The Kuleshov Effect, Ruined

Famously, Lev Kuleshov spliced together some bits of film. Specifically, he took a shot of an actor, with neutral expression, looking downwards, and cut in a shot of a bowl of soup on a table, then cut back to the same shot of the actor. When he showed this short sequence to an audience, they thought it was a bit short for a film. But they also interpreted meaning into the actor’s expression: he’s horny, they thought.

Then Lev daringly removed the shot of soup, which was then distributed around the Transcaucasian Federation to show them what soup looked like, and substituted a shot of a woman on a divan. Audiences again thought this film was rather insubstantial, but better than the soup one, and again considered the actor’s frozen expression before and after the new shot and again supplied a meaning: he’s sad, they thought.

Then Lev, drunk on the heady wine of revolution, removed the sexy woman on the divan, which was then shipped to Tajikistan to show them what divans looked (“Comrades, focus on the divan. Ignore the sexy woman! IGNORE HER, I SAY!”) and in their place was inserted a shot representing a dead child. When this film was shown to audiences they again thought it was too short, and a bit depressing, but again they interpreted meaning into the actor’s unchanged expression: he’s hungry, they thought.

I may have got some of the details wrong there, but you get the gist.

Until just recently I hadn’t really examined a vital element of this famous experiment. We know that the original footage is long lost. Being so short, it may have slipped down the back of some forgotten communist settee, but the point is, many text books describe it as starring “a famous Russian actor.” I’d forgotten that it was Ivan Mosjoukine.

I mean, this changes everything. We can definitely now be morally certain that when Ivan Mosjoukine looked at a bowl of soup with an unchanging expression the emotion the Soviet audience projected onto his supposedly impassive face was “Give us a kiss.” When he looked upon the woman reclining erotically upon her divan, the audience read into his expression the words “I’m absolutely gorgeous.” And when he gazed at the child in the coffin they all read his unaltered features as signifying “Ee, I fancy myself rotten.”

My first novel, We Used Dark Forces (A Whitsuntide Science Adventure) is here. I’ve cut the price of the Kindle edition for anyone who wants to start at the beginning.

The sequel, Is Your Journey to the Centre of the Earth Really Necessary (A Whitsuntide Science Adventure) is here.

And the new one, Kill Baby Hitler! (A Whitsuntide Science Adventure) is here.

You can read them in any order, and I hope you do.