Montage

Montage

"montage" comes from the French; 'monter' which means to assemble.

In film editing, montage can have three senses:

- In French film, "montage" identifies editing, as well as to assemble.

- In Soviet film, "montage" was a way of juxtaposing shots to provide new meaning that did not exist in either shots alone. 

- In Hollywood cinema, a "montage sequence" is a short part in a film where a substantial amount of time and events is condensed into a short period. 

Hollywood montage is a style that became a popular technique throughout the twentieth century and into our current one. 

A montage sequence is an amount of different short shots that are edited into a sequence in order to show a quicker version of events and time passing.

Quite often, music is included in montage sequences in order to emphasise the mood of the events/scene.

In Soviet montage theory, editing different shots together creates a form of symbolic meaning. 

Lev Kuleshov; editing a film is like constructing a building, brick by brick (shot-by-shot). 
Kuleshov conducted an experiment, finding that montages can lead viewers to make particular conclusions about the film. 
Kuleshov edited together a short film where a shot of an expressionless face was alternated with a range of different shots (a plate of soup, a girl in a coffin, a woman on a divan).
The audience believed that Mosjoukine's face displayed three different expressions based on what he was "looking at". 

Soup - Hunger
Girl in coffin - Grief
Woman on divan - Desire

However, the footage of Mosjoukine was the same shot each time.
Montage is effective because viewers interpret meaning based on context. 

In this clip from Raging Bull, the montage scene shows the audience a number of life and boxing events the main characters pass through. The director used a montage to show the audience, in a quicker method, what events occur through 3 years using a variety of clips as well as including music in the background.