Misplaced Pages

Kuleshov effect

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

The Kuleshov effect is a film editing ( montage ) effect demonstrated by Russian film-maker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s. It is a mental phenomenon by which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation.

#452547

59-397: Kuleshov edited a short film in which a shot of the expressionless face of Tsarist matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine was alternated with various other shots (a bowl of soup, a girl in a coffin, a woman on a divan ). The film was shown to an audience who believed that the expression on Mosjoukine's face was different each time he appeared, depending on whether he was "looking at" the bowl of soup,

118-602: A serf whose children were granted freedom as a gratitude for his service. While all three elder brothers finished seminary , Ivan was sent to the Penza gymnasium for boys and later studied law at the Moscow State University . In 1910, he left academic life to join a troupe of traveling actors from Kiev , with which he toured for a year, gaining experience and a reputation for dynamic stage presence. Upon returning to Moscow , he launched his screen career with

177-535: A Movie Camera . The effect has also been studied by psychologists and is well-known among modern film-makers. Alfred Hitchcock refers to the effect in his conversations with François Truffaut , using actor James Stewart as the example. In the famous "Definition of Happiness" interview which was part of the CBC Telescope program, Hitchcock also explained in detail many types of editing to Fletcher Markle . The final form, which he calls "pure editing",

236-642: A calendar change, respectively. Usually, they refer to the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as enacted in various European countries between 1582 and 1923. In England , Wales , Ireland and Britain's American colonies , there were two calendar changes, both in 1752. The first adjusted the start of a new year from 25 March ( Lady Day , the Feast of the Annunciation ) to 1 January,

295-544: A change which Scotland had made in 1600. The second discarded the Julian calendar in favour of the Gregorian calendar, skipping 11 days in the month of September to do so. To accommodate the two calendar changes, writers used dual dating to identify a given day by giving its date according to both styles of dating. For countries such as Russia where no start-of-year adjustment took place, O.S. and N.S. simply indicate

354-459: A letter dated "12/22 Dec. 1635". In his biography of John Dee , The Queen's Conjurer , Benjamin Woolley surmises that because Dee fought unsuccessfully for England to embrace the 1583/84 date set for the change, "England remained outside the Gregorian system for a further 170 years, communications during that period customarily carrying two dates". In contrast, Thomas Jefferson , who lived while

413-660: A neutral control condition. Again, they showed that neutral faces were rated in accordance with the stimuli material, confirming the 2006 findings of Mobbs et al. Thus, despite the initial problems in testing the Kuleshov effect experimentally, researchers now agree that the context in which a face is shown has a significant effect on how the face is perceived. To find out whether the Kuleshov effect can also be induced auditorily, Andreas M. Baranowski and Heiko Hecht intercut different clips of faces with neutral scenes, featuring happy music, sad music, or no music at all. They found that

472-911: A start-of-year adjustment works well with little confusion for events before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. For example, the Battle of Agincourt is well known to have been fought on 25 October 1415, which is Saint Crispin's Day . However, for the period between the first introduction of the Gregorian calendar on 15 October 1582 and its introduction in Britain on 14 September 1752, there can be considerable confusion between events in Continental Western Europe and in British domains. Events in Continental Western Europe are usually reported in English-language histories by using

531-536: Is 9 February 1649, the date by which his contemporaries in some parts of continental Europe would have recorded his execution. The O.S./N.S. designation is particularly relevant for dates which fall between the start of the "historical year" (1 January) and the legal start date, where different. This was 25 March in England, Wales, Ireland and the colonies until 1752, and until 1600 in Scotland. In Britain, 1 January

590-511: Is explained visually using the Kuleshov effect. In the first version of the example, Hitchcock is squinting, and the audience sees footage of a woman with a baby. The screen then returns to Hitchcock's face, now smiling. In effect, he is a kind old man. In the second example, the woman and baby are replaced with a woman in a bikini , Hitchcock explains: "What is he now? He's a dirty old man." The Kuleshov effect has been studied by psychologists only in recent years. Prince and Hensley (1992) recreated

649-512: The 1911 adaptation of Tolstoy 's The Kreutzer Sonata . He also starred in A House in Kolomna (1913, after Pushkin ), Pyotr Chardynin directed drama Do You Remember? opposite the popular Russian ballerina Vera Karalli (1914), Nikolay Stavrogin (1915, after Dostoyevsky 's The Devils aka The Possessed ), The Queen of Spades (1916, after Pushkin) and other adaptations of Russian classics. Mosjoukine's most lasting contribution to

