If you have committed a crime, how can you then prove your innocence? By a perfect alibi? By a witness? Or by public opinion? In the film Sheep without a Shepherd Sam Quah, , the main protagonist Li Weijie Xiao Yang creates all the evidence mentioned above to cover up the crime of his family through the idea of montage. What they both do is to arrange the footages to form a new meaning, so that the interrogators, or the audiences, can understand their thoughts clearly. I have always been interested in technical post-production stage of films throughout my learning in film studies, and this is why I choose to analyse the power of montage.
The style of editing is a very important element of the final film, and it is inseparable from the personal preference of the director. The idea of montage is developed by many former Soviet filmmakers, and one leading theorist among them is Sergei Eisenstein. I also prefer his theories, which I found very interesting and useful in the editing stage of the film, so in the video essay I used a lot of his quotes to apply to the films and examine the utility of montage.
There are many reasons why I choose Sheep without a Shepherd in relation to this topic. There are several different ways of montage used in this film, and I talked about mainly two of them in my video essay. Secondly, it is a very new film released in , showing that even it was several decades ago when Eisenstein suggested his montage theory, until nowadays montage is still a very effective technique for the present cinema.
And last but not least, I suspect most people have not seen any Chinese films or done much analysis before, so I am also more than delighted to introduce my personal film of the year, which although is a niche crime theme, but has gained huge success in China and achieved a box office of more than 1 billion RMB. My video essay consists of mainly three parts. But to make this sequence meaningful, the main function of montage must be taken into account.
Therefore, montage does not simply mean adding any two or more shots together, but the aim is to form new meanings or add emotional effects to the sequence, which cannot be visually presented straightforwardly. While they are both very influential film theorists throughout the industry, their editing theories are completely opposite. Eisenstein believes that montage contributes to the plot and meaning of the film, but what Bazin pursues is realism, that the avoidance of editing, i. Since the two held opposite opinions, I think it would be useful to compare and contrast them, to see what montage can achieve and what it cannot.
