively comment on the proceedings.
Therefore it demonstrates, as Douglas Hofstadter would say, R. Kelly “going meta.”
86
This is
especially apparent at the end of Chapter 9, when R. Kelly implores the audience, “Now, pause
the movie, ‘cause what I’m about to say to y’all is so damn twisted – not only is there a man in
his cabinet, but the man is a midget. Midget! Midget! Midget!” R. Kelly self-referentially

169

demands the viewer pause Trapped in the Closet to appreciate the extraordinariness of the latest
narrative reveal. It’s as if R. Kelly anticipated a chorus of “oh no he didn’t” and emphatically
underlines how “yes, he did.” Through repetition of the word “midget,” R. Kelly highlights just
how outlandish he thinks the dramatic revelations have become. In the world of Trapped in the
Closet, a married man dallying with a married woman who finds himself literally trapped in a
closet so as to escape detection by the woman’s husband only to get caught and discover the
woman’s husband is gay, is nothing compared to finding out your wife is pregnant by a stripper
and little person named Big Man.
Contemplating the nuanced relationship between media, politics, and the audience,
entails the recognition that ideologies can disappear into a naturalized world of common sense.
Hegemony persists by winning consent, which brings forth the power of the text and the social
and political context of its production and reception. In “Encoding and Decoding,” Stuart Hall
condemns the idea that communication is a direct line from sender to receiver. In so doing, Hall
creates a space for multiple decoding positions occupied by any audience of mass culture. The
dominant-hegemonic position, negotiated position, and oppositional position expand an
understanding of resistance by potentially drawing attention to the internal instabilities of how
meaning is constructed and understood. Ultimately, for Hall, contested meanings at the heart of
the dynamic between power and resistance can also create significant moments ripe with
political change. One of the ways Trapped in the Closet is regularly consumed is through
interactive sing-a-longs held on college campuses, in homes, and in independent theaters venues
like the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, the Music Box Theater in Chicago, Freemont Outdoor
Movies in Seattle, and The Castro Theater in San Francisco. All of these venues foster an
interactive environment where viewers can adopt a multiplicity of reading positions just so long
as they sing along to R. Kelly.
Throughout each chapter, the sonic properties follow a distinct pattern, where Kelly
presents a scenario and, after several narrative reversals occasioned by the surprise of betrayal,
ends with another cliffhanger punctuated by an elongated word in Kelly’s distinctive vocal
delivery. Sonically, the end of each chapter is cathartic as the repeated word stretches out giving
the listener an opportunity to recover from the onslaught of melodramatic revelations. This
catharsis is accentuated in Bell-Smith’s Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet
Synced and Played Simultaneously. Kelly’s tripartite role within Trapped, as simultaneously, the

170

narrator, Sylvester, and the singer who delivers the other characters’ lines, is emphasized in Bell-
Smith’s piece. The superimposition of the chapters also evokes Nam June Paik’s Beatles
Electroniques (1966-69) in its distortion and reimagining of the performer. While Bell-Smith
wants the video to encapsulate the narcissism of R. Kelly, he also treats the video as highlighting
“how the Web has changed (and continues to change) the way much of society thinks about
media, information, and social relations.”
87
R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 1-12,
originally released in 2005, dovetailed with the launch of YouTube in February of 2005 and the
popularity of Trapped convinced IFC to broadcast Chapters 13-22 on its website in 2007. The
Bell-Smith video, in its recirculation of Trapped online and in traditional art venues, points to the
intersections between music video, video art and the diversified paths of the contemporary media
landscape.
Finally, Bell-Smith’s 2010 three channel video piece N.e.w. Y.o.r.k. / M.i.a.m.i. / L.a.s.
V.e.g.a.s. grappled with appropriation strategies in light of how prevalent they have become
online. In conversation, Bell-Smith mentioned he had Dara Birnbaum’s
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978-79) in mind when he conceived the piece.
Birnbaum, who appropriated the CBS footage of the series Wonder Woman (1975-79) to expose
television’s stereotypical construction of male and female, was less interested in hijacking
footage once everyone could. While Bell-Smith does not engage with identity politics, his piece
queried how to position oneself as an artist against the widespread mobilization of appropriation.
His answer was to control the audience’s interaction with the work. Borrowing another show
from CBS, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Bell-Smith created three supercuts from the
helicopter shots of the three CSI franchises: New York, Miami, and Las Vegas. Looped on three
separate monitors was an entire season’s worth of helicopter shots for the three cities, effectively
creating a montage out of the juxtaposed screens. For every shot, Bell-Smith inserted a hand-
drawn layer. These minimalist neon squiggles are superimposed over the cityscapes evoking the
momentary blindness experienced after looking too closely at the sun. Simultaneously, the neon
lines recall the neon lettering of Miami Vice, which appeared in the opening credits over the fast-
moving helicopter shot of the ocean below.

