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.