Butler, A 2012, “Some Early Film Theorists” in Film Studies, e-book, accessed 20 March 2016,

Butler’s chapter gives a succinct outline of several notable film theorists’ writings including Eisenstein, Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Arnheim, and Munsterberg. He presents their respective ideas in a chronological order, and essentially translates their literary works, making them easier for the audience to comprehend. He bands Pudovkin with continuity group and Eisenstein with discontinuity. He reiterates Pudovkin’s chief ideas: juxtaposition of opposites, parallel editing, symbolism, simultaneous editing, leitmotif, and contrasts this with Eisenstein, who similarly believed the “meaning of the film lay in the editing” though sought to evoke audience emotion through conflict between images, or “cells” as he calls it. Both Pudovkin and Eisenstein advocated the use of unsynchronised sound to add to the montage, whereas Arnheim believed sound would prevent the portrayal of emotion through purely the image.

As Butler divided the focus of his work among different theorists, it was helpful in giving a broad overview of how editing was discussed at the time. Although this means he was not able to go into much depth on each theorist, he was concise and pinpointed the main areas of interest in each of the theorists’ work which would likely identify them best.

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