"The Kuleshov Effect" - a textbook film by a cinematographer

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

A child lying in a coffin, a sexy girl on a bed, a bowl of hot soup through the eyes of the artist I. I. Mozzhukhin - this is deep sorrow, lust, severe hunger. Or rather, not quite with the eyes and not quite an actor - this is the Kuleshov effect. Lev Kuleshov, the great virtuoso of directing and film theorist, thus, with the help of three static shots connected by the same image of Mozzhukhin's face, proves that the essence of the next frame can radically change the meaning of the previous one.

Viewer judges by context

This psychological feature was noticed and first recorded, scientifically proven by the founder of the Soviet film industry Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970). Therefore, this phenomenon, having made a real sensation, was called the “Kuleshov effect”. Pursuing the goal of proving to the cultural community the necessity and importance of montage in cinema, he conducted a series of experiments in 1910.

Lev Vladimirovich filmed 3 film sketches with the participation of the eminent actor of the tsarist cinema I. Mozzhukhin. Only the face of the artist was recorded on the film, expressing absolutely no emotions, neutral. Further, Kuleshov glued frames withclose-ups of Mozzhukhin, inserting frames between them depicting a bowl of hot soup, a seductive girl and a dead child. The cinematographer demonstrated the finished mini-roll to his colleagues.

The film community was delighted

According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the audience was indescribably delighted with Mozzhukhin's "sincere, sincere game", which in fact consisted in its complete absence as such. In fairness, it should be noted that the Kuleshov effect was also triumphantly received because cinematography was just emerging at that time, and its influence on viewers was many times greater than at the present time, when the modern viewer is accustomed to unrelenting streams of video information.

Some critics argue that the Kuleshov effect was greatly overestimated, and many viewers perceive Mozzhukhin's face as neutral. Perhaps there is some common sense in this statement. The actor's face really remains cool. But during viewing, the subconscious of the viewer comes into force, building a single image from disparate elements. For example, the Kuleshov effect was masterfully used by the creators of Shame (directed by Steve McQueen).

Legacy

In order to record a valuable legacy, in 1969 director Semyon Raitburt, Honored Art Worker of the USSR, winner of film awards at the Venice Film Festival, based on the script by A. Konoplev, shoots a documentary biographical film about LeoKuleshov. The plot revolves around the personality of the founder of VGIK, contains the facts of his biography, a description of the experimental activities and reflections of the great filmmaker. The documentary film "The Kuleshov Effect" by Semyon Raitburt, a student of Lev Vladimirovich, was filmed in the direction of popular science cinema.

The red thread through the whole story is the idea of Lev Vladimirovich that in order to create a film, the director must be able to calibrate the separately filmed episodes, incoherent and chaotic, into one whole. The director is obliged to match the disparate shots in an ideally coherent, most beneficial for the concept and rhythmic sequence, like a child composing a mosaic or putting cubes into a whole phrase. Also in the narration of Reitburt's film, Kuleshov's 1929 book The Art of Cinema is mentioned, which describes all the delights of the great director, which later became textbook interpretations of the two fundamental functions of cinematographic editing.

Advice from the master

In Reitburt's film, Kuleshov voiced very important words that are sometimes ignored by novice filmmakers. The master of directing advises directors to think over its future editing when preparing each scene for shooting. According to Lev Vladimirovich, editing during film production should be taken into account everywhere in the script, at rehearsals, during shooting, otherwise it will be quite difficult to edit the picture. The founder of Soviet cinema strongly advises all followers whenshooting the next scene, always remember how the previous one ended.

The beginning of the era of assembly delights

“The Kuleshov Effect” is a film whose importance can hardly be overestimated. After all, the methods of working with film, invented by Kuleshov, although practically not used in their pure form, undoubtedly laid the foundation for the era of editing experiments. According to the teachings of Lev Vladimirovich, directors learned to combine techniques, to subordinate them to personal authorial methods.

And the Kuleshov effect itself is of fundamental importance - it was studied and continues to be studied by psychologists, it is admired to this day, the leading directors of our time Kubrick and Hitchcock actively used it when creating their masterpieces. Even in modern thrillers and blockbusters, you can find his quivering shadow. According to montage-obsessed Jean-Luc Godard, modern montage is nothing compared to 1920s montage.