ABSTRACT
Montage, as conceived in film, is about space and time. In 1936 the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein visited the Acropolis. Fascinated by the experience, he wrote a short text titled "Montage and Architecture", which he illustrated with diagrams by the architectural historian Auguste Choisy. Eisenstein described Acropolis as an example of montage, moving past the temples and statuary, he experienced the highly organized visual collision of elements as an analogue to how filmmakers might cut shots or sequences of images and juxtapose them against one another. The Acropolis of Athens has an equal right to be called the perfect example of one of the most ancient films. It is hard to imagine a montage sequence more subtly composed, shot by shot, than the one that our legs create by walking among the buildings of the Acropolis. Eisenstein demonstrates, it is a masterly dynamic montage, but also because montage suggests a society in constant flux and an architecture of uncertainty and conflict.
