French New Wave v Soviet Montage
The differences between soviet montage and French new wave cinema are interesting and many. Both genres of film seek to create contrast between adjacent shots via discontinuity editing, but subtle differences in their editing styles allow this contrast to produce very different results. In French new wave editing is used to both draw the audience in, and push them away, it draws the audience's attention and inspires distaste. Soviet montage on the other hand uses editing not as a method of controlling the audience's focus, but as a way to create ideas. An analysis of the editing in the Godard's “Breathless” and Eisenstein's “Battleship Potemkin” will highlight these different effects.
In “Breathless”,