Eisenstein is dance because he, like it, seeks within the heart of people and things the immobility within movement.  (Jean Luc-Godard)(19)

Jean Luc-Godard's words above illustrate the respect which, even over fifty years after his death, Eisenstein continues to elicit.

The visitor's book of Eisenstein's American apartment is covered with words from such disparate yet illustrious names as the cinematographer Sacha Vierny, who commented that Eisenstein was 'mes racines' ('my roots'), Robert Redford, John Boorman, Wim Wenders, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Terry Gilliam and Lindsay Anderson.

In Hollywood, (from where D.W. Griffith developed his influential early forms of montage), Eisenstein's 'montage of attractions' has influenced the work of such filmmakers as Oliver Stone, Alfred Hitchcock and Brian de Palma.

Indeed, the Odessa steps sequence from The Battleship Potemkin has been mimicked on several occasions, most notably in de Palma's The Untouchables (Brian de Palma 1987), Terry Gilliam's Brazil (Terry Gilliam 1985) and Woody Allen's Bananas (Woody Allen 1971).

However, perhaps the most famous and celebrated use of the 'montage of attractions' is to be found in the shower sequence (see clip below) of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960).

Hitchcock's admiration of Eisenstein was unstinting.  He utilised Eisenstein's violent editing style within a number of films, most notably The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock 1963) and, of course, Psycho.  Indeed, as he once commented, 'montage has that power of audience suggestion.  I'm very keen on that method of storytelling.' (20)
 

In the shower sequence in Psycho, the quickfire cutting which accompanies the murder of Lila Crane, could be viewed as a form of tonal montage.  While the somber mourning sequence of The Battleship Potemkin is depicted through lingering camera shots and low-key lighting, the quick, violent 'stabbing' motion made by Norman Bates' knife and  Lila's incessant movement within the frame, elicits a rapid editing style.  Thus, the violent tone within the frame, triggers a violent editing of the sequence as a whole (it is interesting to note that the rapid cutting ends once the attack has ended).

Indeed, through the juxtaposition of a close-up of Lila's horrified face and a shot of the knife bearing down upon her, we essentially get a visual illustration of Eisenstein's theory that in montage: depictable + depictable=undepictable.

In the shower sequence this equation would be knife + horrified face= (the abstract concept of) terror.  In Film Form, Eisenstein provides a number of other examples of this equation including, knife+heart=sorrow and dog+mouth= 'to bark'.

It is not just the work of Hitchcock which exhibits Eisenstinian traits.  In 1991 Oliver Stone's JFK with its obfuscating visual style, described by some critics as a 'gunshot mise-en-scene', was released to a combination of critical acclaim and political condemnation.

Although Stone has steadfastly refused to identify any particular influence behind his work, in JFK the agitational mise-en-scene parallels strongly with the visual aesthetic found in, for example, The Battleship Potemkin, October and Strike.  As Bill Nichols suggests,

Like Eisenstein's reliance on a montage of attractions in Strike, JFK engages us in the process of bringing into being a world constituted from, shards, fragments, a series of facts and events, viewed in conditional or subjunctive form and capable of infinite permutation.(21)

Indeed, in the film's opening sequence (see clip opposite), where a Citizen Kane-style newsreel sequence provides us with a background to Kennedy's life we see this juxtaposition of fact and fiction as real-life shots of Kennedy are juxtaposed with a brief, clearly 'artificial' shot of police beating up protesters during a civil rights demonstration.

Like Eisenstein, Stone was accused, through his juxtaposition of conflicting shots (i.e. fact+fiction) of manipulating the viewer to think in a certain way.

Eisenstein would no doubt have viewed such films as JFK and Psycho with interest.  Could he have ever predicted that his 'montage of attractions' would be so influential for  filmmakers living in cultures so far removed from his own?

Perhaps the words of such figures as Godard and the work of Stone and Hitchcock prove that no matter what culture a filmmaker works in, we will always see, in the words of Eisenstein, art functioning as conflict.