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Conclusion
Whereas montage in the classical era was corseted by the larger diegesis, music television
ushered in the moment when montage was freed from the constraints of a surrounding narrative.
While the conflation of art and commerce on MTV highlighted the appeal of a montage
aesthetic, the impulse to use montage for political ends could not be quelled. For Slavko
Vorkapich, montage was a film style of its own, “which uses purely visual means, including all
the possibilities of the camera, of movement, of rhythm, and of cutting, to express feelings and
thoughts and to tell stories.”
88
Ironically, perhaps the most perfect realization of kinetics in film
is also the form most aligned with capitalism’s imperatives, the music video. Stylistically, music
video montages borrowed freely from past sonic and visual experiments like German
Expressionism, Soviet Montage, Surrealism, and American avant-garde film. Music video
montages have a deeply layered quality that takes multiple views to dissect. Similar to avant-
garde films engaged with popular music, the most interesting music videos force the viewer to
consider the meanings and questions integrated into the art form. Since the inception of MTV,
however, the form’s revolutionary impulses were curtailed by its adherence to capitalistic ends.
No longer punctuating a larger narrative in film, music videos foregrounded montage for
montage’s sake. In many ways, television was the perfect medium to appropriate and unleash
montage. What better way to captivate a distracted viewer than with short, kinetic, visually
arresting sequences set to music?

1
Kelefa Sanneh, “Outrageous Farce from R. Kelly: He’s In on the Joke, Right?,” The New York
Times, August 20, 2007, accessed March 31, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com
/2007/08/20/arts/music/20trap.html.
2
Gary Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2009).
3
Alun Owen, A Hard Day’s Night. 35 mm. Directed by Richard Lester. London: Walter
Shenson, 1964.
4
E. Ann Kaplan, Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Post Modernism and Consumer
Culture (London: Routledge, 1987), 6.
5
Both Penny Lane, and Strawberry Fields Forever were broadcast on American television in
1967. Goldman mixed stop motion animation, jumpcuts, and reverse film effects with footage of
the Beatles.

172

6
Barbara London, “Interview for Cover Versions,” Artforum International, No. 7: 209.
7
Tom McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution (Philadelphia: Running Press Book
Publishers,1996), 37.
8
David E. James, “Avant-Garde Film and Music Video: A View From Zurich,” Power Misses:
Essays Across (un)Popular Culture (New York: Verso Books, 1996), 234.
9
Michael Nesmith, “Cruisin,” Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma, 1979 by Pacific Arts Records &
Tapes, LP.
10
McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution, 27.
11
Ibid., 28.
12
Michael Nesmith, Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma.
13
Steve Strong’s real name was Steve Cepello. Eventually, Cepello retired from wrestling to
pursue an art career and was later hired to paint Governor Jesse Ventura’s residence.
14
Michael Nesmith, Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma.
15
Blaine Allan, “Music Television,” in Television: Critical Methods and Applications, ed.
Jeremy G. Butler (New Jersey: Erlbaum, 2007), 292.
16
Ibid.
17
McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution, 28.
18
At the National Cable Television Association Convention in 1968.
19
Edgerton, The Columbia History of American Television. 300. Started by cable entrepreneur
Charles Dolan in 1971. The Green Channel, which became Home Box Office (HBO) and leased
a transponder on Radio Corporation of America’s SatCom I, successfully convinced viewers to
pay for sporting events and commercial-free films delivered to their homes.
20
McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution, 26.
21
Ibid. The burgeoning cable business was possible because of increasingly effective satellite
distribution. However, the rapid proliferation of new networks altered the power balance
between cable system owners and cable programmers. Now programmers were desperate for
cable operators, who acted as gatekeepers, to carry their shows. While WASEC had to convince
cable operators to put Nickelodeon and the Star Channel, recently renamed The Movie Channel,
on their systems, business was profitable enough for WASEC to start planning their next
network.
22
Ibid., 18. When Jack Schneider was head of television and radio operations at CBS, his phone
was tapped by President Richard Nixon.
23
Ibid. The other individuals involved at WASEC were Bob Pittman as head of programming,
Bob McGroarty as vice president of marketing, and Jordan Rost as head of research. The
WASEC approach to research involved determining people’s tastes in order to be ready to give
viewers what they wanted when the channel went on the air. Armed with new ideas about how to
use audience research effectively, WASEC opened regional sales offices across the country.
24
Ibid., 46.
25
Ibid., 29. Including Howie Mandel.
26
Ibid., 29.
27
Debbie Harry and Giorgio Moroder, “Call Me,” American Gigolo, 1979 by Polydor Records,
LP. “Call Me” was used as the main theme song for American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980).
28
McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution. WASEC executives were pretty confident they
could convince Warner Communications CEO Steve Ross but they worried AMEX CEO Jim
Robinson would balk at the hefty price tag.

