Montage

Meaning made by the order of images, not by any single one. Two shots that mean nothing alone can, joined, mean everything.

Montage is film's compound sentence: image A and image B, joined, produce meaning C that neither carried alone. A face, then a meal: hunger. The same face, then a coffin: grief. The audience writes the connection themselves, which is why montage persuades more deeply than statement; conclusions people reach feel like their own.

The Soviet directors formalised it, advertising industrialised it, and every trailer and title sequence still runs on it. The working craft is choosing the gap: joins that are too obvious bore, too distant confuse. The right interval makes the viewer leap and land, and the small success of landing binds them to the film.