SECTION 10

#1732783651453

708-584: The Emil Jannings vehicle The Last Command , released three months after Surrender , being two examples of the genre. Since Laemmle's new star was a genuine survivor of the Revolution, it seemed only natural that the story would be set in that milieu. Symptomatic of Mosjoukine's co-star status, he does not even appear in the first fifteen minutes of the film, which are occupied with the depiction of life in an Eastern European Jewish settlement on

767-755: The Imperial Russian Army and was later enrolled to the Red Army . In 1931 he was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for Anti-Soviet agitation . In 1937 he was arrested for the second time on the same account and by the NKVD troika 's decision sentenced to death. Konstantin Mozzhukhin (born 1882) was also an army officer who served in the Imperial Russian Navy . In 1935 he and his father were arrested and sent to Yrgyz in

826-534: The Kazakh SSR . In 1937 he was arrested for the second time, also for Anti-Soviet agitation, and sentenced to ten years of labor camps. The date of his death is unknown. Mosjoukine was officially married three times. His first wife was the Russian actress Natalya Lisenko (1884–1960). They married in 1912 and divorced in 1927. In 1928 Mosjoukine married a Danish actress Agnes Petersen (1906—1973). His third wife

885-468: The Morosco Theatre on Christmas Day 1961 and closed on 13 January 1962, after 24 performances. In 1970, returning to its original title, it was adapted for the screen and directed by Jules Dassin as a vehicle for his wife Melina Mercouri (then aged 49), who played Nina. Dassin, who was 59 years old at the time, chose to play Mosjoukine himself in the single scene that the character appears in

944-609: The Russian Empire and the very beginning of Soviet Russia . For example, in the article "The October (November) Revolution", the Encyclopædia Britannica uses the format of "25 October (7 November, New Style)" to describe the date of the start of the revolution. The Latin equivalents, which are used in many languages, are, on the one hand, stili veteris (genitive) or stilo vetere (ablative), abbreviated st.v. , and meaning "(of/in) old style" ; and, on

1003-539: The 4th century , had drifted from reality . The Gregorian calendar reform also dealt with the accumulated difference between these figures, between the years 325 and 1582, by skipping 10 days to set the ecclesiastical date of the equinox to be 21 March, the median date of its occurrence at the time of the First Council of Nicea in 325. Countries that adopted the Gregorian calendar after 1699 needed to skip an additional day for each subsequent new century that

1062-583: The Boyne was commemorated with smaller parades on 1 July. However, both events were combined in the late 18th century, and continue to be celebrated as " The Twelfth ". Because of the differences, British writers and their correspondents often employed two dates, a practice called dual dating , more or less automatically. Letters concerning diplomacy and international trade thus sometimes bore both Julian and Gregorian dates to prevent confusion. For example, Sir William Boswell wrote to Sir John Coke from The Hague

1121-462: The British Isles and colonies converted to the Gregorian calendar, instructed that his tombstone bear his date of birth by using the Julian calendar (notated O.S. for Old Style) and his date of death by using the Gregorian calendar. At Jefferson's birth, the difference was eleven days between the Julian and Gregorian calendars and so his birthday of 2 April in the Julian calendar is 13 April in

1180-410: The British colonies, changed the start of the year from 25 March to 1 January, with effect from "the day after 31 December 1751". (Scotland had already made this aspect of the changes, on 1 January 1600.) The second (in effect ) adopted the Gregorian calendar in place of the Julian calendar. Thus "New Style" can refer to the start-of-year adjustment , to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar , or to

1239-481: The Carnival ), released on 29 August 1921 and Le Brasier ardent ( The Blazing Inferno ), released on 2 November 1923. The leading lady in both films was the then-"Madame Mosjoukine", Nathalie Lissenko . Brasier , in particular, was highly praised for its innovative and inventive concepts, but ultimately proved too surreal and bizarre to become financially successful. Styled like a semi-comic Kafkaesque nightmare,

SECTION 20

#1732783651453

1298-623: The Gregorian calendar. For example, the Battle of Blenheim is always given as 13 August 1704. However, confusion occurs when an event involves both. For example, William III of England arrived at Brixham in England on 5 November (Julian calendar), after he had set sail from the Netherlands on 11 November (Gregorian calendar) 1688. The Battle of the Boyne in Ireland took place a few months later on 1 July 1690 (Julian calendar). That maps to 11 July (Gregorian calendar), conveniently close to

1357-466: The Gregorian calendar. Similarly, George Washington is now officially reported as having been born on 22 February 1732, rather than on 11 February 1731/32 (Julian calendar). The philosopher Jeremy Bentham , born on 4 February 1747/8 (Julian calendar), in later life celebrated his birthday on 15 February. There is some evidence that the calendar change was not easily accepted. Many British people continued to celebrate their holidays "Old Style" well into