173

29
Ibid., 38.
30
Ibid., 45.
31
Ibid., 46.
32
David Sedman. “The Legacy of Broadcast Stereo Sound: The Short Life of MTS, 1984-2009,”
Journal of Sonic Studies 3.1 (October 2012), accessed June 7, 2013,
http://journal.sonicstudies.org/vol03/nr01/a03
33
McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution, 46.
34
Sedman, “The Legacy of Broadcast Stereo Sound.”
35
McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution, 48. Initially, they called the new channel TV-1
only to learn the name had already been trademarked. TV-1 became TV-M for Television Music
until a programmer named Steve Casey rearranging the letters on a piece of paper realized MTV
was more attractive graphically.
36
Ibid., 47. Not everyone agreed with the constant flow of music. Head of WASEC, Jack
Schneider, balked at the schedule when it was proposed to him believing the unwritten compact
between channel and viewer was based on the presence of scheduled programs.
37
Ibid., 48. Especially Bob Pittman and John Lack.
38
Ibid., 63.
39
Bruce Woolley, Geoff Downes, and Trevor Horn, “Video Killed the Radio Star,” The Age of
Plastic, 1979 by Island Records, LP.
40
McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution, 65.
41
Bruce Woolley, Geoff Downes, and Trevor Horn, The Age of Plastic.
42
McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution, 63.
43
Allan, “Music Television,” 298.
44
Raymond Williams, Television, Technology, and Cultural Form (New York: Routledge, 2003).
45
Allan, “Music Television,” 287.
46
McGrath, MTV: The Making of a Revolution, 100.
47
Ibid. Although there is some suggestion that CBS Records boss Walter Yetnikoff had to
threaten MTV by saying he would pull all CBS artists off the air if MTV didn’t play “Billie
Jean” and “Beat It.”
48
“Beat It,” YouTube, accessed July 25, 2013, http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=oRdxUFDoQe0.
49
Michael Jackson, “Beat It,” Thriller, 1983 by Epic Records, CD.
50
Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at a White House Ceremony Marking Progress Made in the
Campaign Against Drunk Driving,” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, accessed
May 18, 2013, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1984/51484a.htm.
51
Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1989), 97.
52
Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), 434.
53
Noel Murray, “How Miami Vice launched the ‘80s on TV Then Died with its Decade,” A.V.
Club, August 2, 2012, accessed July 29, 2013, http://www.avclub.com/articles/how-miami-vice-
launched-the-80s-on-tv-then-died-wi,83262/.
54
The two music videos released by the heartthrobs of Miami Vice were “Heartbeat” by Don
Johnson and “Just the Way I Planned It” by Philip Michael Thomas.

