Hollywood Films: The Montage
 

The hours approaching, to give it your best
You've got to reach your prime.
That’s when you need to put yourself to the test
And show us a passage of time
Were going to need a montage (montage)
Ooh it takes a montage (montage)
- Team America - World Police

Team America did a great spoof on the idea of a montage, it's truly something that was ripe for parody.

I was watching this because it was embedded in a Newsweek blog about jocks being jerks. It had this montage in it.


This is probably one of the more memorable ones I can think of, but what's the best montage in a movie out there?

Montage - a filmmaking technique which uses rapid editing, special effects and music to present compressed narrative information

... just because I needed a better explanation to actually remember of what I am looking for... I think most of the examples that may come hereafter will be from the era of 1978-94, just in my relative terms of when montages were most evident in film.

Getting strong now, won't be long now, gonna fly now...
 

I'm glad you featured the one above from The Karate Kid, because it is most probably my favorite example of a perfectly-executed montage in cinema.

This one follows closely, if only because the formula never gets old in any of the sequels:

Thanks! I needed that...

thanks jet!

I didn't even think about putting the definition of a montage in here, because it seems like I've always known it. The Rocky montage is a great one!

It's not just in films, you can also see it in ATeam each and every week when they put together the machine that helped them overcome the bad guys.

Footloose was a hit in my household back in the day. We must have watched this film at dozens of times the year it was released on video. It's amazing how much of this montage is as familiar to me now as it was back then.

I like the montages where they make weapons out of junk, or are training.
Some of the ones I remember was the weapon-making in Phantasm II where Reggie makes a 4-barrel shotgun.
In Commando with Arnold and Rae-Dawn, where they break into the gun store and gather an arsenal.
And in Army of Darkness where Ash creates his metal hand and boosts the castle's defenses.

A good training montage is the Rocky IV one where it contrasts Rocky's basic down-home training to Drago's more modern and chemically enhanced training.

Also, I liked the montage in Revenge of the Nerds where the nerds find and fix up their frat house.

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Here's a link to a montage of a bunch of different movies. Not just one.

The Ultimate Movie Montage | I Am Bored

I found this blog which contains all the training montages in Rocky IV rolled up into one neat little video bow. Click the link, and the video is found after a few descriptive paragraphs. It's just as the title says:

Rocky IV Training Montage: Awesomeness That Can’t Be Measured | jasonyormark.com



I also thank you for the link; I'm not going to watch it right now 'cause I'm trying to test my mental fortitude right now to recall montages that were especially memorable to me, so clicking that link would be kind of cheating in a way. This morning when I awoke, I was repeating "on the way, on the way", and I'm sure it is a snippet from some montage in a mid-80s or early-90s movie, though I cannot recall the name of it. I'm not sure if it is a good montage either, just one that came to mind, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

Jetee, the link in my post ^^ leads to a clip of a montage of different scenes from different movies, not montages from those movies. :)

Oh, it's a homemade movie montage of film scenes that does not feature any previous montages? Alright, then I have no reason to bypass it now.

Here's another montage I've come up with after on-and-off thinking... it will be a true juxtaposition of editing techniques and themes evident when combined with the next montage(s) I have in mind to share hereafter. (also to note: I originally thought of "Hakuna Matata" as the montage to share, but it really degraded once I watched it again. More talking in song than anything else.)

Requiem for a Dream
 

The Trailer


Style

As in his previous film, π, Aronofsky uses montages of extremely short shots throughout the film (sometimes termed a hip hop montage). While an average 100-minute film has 600 to 700 cuts, Requiem features more than 2,000. Split-screen is used extensively, along with extremely tight closeups. Long tracking shots (including those shot with an apparatus strapping a camera to an actor, called the Snorricam) and time-lapse photography are also prominent stylistic devices.

In order to portray the shift from the objective, community-based narrative to the subjective, isolated state of the characters' perspectives, Aronofsky alternates between extreme closeups and extreme distance from the action and intercuts reality with a character's fantasy. Aronofsky aims to subjectivise emotion, and the effect of his stylistic choices is personalisation rather than alienation.

The film's distancing itself from empathy is furthered structurally by the use of intertitles (Summer, Fall, Winter), marking the temporal progress of addiction. The average scene length shortens as the movie progresses (beginning around 90 seconds to two minutes) until the movie's climactic scenes, which are cut together very rapidly (many changes per second) and are accompanied by a score which increases in intensity accordingly. After the climax, there is a short period of serenity, during which idyllic dreams of what may have been are juxtaposed with portraits of the four shattered lives.

Select Film Montages
(the ones that I could find mostly, and they quite were difficult to find, even on YouTube)

Naturally (official)


"Take What's Given" - I'm pretty sure this is fan-made, but you could've fooled me (unofficial)



Epilogue Montage (official)

Sorry, but this video cannot be embedded and you should click it to watch it on Youtube. Very easily the most memorable montage from the film, but its also the ending, so for those who have not yet seen the film, don't click this link.

those are some great montages you've posted. I didn't think of the opening of Lion King to be a montage, but upon viewing it again, it sure is! Amazingly sneaking those montages are.

I'll make some time to see these recent postings and keep my eye out for more.

There are some great montages in The Graduate. I could only find part of one online:


The end of Bonnie & Clyde also has a great montage. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington also has a great montage scene when Jimmy Stewart gets to Washington. Unfortunately, I don't have links to any of them.

Eisenstein used montage a lot, but it's Soviet montage, not "Hollywood" montage.
Battleship Potemkin: The Odessa Steps Sequence

I can't find a youtube one of this one, but it's a classic

Ghostbusters Montage