1416-430: The Julian and Gregorian dating systems respectively. The need to correct the calendar arose from the realisation that the correct figure for the number of days in a year is not 365.25 (365 days 6 hours) as assumed by the Julian calendar but slightly less (c. 365.242 days). The Julian calendar therefore has too many leap years . The consequence was that the basis for the calculation of the date of Easter , as decided in

1475-581: The Julian calendar had added since then. When the British Empire did so in 1752, the gap had grown to eleven days; when Russia did so (as its civil calendar ) in 1918, thirteen days needed to be skipped. In the Kingdom of Great Britain and its possessions, the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 introduced two concurrent changes to the calendar. The first, which applied to England, Wales, Ireland and

1534-517: The Julian date of the subsequent (and more decisive) Battle of Aughrim on 12 July 1691 (Julian). The latter battle was commemorated annually throughout the 18th century on 12 July, following the usual historical convention of commemorating events of that period within Great Britain and Ireland by mapping the Julian date directly onto the modern Gregorian calendar date (as happens, for example, with Guy Fawkes Night on 5 November). The Battle of

1593-475: The Sheik characterization of a dominant, forceful lover who initially takes women against their will, until they melt under the radiance of his sheer animal magnetism, it ran against Mosjoukine's European Casanova image as a fatalistically irresistible paramour to whom women flock and "surrender" without any hint of force or threat, but simply because of their inability to resist. This basic misunderstanding of

1652-479: The actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings. Kuleshov believed this, along with montage, had to be the basis of cinema as an independent art form. The experiment itself was created by assembling fragments of pre-existing film from the Tsarist film industry, with no new material. Mosjoukine had been the leading romantic "star" of Tsarist cinema, and familiar to the audience. Kuleshov demonstrated

1711-445: The artist into new juxtapositions. The montage experiments carried out by Kuleshov in the late 1910s and early 1920s formed the theoretical basis of Soviet montage cinema, culminating in the famous films of the late 1920s by directors such as Sergei Eisenstein , Vsevolod Pudovkin and Dziga Vertov , among others. These films included The Battleship Potemkin , October , Mother , The End of St. Petersburg , and The Man with

1770-738: The boy was raised as Aleksandr Petrovich Telegin, although he was made aware of his real father. For several years Mosjoukine traveled with his civil wife and his son before returning to Moscow and marrying Natalya Lisenko. According to Telegin, his father always supported them by sending letters, money and packages until his name came under a ban in the Soviet Union. Telegin and his family lived in Moscow, although they had to conceal their origin. To this day he remains Mosjoukine's only confirmed offspring. French novelist Romain Gary claimed that his birth

1829-492: The combination of the two. It was through their use in the Calendar Act that the notations "Old Style" and "New Style" came into common usage. When recording British history, it is usual to quote the date as originally recorded at the time of the event, but with the year number adjusted to start on 1 January. The latter adjustment may be needed because the start of the civil calendar year had not always been 1 January and

Kuleshov effect - Misplaced Pages Continue

1888-417: 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." Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to

1947-489: The dissimilarity between Valentino and Mosjoukine combined with journeyman direction by Edward Sloman and Mary Philbin's unresponsiveness and lack of chemistry with her leading man, consigned the film to a tepid reception by the critics and the public. Although moderately profitable, it was not the money-making hit that Laemmle expected. Mosjoukine received some good notices, but a number of critics doubted his suitability for American audiences. An even more ominous note, however,

2006-543: The end of the following December, 1661/62 , a form of dual dating to indicate that in the following twelve weeks or so, the year was 1661 Old Style but 1662 New Style. Some more modern sources, often more academic ones (e.g. the History of Parliament ) also use the 1661/62 style for the period between 1 January and 24 March for years before the introduction of the New Style calendar in England. The Gregorian calendar

2065-482: The eve of World War I . Eventually, at the centerpiece of the plot Mary Philbin, as the virginal daughter of the village rabbi, is confronted with the startling choice of willingly "surrendering" her maidenhood to Mosjoukine's aristocratic leader of the Cossack detachment sent to wipe out her village, or refusing and seeing him carry out his assignment. While this type of personality fitted into Valentino's past Son of

2124-419: The film has him playing a detective known only as "Z" hired by an older husband to follow his adventurous young wife. However, the plot was only the device which Mosjoukine and his assistant director Alexandre Volkoff used to experiment with the audience's perception of reality. Many of the scenes seem to be taking place on sets that are disconcertingly larger than normal and one particularly striking staging has