174

55
Lynne Joyrich, Re-Viewing Reception: Television, Gender, and Postmodern Culture
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1996), 78. Belying corporate synergy strategies, music
videos eventually became one part of a film’s promotional package. Like a “Coming Attractions”
trailer, the videos borrow footage, presenting visual and narrative highlights. In Bruce
Springsteen’s Streets of Philadelphia for the film Philadelphia, scenes of Springsteen singing are
intertwined with scenes of Tom Hanks, as the lawyer Andrew Beckett, struggling against
homophobia and discrimination.
56
Joyrich, Re-Viewing Reception, 22.
57
Ibid., 93.
58
Ibid., 93.
59
Peter Brown and Robert Rans, “Material Girl,” Like a Virgin, 1984 by Warner Bros. Records,
CD.
60
Kaplan, Rocking Around the Clock, 54.
61
Ibid., 117.
62
Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (New York: New Press,
2002), 114.
63
A small sampling includes Paula Abdul’s reenactment of Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas
Ray, 1955) in Rush Rush; Jennifer Lopez remakes the erotic dance scene from Flashdance
(Adrian Lynne, 1978) in I’m Glad; Ja Rule and Ashanti poach the basic narrative of Grease
(Randall Kleiser, 1978) in Mezmerize and Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) in Foolish.
64
Kaplan, Rocking Around the Clock, 123.
65
James, “Avant-Garde Film and Music Video,” 247.
66
Andrew Goodwin, Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 5.
67
Ibid., 20.
68
Ibid., 154.
69
Norman Cook, “Weapon of Choice,” Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, 2001 by
Skint, Astralwerks, CD.
70
Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York:
Routledge, 1990), 113.
71
Neil Feineman and Steve Reiss, Thirty Frames Per Second: The Visionary Art of the Music
Video (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 70.
72
“MTV Video Music Awards 2001,” MTV.com, accessed on April 14, 2013,
http://www.mtv.com/ontv/vma/2001/.
73
Allan, “Music Television,” 237.
74
Carol Vernallis, Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2004), 297.
75
Ibid., 93.
76
Roger Manvell, Film (Middlesex: Pelican Books, 1944), 36.
77
Vernallis, Experiencing Music Video, 41.
78
Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 1-22, DVD, directed by Jim Swaffield and R. Kelly (Jive and
Zomba, 2005 for 1-12 and 2007 for 13-22). The first twenty-two chapters are available on IFC’s
website and VEVO.
79
Michael Bell-Smith, Interview by Ghia Godfree, New York, February 11, 2011.
80
Ibid.

175

81
These are a sampling of the earth-shattering revelations R. Kelly unveils throughout Trapped
in the Closet.
82
Kyle Anderson, “R. Kelly’s ‘Trapped in the Closet’ Premiere: On the Scene,” Entertainment
Weekly, accessed August 25, 2013, http://music-mix.ew.com/2012/11/20/r-kelly-trapped-in-the-
closet-premiere/.
83
R. Kelly, Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 1-22, DVD, directed by Jim Swaffield and R. Kelly
(Jive and Zomba, 2005 for 1-12 and 2007 for 13-22).
84
Ibid.
85
Ibid.
86
“Meta,” The Oxford English Dictionary, accessed on August 8, 2013, http://www.
oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/meta. The Oxford English Dictionary defines meta
as “referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self -referential.” The term was
popularized by Douglas Hofstadter in his 1979 Godel, Escher, Bach.
87
Michael Bell-Smith, “Interview for Cover Versions,” Artforum International, No. 7: 204.
88
Slavko Vorkapich, “The Meaning and Value of Montage” (21 September 1938). “Slavko
Vorkapich Articles,” Box 1, David Shepard Collection, School of Cinematic Arts, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.

176

Conclusion:
“Art Breaks” Meets “Salt Peanuts”
Dream within a dream,
Our dream deferred.
Good morning, daddy!
Ain’t you heard?

