Abstract: This essay revisits Dziga Vertov’s mysterious and much-discussed idea of "interval-based" montage. Referring to important Soviet music theory of the 1920s, the essay suggests that Vertov might have borrowed from contemporary notions of musical intervals as forms of perceptual anchorage for spectators, in lieu of those narrative forms of montage organization that he was intent on avoiding. It goes on to suggest how the idea of interval-based montage might offer an answer to those, like Viktor Shklovskij, who believed that a non-narrative cinema of motion was impossible. Finally, the essay offers a couple of concrete examples of Vertov’s montage of intervals, and suggests that interval-based montage, despite its ostensibly avant-garde and non-narrative character, also answered to the ideological demands of the early Soviet period.
