a ee ee —»—_--—__4— montage. In this he stands parallel to Frank Lloyd Wright in architecture. Just as Wright makes no compromise with the relation of structural honesty to living philosophy, Eisenstein makes no comprom- ise with the human reality which h builds by a stinging juxtaposition of imagery. The sequence of the Odessa steps is now a classic of visual-psychological fusion. Fragments of images—a hand, a shouting head, a smashed eye-glass, a row of marching feet of: soldiers, a long vista down the. stairs, a close-up of a blood-soaked dress, a ctazily bouncing baby carriage, such fragments singled out by a perceptive lens and by pertinent edit- ing are juxtaposed on our vision with masterly cumulative progression so that we apprehend the true time lapse, the consequent emotional tension and thus the ever-mounting drama of the plot. Such is the nature of Russian montage. German directors have developed a dif- ferent phase of montage or progressive image-sequence. Instead of for action- narrative effect, they employ the montage principle to expand the implications of a character's thought at a given moment, giving us a cross section of his mind through the blended visual images as he is thinking of them. This view inside the mind may reveal a fantastic mental world or the actual world transformed by terror, anger or confusion into a distorted image. This evolution of the subtle multiple- image, fantastic or even surrealistic mon- tage has greatly extended the expressive dimension of film language. “It can now conjure into relation with reality the shad- owy world of the subconscious. German montage owes much to the creative script writer, Carl Mayer, who wrote the original scenario for ‘The Cab inet of Dr. Caligari’. Probably it is no- where better evidenced than in his ex haustive collaboration with the master di- rector, F. W. Murnau in the film “Sunrise”, last of the great German “Golden” tradi- tion, but filmed actually in Hollywood in 1928. To the serious film observer this discov- ery and development of montage is an important new addition to man’s communi- cative mediums. It is the cinema’s great claim to art, whether used in the Russian or the German sense, or in combination, as in a considerable work where demands are made on both aspects for narrative and psychological reasons. In any case they amount to a poetic use of imagery emanating from actuality but so transform- ed by an abstract logic into the poetic in- tensity of art as to heighten reality. When a director reveals a sense for montage, he * ART AND ARCHITECTURE Throughout history one of the surest reflectors of its contemporary society has been the Arts. This is equally true of periods when artistic movements have been at their creative pinnacles as it is of periods when artistic standards have been at their most superfluous or almost non-existent. Human concepts in all fields at any given time tend to have a great degree of unanimity. Primitive man, races of whom exist today, related himself to his environment in a way which to him was entirely rational. As time elapsed, events and ideas came to challenge his concept of himself, his world and his gods, in each period. He first reacted violently against the idea of change; then, when it appeared to him that he had no power over this change, he became greatly confused, not knowing what was to supplant his cher- ished ideas nor which way the universe was directing itself. Eventually, in each case he found a new solution, which, as By RONALD THOM the one it had replaced, then also became rational to him. Sometimes this new solu- tion represented a real advancement and a broader and richer concept of life; some- times it merely represented a new cloak for the same ideas; and sometimes it repre- sented a cloak for forces leading to retro- gression. However, in all cases these changes were far-reaching in their effect, and as a result, all things or ideas, under influence, moved with a basic unity to- ward the type of society that characterized that civilization at that period. Our society today, almost the world over, is in some stage of just such a change. Every idea has been challenged. In many cases the challenge to the old stands by itself without supporting thought as a foundation for any new concept. We are in the period of reaction, grave mis- givings amongst broad strata of society about established ideas, and fear and con- fusion about new and _ contemporary thought. Religion is meeting with wide- ~ spread skepticism; our very social struc- is talking to us in an exciting new langu- age. Therefore, merely to “go to a movie”, to thrill to the hero’s adventures, to un- ravel the plot, to enjoy the dialogue or the music and the dazzling spectacle, may give pleasure and even relief but these can hardly offer such satisfactions to the mature mind as the comprehension of a film in terms of its full implications. The critical consciousness will exercise its range in response to the film rhythm, en- joying the way it has been conceived, photographed and edited. It will test this expressive totality by its validity for true experience and by what that whole adds up to in social terms. In this critical direction lies the aware- ness of a stimulating contemporary idiom as loaded with repercussions as the print- ing press or the film’s contemporary com- panion, the radio. For these can be dan- gerous as well as emancipating mediums. Their existence to satisfy the demands of uncritical stimulation alone renders them pernicious since they are habit-forming drugs. Critical examinaion of films is no bar to entertainment. It places entertain- ment on the level of alert enjoyment and offers a salutary contribution toward high- er standards. And, if you can take it, it keeps you awake amid the Babylonian luxury of plush seats. IN SOCIETY? ture is being rooted out by some 4s it is vainly being revived from a lingering death by others. : The visual and plastie arts and archi- tecture are no exception to this general evolution. There is a strong parallel be- tween the decadent periods of the past three centuries in painting, sculpture, archi- tecture and the society of man. Decadence, dry rot, stagnation, have been the lot of man while capitalistic monopoly exploita- ion has been grinding to its inevitable conclusion. Art and architecture are the reflectors of a degrading class struggle, between one class—bourgeois, machine- made aristocracy seeking the mirage of grandeur behind classical facades and soft, sumptuous, sensual idioms of art— and the other class—-an ignorant, impov- erished mass seeking comfort in religion and a sentimental art, being the victims of our earliest utilitarian ways of city plan- ning and tenement architecture, plus, to a lesser degree, the same romantic mirage of urban “style” architecture.