Continuity editing is by far the most common form you'll encounter. But directors, many outside of the U.S., developed various alternative editing techniques to better express narrative or intellectual ideas in a film.
Russian director Sergei Eisenstein made enormous contributions to the development of editing for narrative power, most famously in the famous "Odessa Steps" sequence of his film Potemkin (1925).
A film celebrating the liberation of the Russian people from the cruelty of the Tsar Nikolai II, Potemkin tells the story of the 1905 uprising of sailors on the battleship Potemkin. The Odessa steps sequence uses a technique called "montage," in which various narrative strands in a single scene are woven together to create tension and drama. Montage emphasizes dynamic, often discontinuous, relationships between shots and the juxtaposition of images to create ideas not present in either shot by itself.
In this scene, the people wait at the quay to celebrate the return of the sailors on the battleship, when the Tsar's troops suddenly attack.
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