The “dream deferred,” in the case of montage, is how the form linked with revolution in
Russia was appropriated by music video stylistically but, in such a way, that the political urgency
evaporated. The original “Art Breaks” on MTV and its 2012 reincarnation is the perfect example
of how the Internet levels the relationship between artists engaged in critiquing, parodying, or
deconstructing the commercially motivated music video form. Furthermore, it’s indicative of
how the YouTube generation potentially treats all videos the same, whether they’re from a label
like RCA starring a salacious pop diva and directed by a famous fashion photographer to
coincide with an album release, or a fan wielding iMovie to craft a supercut of Dean and Sam, or
a performance/visual artist mashing-up the tradition of European heraldry with hip-hop swagger.
Starting in 1985, in an attempt to continue to attract a youth demographic, MTV commissioned a
collection of short clips for a series called “Art Breaks” by a vanguard of New York’s downtown
artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Doug Aitken, Keith Haring, Richard Prince, and Dara
Birnbaum. Played in between music videos, the “Art Breaks” clips were announced by a graphic
with MTV’s logo, an “Art Breaks” logo, and the name of the artist responsible for the clip. Josh
Kun’s poetic chapter “Basquiat’s Ear, Rashaan’s Eye” from Audiotopia provides a lyrical lens
for imagining different ways to combine thoughts about sound and image. Undoing the
dichotomy of eye vs. ear, Kun focuses on the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat and the musician
Rashaan Roland Kirk as “ideal figures for beginning to approach American race and racial
difference as sonic constructions as much as visual ones, two of the great keepers of the keys that
unlock the audio archive of race.”
1
Treating the artistic practices of Basquiat and Kirk as acts of
resistance, Kun demonstrates that popular music is one of the most “valuable sites for witnessing
the performance of racial and ethnic difference against the grain of national citizenships that
work to silence and erase those differences.”
2
Throughout his discussion of Basquiat’s and
Kirk’s life and work, Kun discusses the way in which visuality is privileged within critical
theory. By resisting the privileging of eye over ear, Kun is able to show how this hierarchy
“limits knowledge formation to visual vocabularies of interpretation and meaning and

177

marginalizes sound and music in the study of race and nation-formation.”
3
Kun’s ability to link
Basquiat’s art and Kirk’s music inspires a new conception of the way scholarship can move
beyond the theoretical deadlock between the emphases on either the visuals or the music.
Bridging the gap between the aural and the visual, Basquiat constructed a thirty-second
art video for MTV.
4
Basquiat’s video calls attention not only to his artistic process but to the
constructed nature of film as well. Shots of Basquiat working a canvas are interspersed with the
canvas itself and quick jumpcuts of a cadre of friends goofing off. A shot of a man playing a
guitar accompanies the discordant sound of a guitar. At multiple points, hand-drawn neon
squiggles and shapes are superimposed over the video. Some of the neon drawings are familiar
elements of Basquiat’s iconography. For example, a line of animated crocodile heads snap their
way to posterity as they travel from right to left in the lower third of the frame while Basquiat
jokes with a friend in the background. The previous year, in 1984, Basquiat had incorporated the
crocodile head motif in a piece made with Andy Warhol, Crocodile. The last shot of the video is
a close-up of the smiling Basquiat next to a boat and crocodile head accompanying the words
“AFRO” and “CROCODILE” seemingly scratched onto the surface of the video in neon green.
Basquiat’s use of the word “crocodile” recalls Langston Hughes’ repetition of the word in his
poetic critique of Hollywood’s treatment of African-Americans, “Movies.” Like Hughes,
Basquiat drew on the legacy of bebop in his art, embodying bebop and its musicians in pieces
such as Syncopation, Horn Players, and Discography. In Audiotopia, Kun writes about what
drew Basquiat to bebop: “The way it used repetition, reproduction, and improvisation to
transform, or ‘artistically other,’ the shape and meaning of somebody else’s originals, and to do
so in the name of black protest against the restrictive social structures of American racism.”
5

Three years after Basquiat’s “Art Break” clip aired on MTV, Fab 5 Freddy would remix the
Langston Hughes poem “Genius Child” at Basquiat’s funeral to read “Free him and let his soul
run wild.”
6
As the first host of Yo! MTV Raps, Fab 5 Freddy serves as a symbolic bridge between
Basquiat and R. Kelly.
Basquiat’s “Art Breaks” clip is startling in its expressiveness and the fact that it was
embraced by MTV around the same time the corporation abandoned its haphazard beginnings
and solidified itself as an industry player. Twenty-seven years later, the revival of “Art Breaks”
in the spring of 2012 featured work that eschews the slick commercialism of pop acts pushed by
the mainstream recording industry. Instead, the new crop of art videos commissioned by MTV,

