In front of me lies a crumpled sheet of yellowed paper.
It bears the enigmatic message:
'Connection - P' and 'Collision - E'.
This is the material trace left by a heated discussion on the theme of montage between E - myself and P - Pudovkin. (Six months ago).
It's an established habit. With regular intervals he calls on me late in the evening, and we quarrel behind closed doors about matters of principle.
That's how it was on this occasion also. As a follower of the Kuleshov school he backed the idea of montage as a connection of passages. Into a series. 'Bricks'.
Bricks, which in a series manifest thought.
I opposed my own point of view to his, that the montage is a collision. The point where at the clash between two given circumstances a thought arises.
Connection is only one - single - possible version of this, according to my view.
Remember the vast number of possible combinations known to physics, when spheres collide.
Depending on whether they are hard, soft, or intermediate.
Among these combinations there is also one, where the collision merely results in the steady motion of both in the same direction.
This would correspond to Pudovkin's viewpoint.

Eisenstein, Udvalgte Skrifter, p.97 (my translation, from Danish! into English))