Fernand Leger

Leger was a painter aswell as film maker , his paintings and films are both considered within the cubo-futurist genre of art. Its interesting  comparing both Legers paintings and films. Cubism is the disective , investigative process of painting an object. contradictory light sources are a character of cubism. . Futurism the movement which Leger was placed more comfortably encompasses a more irresponsible application of colour is , speed, violence and energy are also character to futurism . Legers obsession with light is what pulled him to the camera, and Ballet Mechanique is his most prominent production.  Neither abstract nor narrative, it is a series of images of a woman's lips and teeth, close-up shots of ordinary objects, and repeated images of human activities and machines in rhythmic movement. Looking upon his paintings in contrast to Ballet Mechanique is interesting. The sharp, geometric, confronting imagery  of futurism seems  remote to the soft , playful , slow steady pace of Ballet Mechanic. The common ground is the investigation of the object, finding a modern object.It makes perfect sense why Leger moved from  kinetic painting to filming movement.

Eisenstein

The propagandist film Battle ship potemkin is a small account of the socialist revolution of russia. In Watching this film  the odessa step montage is the nucleus of the composition, it is very provocative. An intense phsycological reaction towards the images and techniques  was Eisentsteins goal. The montage was unprecedented and mastered in terms of composition, rhythm and symbolism. The revolutionsists are protrayed and individualized as weak, helpless figures   juxtaposed to the superior masculine  collective of soldiers. The soldiers stand high and uniform upon the odessa steps and  close in on the chaos and unrest of the working class. structure against confusion.
           The counter army are shown as shadows sieging the town, faceless , anonomous and indifferent . The proletariet is often individualized and personalised through close up shots and dramatic body language. This is a silent film so the language and emotion is active within the film techniques and body language.
The montages dischordant rhythm and incoherency gives an  emergency to the sequence and heightens the viewers phsycological relationship to the screen. The sequence is shattered, violent and disrupted like the working classes attempts to revolt.

Melie and surrealism

The surrealistic quality of melies short films is provoked by a group of stylistic elements . His dramatic ,fictional behaviour in front of the camera for one makes little effort to humanize the narrative. His "cine magic" techniques found spontaneously, such as his cutting and pasting of frames take on a rhythm and pace of their own. The materialism and dissonance these tricks exhibit disrupts the viewers engagement . This makes the viewer conscious they are viewing a film, this is not a criticism of melies direction, these qualities provoke the viewers awareness of their being and gives them ground to compare the film to reality, reality being the environment in which they view the film.the film then is surreal to the audience.
A contrast to eisenstien who engages the audience through montage. Eisensteins powerful use of the montage, which embodies music,  composition and balance, the closeup and landscape portraits is a vehicle inwhich to take the audience to another perspective and realms outside of the cinema. This can be surreal but the viewer is not conscious untill the engagement is broken .
this is a response rodney to your preceding post,  i may continue to elaborate on this one next blog

melies early films

Yes Georges Melies was a magician before a cinematic genius and he was often referred to as a cinemagician. His sensibility from the stage to the camera and film still remains, his manner,thatricality , his passion for illusion and his conversation with the audience. Early film at this stage is a vehicle purely to entertain and Melies approach opened him to a whole new vocabulary behind the camera.
Accidents and experimentation led to techniques which are common today, in Le Diable Noir  cut and paste editing  was necessary as the hand cranked camera was not accurate enough. The techniques inwhich the audience was indifferent to at the time heightened the energy and the surreal character of the film.  These were modes which were often found accidentally and eclipsed the narrative. Melies playful application to film is distinct from say Eisensteins revolutionary propagandist film  battleships potemkin. Eisensteins wholesome, political narrative being that of the russian revolution reversed this relation of narrative versus technical trickality. Eisenstein attempted an edit inorder to provoke a high emothional response from the audience but this was completely driven by the narrative .