It was in Lev Kuleshov's film workshop in 1923, that Eisenstein experienced his first direct contact with the apparatus of cinema. Yet, while Kuleshov quite clearly played a part in Eisenstein's development as a filmmaker, the theories of montage espoused by the two directors differed to a great degree.Kuleshov, recognised by many as the founding father of Soviet cinema, was the first person to use the term 'montage' in relation to film. In an article in 1917, Kuleshov wrote that 'to make a picture the director must compose the separate filmed fragments, disordered and disjointed, into a single whole and juxtapose these separate fragments into a more advantageous, integral and rhythmical sequence, just as a child constructs a whole word or phrase from separate scattered blocks of letters.'(14)
Thus, adopting a similar position to Pudovkin, Kuleshov argued that montage functioned, not in terms of collision and conflict, but in terms of linkage and unification.
However, this dialectical approach to editing was deemed by Kuleshov to be too manipulative because it consciously attempted, through its powerful, oppositional nature to 'rape the viewer's emotions.' For Kuleshov, because editing put the director in full command, it should guide the viewer's attention and direct him/her along the necessary path; something which Eisenstein's montage, with its abuse of the viewer, failed to do.
This form of montage was particularly evident in his 1924 film, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in The Land of the Bolsheviks (Lev Kuleshov 1924) which was made by Mezhrabpom Rus (International Workers Aid), a Soviet film organisation which, going against the Eisenstinian epics, combined revolutionary propaganda with an 'Americanised' visual and narrative aesthetic. The mise-en-scene of such films as Mr West was based upon Kuleshov's assertion that shots function like 'bricks' which, when piled upon each other, harmonise the narrative and mise-en-scene. Eisenstein, described this as 'a most pernicious make-shift analysis'(15) because shots for him were not elements of montage but montage cells which, through their divisions and dialectical leaps, create a mise-en-scene not of harmony but of conflict and dynamism.
Another area of contention between Kuleshov and Eisenstein concerned the influence of theatre within cinema. Eisenstein's Kabuki and Soviet theatre influences have been well documented. However, the direct combination of theatre and cinema in his 1923 play, The Mexican, would have been frowned upon by Kuleshov who consistently argued that 'theatre and theatre workers bring nothing but harm to cinema...the more theatre has to do with cinema, the more it will appear to violate its nature.'(16)
Thus, together with such figures as Pudovkin and Vertov, Kuleshov continually appeared to contradict Eisenstein's film theories. Indeed, looking back on their writings now, it is hard to believe that they had even met each other, such are the profound differences in their approach to filmmaking.