2183-475: The film. Ivan Mosjoukine died of tuberculosis in a Neuilly-sur-Seine clinic. All available sources give his age as 49 and year of birth as 1889. However, his gravestone at the Russian cemetery in the Parisian suburb of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois is inscribed with the year 1887. Old Style and New Style dates Old Style ( O.S. ) and New Style ( N.S. ) indicate dating systems before and after

2242-413: The girl in the coffin, or the woman on the divan, showing an expression of hunger, grief, or desire, respectively. The footage of Mosjoukine was actually the same shot each time. Vsevolod Pudovkin (who later claimed to have been the co-creator of the experiment) described in 1929 how the audience "raved about the acting ... the heavy pensiveness of his mood over the forgotten soup, were touched and moved by

2301-485: The husband entering the detective agency to find a synchronized line of men, presumably detectives, all wearing tuxedos and gliding about in formation. Mosjoukine received praise for his enthusiastic acting and display of emotion. According to popular myth, when Rudolph Valentino died on August 23, 1926, Hollywood producers began searching for another face or image that might capture some iota of that unique screen presence radiated by "The Great Lover". However, Mosjoukine

2360-479: The music significantly influenced participants’ emotional judgments of facial expression. Ivan Mosjoukine Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin (Russian: Иван Ильич Мозжухин , IPA: [ɪˈvan ɨˈlʲjitɕ mɐˈʑːʉxʲɪn] ; 26 September [ O.S. 8 October] 1889 – 18 January 1939), usually billed using the French transliteration Ivan Mosjoukine , was a Russian silent film actor. Ivan Mozzhukhin

2419-448: The necessity of considering montage as the basic tool of cinema. In Kuleshov's view, the cinema consists of fragments and the assembly of those fragments, the assembly of elements which in reality are distinct. It is therefore not the content of the images in a film which is important, but their combination. The raw materials of such an art work need not be original, but are prefabricated elements which can be disassembled and reassembled by

Kuleshov effect - Misplaced Pages Continue

2478-591: The original study design but did not find the alleged effect. The study had 137 participants but was a single-trial between-subject experiment, which is prone to noise in the data. Dean Mobbs et al. did a within-subject fMRI study in 2006 and found an effect for negative, positive, or neutral valence . When a neutral face was shown behind a sad scene, it seemed sad; when it was shown behind a happy scene, it seemed happy. In 2016, Daniel Barratt et al. tested 36 participants using 24 film sequences across five emotional conditions (happiness, sadness, hunger, fear, and desire) and

2537-456: The other, stili novi or stilo novo , abbreviated st.n. and meaning "(of/in) new style". The Latin abbreviations may be capitalised differently by different users, e.g., St.n. or St.N. for stili novi . There are equivalents for these terms in other languages as well, such as the German a.St. (" alter Stil " for O.S.). Usually, the mapping of New Style dates onto Old Style dates with

2596-502: The relative safety of Crimea in 1917. At the end of 1919, Mosjoukine arrived in Paris and quickly established himself as one of the top stars of the French silent cinema , starring in one successful film after another. Handsome, tall, and possessing a powerful screen presence, he won a considerable following as a mysterious and exotic romantic figure. The first film of his French career

2655-729: The theoretical concept of film as image is the legacy of his own face in recurring representation of illusory reactions seen in Lev Kuleshov 's psychological montage experiment which demonstrated the Kuleshov Effect . In 1918, the first full year of the Russian Revolution , Kuleshov assembled his revolutionary illustration of the application of the principles of film editing out of footage from one of Mosjoukine's Tsarist -era films which had been left behind when he, along with his entire film production company, departed for

2714-773: The unsuccessful attempt at a Hollywood career, Mosjoukine returned to Europe. The remainder of his film career, appearing in a new film every year until at least 1936, was spent in Europe. He appeared mainly in German films in the last years of the Weimar Republic , moving to France after the rise of the Nazis to power . In both countries he was often given roles in films with a Russian background. Many of his films were directed by fellow Russian emigres Vladimir Strizhevsky , Victor Tourjansky , and Alexandre Volkoff . Mosjoukine had three elder brothers. Alexander Mozzhukhin (1878—1972)

2773-650: Was Paris, which became the new capital for most of the exiled former aristocrats and other refugees escaping the Russian Civil War . The film was completed and released in Paris in November 1920. Mosjoukine's film stardom was assured and during the 1920s, his face with the trademark hypnotic stare appeared on covers of film magazines all over Europe. He wrote the screenplays for most of his starring vehicles and directed two of them, L'Enfant du carnaval ( Child of

