Moatasem Samir

“A stronger analogy to Eisenstein's analysis of the rising pattern in the music and the visuals can be found in the
contrapuntal practice in music whereby a theme is juxtaposed against either an augmented (the note values are
doubled) or diminished (the note values are halved) version of itself. The listener can thus simultaneously
experience two different temporal elaborations of the same melodic line across a single block of chronological
time, just as the viewer/listener in Alexander Nevsky can experience two different temporal elaborations of the
rising motion across a single block of chronological time. (Needless to say, an oppositional "counterpoint" could
also be set up by creating, for instance, an upward movement in the music and a downward one in the visuals.) But
the experience here is doubly enriched, since the simultaneity also includes two different modes of perception,
visual and aural, which is, one suspects, one of the underlying raisons d'être of the gesamtkunstwerk. Even on the
simplest of levels, then, Eisenstein's "vertical montage" involves the simultaneous, layered presentation of a
number of different elements. For the first shot, these layers would stack up as follows:
1. Graphic perception (photography)
2. Musical perception (score)
3. Upward movement 1 (graphic)
4. Upward movement 2 (musical)
5. Synchronicity 1 (graphic)
6. Synchronicity 2 (musical)”
― Royal S. Brown, Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music