178

MoMA PS1, and Creative Time recall past sonic and visual experiments. Creative Time curator
and director of consulting, Meredith Johnson, believes “People understand MTV is a venue for
contemporary culture. The fact that MTV is commissioning and screening new works of art
means that they consider visual art as integral to that role. Projects like ‘Art Breaks’ begin to
break down the often perceived barriers that contemporary art is only something you experience
in a sacred white cube.”
7
Each uses rhythmic movement creatively in quick sequences expressing
a theme, a mood, or a mini-narrative. The idiosyncratic SSION piece “PSY-CHIC” brings to
mind Laurie Anderson’s O Superman (as fed through a Flash animation by someone hopped on
pixy sticks and Mt. Dew) with its white orb and distorted vocals. The Mickalene Thomas video
“ReVay” recalls Cindy Sherman’s conceptual portraits and Thomas elicits a seventies aesthetic
by shooting in Super 8, using an orange color palette, and donning a white-blonde afro. Rashaad
Newsome’s “SWAG The Mixtape Vol. 2” contains a visual nod to Basquiat in the form of a
black crown. Reminiscent of the painter’s repeated crown motif, Newsome tweaks the image by
crafting it out of a New Era baseball cap. The updated urban crown is placed atop a blinged-out
fish collaged together from diamond rings, black diamonds, gold chains, and human hair, arms,
with a grille-encrusted mouth urgently rapping, “I know you feel that power, You don’t know
my plight.” Newsome’s clip harnesses hip-hop’s adoption of traditional status symbols and its
contradictory desire to remake/redefine those symbols.
As opposed to the 1985 version of “Art Breaks,” which flew by as a series of fills between
mainstream music videos, the most recent incarnation of “Art Breaks” is available in various
places. The series airs globally on MTV, the clips are accessible on demand at MTV.com,
MTV’s Facebook page, and a dedicated Tumblr page. Within the MTV website, “Art Breaks”
exists as a curated program. Once you click on any of the art videos, the website will continue to
upload a new video in a preordained order. However, on the interactive “Art Breaks” Tumblr
page, the viewer acts as curator choosing which videos to watch and in what order. Pertinent to
the contemporary “Art Breaks” series is artist Michael Bell-Smith’s ruminations on the leveling
that takes place when videos are accessible online. Bell writes, “Many of the strategies artists
have traditionally employed in the critique of culture — amateurism, appropriation, and humor
— have become the customary language of YouTube and Internet culture. While the
democratization of these techniques also seems utopian, with their spread comes their adoption
by the very culture they were initially employed to critique, which brings their efficacy into

179

question.”
8
In response, artists are forced to negotiate the contemporary media landscape in
three ways. They can engage directly with new relations between art, technology, and the user,
they can place work online allowing it to become a part of Internet culture, and they can distance
their work from the digital landscape through installation and performance. Bell-Smith and
Rashaad Newsome are two artists, who have opted to do all three.
One of the consequences of the success of music video, its subsequent propagation of a
montage aesthetic on television, and the eventual leveling of all music video clips online has
been the rise of ornate cable television credit sequences. In contrast to the compression of time
and space within the montages of the Classical Period, the quality cable sequences distill the
show’s themes into deeply layered sequences, which convey a mood or atmosphere. While
Miami Vice signaled montage’s move from cable to broadcast, recent credit sequences
demonstrate the form’s migration back to cable. The opening credit sequence for True Blood on
HBO distills the key themes of the show into contradictory images evoking blood, life, death,
religion, immortality, desire, sex, bigotry and decay. Permeating the entire sequence are shots
that evoke the United States Deep South including an underwater shot of a catfish, a Baptist
church service, black-and-white footage from sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement, a child
in the Klu Klux Klan “glory suit,” and a stereotypical redneck bar. The viewer watching
carefully will catch a glimpse of a church’s sign at night proclaiming “God Hates Fangs,” which
is the only clue that True Blood is a vampire show. A subtle visual connection between a
rattlesnake striking and two boys with their mouths stained with berries refers to showrunner
Alan Ball’s treatment of vampire mythology, which treats vampire fangs like retractable snake
fangs. Set to country musician Jace Everett’s “Bad Things,” the credits crescendo with time-
lapse footage of a fox decaying interspersed with quick flashes of entwined limbs, and a black
congregation “catching the holy spirit.” A very different tone suffuses the credit sequence for
Homeland, Showtime’s spy drama. Dissonant trumpets simultaneously allude to Carrie
Mathison’s (Claire Danes) fragile mental state and the perversion of Nicholas Brody (Damian
Lewis), marine turned sympathetic terrorist.
These cable shows are distinguishing themselves as “quality television” by offering a
montage credit sequence at the beginning of their shows. The montage sets cable apart from the
shows on broadcast networks, which have almost completely done away with credit sequences.
Instead they “hot switch” or “cold roll” from one program to the next to keep viewers tuned to

