A child lying in a coffin, a sexy girl on a bed, a bowl with hot soup through the eyes of the artist I. I. Mozhukhin is deep grief, lust, severe hunger. Rather, not quite with the eyes and not quite with the actor - this is the Kuleshov effect. Lev Kuleshov, the great virtuoso of directing and film theorist, thus, using three static plans connected by the same image of Mozhuzhin’s face, proves that the essence of the next frame can radically change the meaning of the previous one.
Viewer judges based on context
This psychological peculiarity was noticed and first recorded, scientifically proved by the founder of the Soviet film industry Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970). Therefore, this phenomenon, making a real sensation, was called the “Kuleshov effect”. Pursuing the goal of proving to the cultural community the necessity and importance of editing in the cinema, he conducted a series of experiments in 1910.
Lev Vladimirovich filmed 3 films with the participation of the eminent actor of tsarist cinema I. Mozuzhukhin. On the film, only the artist’s face was recorded, not expressing absolutely no emotions, neutral. Then Kuleshov glued footage with a close-up of Mozhuzhin, inserting between them the footage depicting a bowl of hot soup, a seductive girl and a dead child. The cinematographer demonstrated the finished mini-movie to his colleagues.
The cinema community was thrilled
According to eyewitnesses, the audience was indescribably delighted with the “sincere, sincere game of Mozhuhin,” which in fact consisted in its complete absence as such. In fairness, it is worth noting that the Kuleshov effect was also triumphantly taken because the cinema was only in its infancy at that time, and its power of influence on the viewers was many times greater than at the present time when the modern viewer was used to unrelenting streams of video information.
Some critics claim that the Kuleshov effect was greatly overestimated, and many watchers perceive Mozhuhin’s face as neutral. Perhaps in this statement there is a fraction of common sense. The actor’s face really remains calm. But during the viewing, the viewer's subconscious comes into force, building a single image from disparate elements. For example, the Kuleshov effect was masterfully used by the creators of the Shame film (directed by Steve McQueen).
Heritage
In order to capture a valuable heritage, in 1969 director Semyon Reitburt, Honored Artist of the USSR, winner of film awards at the Venice Film Festival, based on the script by A. Konoplev, takes a documentary biographical picture about Lev Kuleshov. The plot is twisted around the personality of the founder of VGIK, contains the facts of his biography, a description of the experimental activities and thoughts of the great filmmaker. The documentary film "Kuleshov Effect" Semyon Reitburt, a student of Lev Vladimirovich, shot in the direction of popular science cinema.
A red thread through the whole story traces the idea of ​​Lev Vladimirovich that in order to create a film, the director must be able to carefully compose separately shot episodes, incoherent and disordered, into one whole. The director is obliged to juxtapose disparate shots in an ideally integral, most beneficial for design and rhythmic sequence, like a child making a mosaic or putting cubes into a whole phrase. Also in the narrative of the Reitburgh movie, Kuleshov’s book “The Art of Cinema” of 1929 is mentioned, which describes all the delights of the great director, who later became textbook interpretations of the two fundamental functions of cinematic editing.
Tips from the master
In the film by Reitburth, Kuleshov voiced very important words that are sometimes ignored by novice filmmakers. The master of directing advises the directors, in preparing each scene for the shooting, to think over its future editing. According to Lev Vladimirovich, editing during filmmaking should be taken into account everywhere in the script, at rehearsals, during the shooting, otherwise it will be difficult to mount the picture. The founder of Soviet cinema strongly advises all followers when shooting the next episode to always remember how the previous one ended.
Beginning of an era of installation delights
The Kuleshov Effect is a film whose importance is hard to overestimate. After all, the methods of working with film invented by Kuleshov, although not used in their pure form, have undoubtedly laid the foundation for an era of editing experiments. According to the teachings of Lev Vladimirovich, directors learned to combine techniques, subordinate them to personal author’s methods.
But the Kuleshov effect itself is fundamental - it has been studied and continues to be studied by psychologists, it is admired to this day, the leading contemporary directors Kubrick and Hitchcock have actively used it to create their masterpieces. Even in modern thrillers and blockbusters, you can find his quivering shadow. According to Jean-Luc Godard, obsessed with editing theory, modern editing is nothing compared to what filmmakers of the 1920s did.