Montage, realism and antropophagy: Eisenstein and Bazin in Canibal Holocausto (1980)

Abstract

This paper analyses the Italian movie Cannibal Holocaust, directed by Ruggero Deodato in 1980, comparing its language to the cinematographic theories by Sergei Eisenstein and Andre Bazin. In different times and countries, both theorists discourse, among other aspects, about the cinematographic montage. Their positions are opposite: while Bazin is interested in the forms of reproduction of reality, as the sequence plan, Eisenstein considered the movie as an articulated discourse constructed from the image edition. Thus, one defended long sequence plans and depth of field; the other, the creation through montage. The objective of this work is to demonstrate that some characteristics from the theories by Bazin and Eisenstein, even opposite, could be observed in the movie, because of its mixture of fiction and “false documentary”, original at the time.