180

their channel. For the broadcast networks, rather than waste valuable airtime eligible to be sold,
the focus is on content and commercials only. Within broadcast shows, montage is subsumed
into the very structure of most fictional programs. During an interview with television writer
Micah Shraft about his use of montage on broadcast television, he asked, “When is TV not a
montage?” and described how the classic episodic structure of television, with its teaser and four
act breaks for commercials, makes it feel like he is always writing montages. Montage is
employed to create the cliffhangers episodic television demands in order to cut to a commercial
break and leave the audience wondering what will happen next. The commercial demands of
advertising-supported television necessitate crafting a flurry of activity right before the
commercial break taking the viewer out on a cliffhanger to ensure they return. In ensemble
pieces especially, the scenes are shorter as there are more characters to follow. This leads to a
tendency to write a montage in the episode’s last act, which “checks-in” with all the main
characters. This “summation montage” establishes for the viewer what’s at stake in each
character’s storyline.
One of the most compelling cable credit sequences is for Dexter on Showtime. The show
recalls Miami Vice in its treatment of the city as a pastel-infused character rife with sin. In season
three, the show even cast Jimmy Smits creating a direct link to Miami Vice. Dexter, however, is
Miami Vice for a postmillennial quality cable audience. The show revolves around a complicated
anti-hero, Dexter Morgan, who is a blood splatter analyst with the Miami Police Department by
day and by night, turns the city into his own personal Grand Guignol. The graphic violence of
Dexter, the serial killer who hunts and kills serial killers is established in the opening credit
sequence. Microscopic shots of Dexter killing a mosquito on his arm, shaving, and cooking
breakfast elevate the mundane to the grotesque. Each shot is presented out of context to suggest a
visual double entendre. A meal of ham and eggs evokes the slicing of human flesh and the
splatter of blood. Throughout the sequence, the music is visualized in clever ways. When Dexter
cuts himself shaving, bells accompany drops of blood hitting a sink and as blood seeps into
Kleenex, the sound radiates outwards. The cable sequences not only distinguish cable’s product
as different from broadcast but they act as advertisements for the programs online in many of the
same spaces inhabited by music video.
Writing in 1972 about television commercials, Slavko Vorkapich criticized the way they
work “from outside in: that is, borrowing (usually from New Wave and ‘avant-garde’ cinema)

181

techniques which may have been suitable to the original subjects, and forcing the same
techniques, photographic or editorial, upon themes where they do not belong.”
9
Specifically, he
was aware of advertising’s potential for depicting motion but bothered by quick, choppy editing
and use of the hand-held camera when the cameraman is not revealed as witness to the event.
Encapsulated in this critique is the tension embodied within postmodernism and the empty
borrowing of aesthetics, which defined the time. For Vorkapich, “expressive form must arise
from inside the subject matter.”
10
Vorkapich believed film should affect the viewer viscerally
and commercial filmmakers pursuing speed, brevity, and maximum effect adopted his
techniques. What would Vorkapich think of a recent Nissan ad? It’s the antecedent of the
opening sequence of The Last Laugh on cocaine. Rather than the revolving doors of the hotel
lobby, the camera takes the viewer on a visual ride through the open trunk, the Nissan interior,
and finally the front windshield of several Nissans in various locales. The car is the focal point in
each idyllic yet visually stimulating setting from stadium revelry to wilderness barbeque to wind
surfing at the beach. Vorkapich would probably have called it a “cacophony of motions.”
Montage can condense familiar story action in original and inventive ways or present a
cacophony of motions in stylistically exciting ways. The deep layering possible in montage
inspires active viewership. This was the goal of Soviet artists who wanted to perpetuate the
ideals of the Russian Revolution in their work. This was also the goal of music television albeit
in the service of selling a product. Finally it has also the goal of visual artists committed to
critiquing popular culture. Dara Birnbaum saw her “Art Breaks” clip as filling in the gaps created
by cable but she always wanted to engage a mass audience. She reminisces, “I didn’t want to
translate popular imagery from television and film into painting and photography. I wanted to
use video on video; I wanted to use television on television… in video we finally had an
eminently reproducible medium that could get out into the hands of many.” Even as the Internet
has flattened the differences between media, it has made clips like Technology/Transformation:
Wonder Woman accessible. As a culture, we are saturated with visual stimulation and montage is
a powerful lens for interpreting and understanding how contemporary visual culture affects us
emotionally, psychologically, and aesthetically.