2832-506: Was a French actress of Russian origin Tania Fédor (1905–1985), although they were married only for a brief period of time. As a teenager Mosjoukine became romantically involved with Olga Bronitskaya (born Telegina) — an actress from the popular traveling troupe led by her brother Petr Zarechny. In 1908 she gave birth to their illegitimate son Aleksandr who was registered as the son of Petr Zarechny under his official family name. Thus

2891-553: Was a famous opera singer who also left Russia for Paris in 1926. After his death his wife Cleo Carini returned to the Soviet Union, bringing her husband's archives along with her which included many documents. Among them was an autobiography and many letters from his family members, including Ivan. They are currently stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art and in several museums. Mosjoukine's second brother Aleksey (born 1880) served as an officer in

2950-528: Was a generally unfamiliar persona to the large majority of American audiences. Universal 's Carl Laemmle , who had employed Valentino as a supporting actor in two 1919-1920 films, found out that Mosjoukine was frequently described by the European press as the Russian Valentino. However, as it turned out, Surrender , filmed in the summer of 1927, did not trust Mosjukine to carry the storyline. He

3009-680: Was also his final Russian film. L'Angoissante Aventure (The Harrowing Adventure) was a dramatized record of the difficult and dangerous journey of Russian actors, directors and other film artists as they made their way from Crimea into the chaos of Ottoman Turkey in the midst of the post- World War I fall of the Sultanate . The group was headed by the renowned director Yakov Protazanov and included Mosjoukine's frequent leading lady Natalya Lisenko (billed in France as Nathalie Lissenko), whom he married and later divorced. Their ultimate destination

SECTION 50

#1732783651453

3068-480: Was altered at different times in different countries. From 1155 to 1752, the civil or legal year in England began on 25 March ( Lady Day ); so for example, the execution of Charles I was recorded at the time in Parliament as happening on 30 January 164 8 (Old Style). In newer English-language texts, this date is usually shown as "30 January 164 9 " (New Style). The corresponding date in the Gregorian calendar

3127-604: Was born in Kondol , in the Saratov Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Penza Oblast in Russia ), the youngest of four brothers. His mother Rachel Ivanovna Mozzhukhina (née Lastochkina) was the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest, while his father Ilya Ivanovich Mozzhukhin came from peasants and served as an estate manager for the noble Obolensky family. He inherited this position from his own father —

3186-596: Was celebrated as the New Year festival from as early as the 13th century, despite the recorded (civil) year not incrementing until 25 March, but the "year starting 25th March was called the Civil or Legal Year, although the phrase Old Style was more commonly used". To reduce misunderstandings about the date, it was normal even in semi-official documents such as parish registers to place a statutory new-year heading after 24 March (for example "1661") and another heading from

3245-549: Was implemented in Russia on 14 February 1918 by dropping the Julian dates of 1–13 February 1918 , pursuant to a Sovnarkom decree signed 24 January 1918 (Julian) by Vladimir Lenin . The decree required that the Julian date was to be written in parentheses after the Gregorian date, until 1 July 1918. It is common in English-language publications to use the familiar Old Style or New Style terms to discuss events and personalities in other countries, especially with reference to

3304-589: Was only the film's co-star, with the top billing and the central role going to Mary Philbin , a popular leading lady of the period who, eighteen months earlier, had the showy role of Christine, the focus of Lon Chaney 's obsession and love in The Phantom of the Opera . The recent Russian Revolution was a popular film subject of the time, with the 1926 John Barrymore - Camilla Horn teaming in The Tempest and

3363-669: Was signed by Universal before Valentino's death, as the August 14, 1926 edition of Motion Picture News mentions Mosjoukine's role in Michel Strogoff as Universal had just announced that they were bringing the film to the American market. Universal's Laemmle was mentioned as having signed Mosjoukine to come to America that fall. A few of the French productions which starred Mosjoukine were seen in large U.S. cities, where multitudes of cinemas regularly presented European films, but he

3422-463: Was sounded at the film's Broadway premiere on 10 October 1927. Another film, playing across the street, had its premiere four days earlier, on 6 October. The Jazz Singer was attracting much bigger audiences than Surrender and, as it was ushering in voice-on-film, would soon sound the death knell for Mosjoukine's career as a silent film star, as his heavy Russian accent eventually dealt a crippling blow to his hopes of continuing in talkies . After

3481-426: Was the result of an affair between Mosjoukine and his mother Nina Owczyńska, a Polish - Jewish actress who later married Arieh Kacew. In 1960 he wrote a novelized autobiographical account of his mother's struggles and triumphs, La promesse de l'aube ( Promise at Dawn ), which became the basis for an English-language play and a French-American film. The play, Samuel A. Taylor 's First Love , opened on Broadway at

#452547