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Marxist film theory is an approach tofilm theory centered on concepts that make a political understanding of the medium possible.[1][failed verification] An individual studying a Marxist representation in a film, might take special interest in its representations ofpolitical hierarchy andsocial injustices.[2]
Sergei Eisenstein and many other Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s expressed ideas ofMarxism through film. TheHegelian dialectic was considered best displayed in film editing through theKuleshov Experiment and the development ofmontage.[3] While thisstructuralist approach to Marxism and filmmaking was used, the more outspoken complaint that the Russian filmmakers had, was with thenarrative structure of theUnited States cinema.[citation needed]
Eisenstein's solution was to shun narrative structure by eliminating the individualprotagonist and tell stories where the action is moved by the group and the story is told through a clash of one image against the next (whether in composition, motion, or idea) so that the audience is never lulled into believing that they are watching something that has not been worked over.[4] Eisenstein himself was accused by the Soviet authorities underJoseph Stalin of "formalist error", of highlighting form as a thing of beauty instead of portraying the worker nobly.[4]
French Marxist film makers, such asJean-Luc Godard, employed radical editing and choice of subject matter as well as subversive parody to heighten class consciousness and promote Marxist ideas.[5]Situationist film makerGuy Debord, author ofThe Society of the Spectacle, began his filmIn girum imus nocte et consumimur igni with a radical critique of the spectator who goes to the cinema to forget about their dispossessed daily life.[citation needed] Situationist film makers produced a number of important films, where the only contribution by the situationist film cooperative was the sound-track. InCan dialectics break bricks? (1973), aChineseKung Fu film was transformed by redubbing into an epistle onstate capitalism andProletarian revolution. The intellectual technique of using capitalism's own structures against itself is known asdétournement.[citation needed]
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