182

1
Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2005), 115.
2
Ibid., 11.
3
Ibid., 117.
4
Basquiat, Jean-Michel, “Art Breaks” MTV, Viacom Corporation, last modified March 30, 2013.
http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/753897/art-breaks-jean-michel-basquiat.jhtml.
5
Kun, Audiotopia, 125.
6
Kun, Audiotopia, 130.
7
Matthew Kim-Cook, “Art Breaks 2012: MTV, MOMA PS1, and Creative Time in
Conversation,” Dirty Magazine, accessed on October 9, 2013, http://dirty-
mag.com/v2/?p=13528.
8
Michael Bell-Smith, “Interview for Cover Versions,” Artforum International, No. 7: 204.
9
Slavko Vorkapich, “A Fresh Look At the Dynamics of Film-Making,” The American Society of
Cinematographers (February 1972). Reprinted in The Motion Picture Division of the UCLA
Theatre Arts Department flyer for “The Visual Nature of the Film Medium,” Ten Lecture-
Seminars by Slavko Vorkapich. Box 1, Biographical Information, David Shepard Collection,
School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
10
Ibid.

183

Photo of Langston Hughes in Soviet Central Asia, 1933

Gustav Klutsis, “Maquette for Radio-Announcer,” 1922

184

Gustav Klutsis, Electrification of the Entire Country, 1920

“Under the Banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin!” by Gustav Klutsis, 1933

185

Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

“Long Live Our Happy Socialist Land! Long Live Our Beloved Leader, the Great Stalin!”
Gustav Klutsis, 1935

186

Photographs by Slavko Vorkapich, Book Design by Alvin Lustig for
Jewish Holiday Dances by Corinne Chochem, 1948

187

Paramount Publicity Photo of Slavko Vorkapich, 1931

Lilyan Tashman as Marie in Girls About Town (George Cukor, 1931)

188

Cassandre, Advertisement for Dole, 1938

Photomontage for Slavko Vorkapich from former student Louis Clyde Stoumen

189

Don Siegel, Ping-Pong Champ

Knute Rockne Script, 1940

190

Warner Club News Cover Featuring the Montage Department, 1943

Warner Club News Article Featuring the Montage Department, 1943

191

Michael Nesmith’s Stellar Rio

Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma

192

Graphic Effects from Michael Nesmith’s Cruisin

Michael Nesmith Plays with the Hollywood Sign in Cruisin

193

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Video Scraffiti

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Crocodile Iconography

194

Layering in Michael Bell-Smith’s Trapped

Big Man from R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet

195

One of R. Kelly’s personas in Trapped

Mapping the Sexual Relationships in Trapped

196

Michael Bell Smith’s
N.e.w. Y.o.r.k. / M.i.a.m.i. / L.a.s. V.e.g.a.s.

197

Rashaad Newsome’s “SWAG The Mixtape Vol. 2”

198

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Asset Metadata

Creator Godfree, Ghia (author)

Core Title Empty threats: the collision of aesthetic, industrial, and revolutionary imperatives in montage

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Cinema-Television (Critical Studies)

Publication Date 12/03/2013

Defense Date 10/18/2013

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag classical Hollywood,Don Siegel,music video,OAI-PMH Harvest,photomontage,Slavko Vorkapich,Soviet montage

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Seiter, Ellen (committee chair), James, David E. (committee member), Kun, Joshua D. (committee member)

Creator Email ghiagodfree@gmail.com,godfree@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-355786

Unique identifier UC11295789

Identifier etd-GodfreeGhi-2199.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-355786 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-GodfreeGhi-2199.pdf

Dmrecord 355786

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Godfree, Ghia

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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