Content area
Full text
Abstract: Researchers have recently suggested that historically mixed findings In studies of the Kuleshov effect (a classic film editing-related phenomenon whereby meaning is extracted from the interaction of sequential camera shots) might reflect differences in the relative sophistication of early versus modern cinema audiences. Relative to experienced audiences, first-time film viewers might be less predisposed and/or able to forge the required conceptual and perceptual links between the edited shots in order to demonstrate the effect. This article recreates the conditions that traditionally elicit this effect (whereby a neutral face comes to be perceived as expressive after being juxtaposed with independent images: a bowl of soup, a gravestone, a child playing) to directly compare "continuity" perception in first-time and more experienced film viewers. Results confirm the presence of the Kuleshov effect for experienced viewers (explicitly only in the sadness condition) but not the first-time viewers, who failed to perceive continuity between the shots.
Keywords: artificial landscape, continuity perception, first-time viewers, Kuleshov effect, naive viewers
The Kuleshov effect is a film-editing effect that was demonstrated during the late 1910s and early 1920s by the pioneering Russian filmmaker and theorist Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970). Famously, Kuleshov is reported to have intercut a close-up of the Russian actor Ivan Mozhukhin's neutral, expressionless face with various other camera shots, including a bowl of soup, a woman in a coffin, and a child playing with a toy bear. He observed that these additional shots interacted with the original, leading viewers to perceive the (objectively neutral) face as expressing happiness, sadness, and hunger/thoughtfulness, respectively (Pudovkin 2013). As the years have passed, the reliability and validity of this effect have come into question. The original footage used by Kuleshov has long since been lost, and superficial issues with the design of the experiment1 have prompted some to reclassify it as part of the "mythology of film" (Holland 1989) or the "folklore of the cinema" (Pearson and Simpson 2005). Yet, this disapproval may be unwarranted.
Despite the somewhat anecdotal nature of Kuleshov's original observations, other (more rigorous) studies provide converging evidence that a single film scene can generate a profoundly different perceptual meaning for viewers when placed in different contexts. Herman Goldberg (1951), for example, found that the emotional quality and intensity of a...