Marxist film theory examines cinema to understand political dynamics, social injustices, and power hierarchies embedded within the medium. Pioneering Soviet filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein in the 1920s championed montage over traditional narrative, using the clash of images and collective protagonists to embody Marxist principles and challenge audience passivity, though Eisenstein later faced accusations of "formalist error" from Soviet authorities.
Later, French Marxist filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard employed radical editing and subversive parody to heighten class consciousness. Situationist filmmakers, notably Guy Debord, author of The Society of the Spectacle, further developed this by critiquing passive spectatorship and utilizing détournement—the technique of turning capitalist structures against themselves. A notable example is 1973's Can dialectics break bricks?, where a Kung Fu film was redubbed to promote ideas of state capitalism and proletarian revolution.