The Film Sense

There's an ad for a show at the moment in which the final few lines are young man protesting:
'I won't go back inside, I won't go back inside.'
Then the voice-over guy says 'and a shocking conclusion...'
Then a woman says 'I'm pregnant.'

Join the dots on why that conclusion is shocking...

This is an example of Eisenstein's theory of montage.  The oft-cited experiment is of a great actor of the day who was shown intercut with a meal, or a gun, or something else, and ask people to rate the mans expression.  When the intercut was food, he looked hungry.  When it was a weapon, he looked threatening.  People also mentioned that he was the greatest actor they'd ever seen, even though it was the same footage of his face in every case.  The goal of montage-school film-making is to manufacture the passage of images in a way that the mind of the watcher puts a story on them.

Here's the book.  I got it from an op-shop, pretty much by accident.

Here's a good essay/post in case you want to actually learn something, rather than my half-remembered thoughts.