The Kuleshov Effect

The Kuleshov Effect is an editing effect used by Soviet film maker Lev Kuleshov utilized to create the mental phenomenon of the audience garners more meaning from the action of a pair of shots in succession than one single shot.

Kuleshov edited a short film (Link) (source 2) in which the expressionless face of Ivan Mosjoukine was edited inbetween various other shots: a bowl of soup, a girl in a coffin and a woman on a divan, showing for each an expression of hunger, grief or desire, respectively. However, the footage of the man is the exact same each time, and the emotions we project and think that we see in the man are emotions that we gather from the context of the montage. Vsevolod Pudovkin said that the viewers "raved about the acting... the heavy pensiveness of his mood over the forgotten soup, were touched and moved by the deep sorrow with which he looked on the dead child, and noted the lust with which he observed the woman. But we knew that in all three cases the face was exactly the same." (source 1)

What the effect indicates is the way that editing can so effectively change how the viewer perceives a film. Kuleshov believed it to be the 'basis of cinema as an art form' (source 1) Kuleshov showed that montage must be used as a basic utility in cinema. According to him a film consists of fragments in scenes which have been assembled. It isn't what is in the scenes of a film that matters, but how they are edited together. The material doesn't need to be made original and new each time, as long as they are put together in a way that is meaningful, or rather in a way that the audience is able to find meaningful.

A good example of the Kuleshov Effect in action is the baptism scene in The Godfather. The father's expression grows more severe progressively as he renounces Satan. One could argue that it was the acting, but on closer inspection you can see that the shots between it make the shots of the father take on a life of it's own. When we are exposed to the violence from the assassination, the shots of the seemingly innocent baptism appear much more ironically grim than they would've been if it was made a separate scene from the assassinations. (source 4)

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KuleshovEffectExample.ogv

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sokkp7NA8NA

4. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reeligion/2011/09/the-kuleshov-effect-and-the-godfather/

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