Kuleshov, Eisenstein and Vertov

Film, Perception and Mind

Film and Psychology

Belief that editing = essence of film art among Soviet theorists/filmmakers not merely due to fact that editing distinguishes film from theater.

Also because of impact of editing on the spectator, mentally and perceptually.

Due to propagandistic goal, Soviet film theorists/filmmakers theorized about, and experimented with, psychological effects of film.

Film and Psychology

Kuleshov: The fundamental source of the films impact on the viewera source present only in cinemawas not simply to show the content of certain shots, but the organization of those shots among themselves, their combination and construction, that is, the interrelationship of shots, the replacement of one shot by another (p. 46).

Lev Kuleshov 1899-1970 Soviet montage filmmaker

and theorist:

The Project of Engineer Prite (1918)

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924)

By the Law (1926)

Book: Art of the Cinema (1929)

We from the Urals (1943) Lev Kuleshov

Kuleshov Organization of shots (montage is the organization

of cinematic material, p. 48) is the fundamental source of cinematographic impact upon the viewer (pp. 47-48). Why?

1) Comparison of faster edited American films with slower edited pre-revolutionary Russian films:

Through fast editing and close-up, American filmmakers focus viewers attention on only that which was categorically essential in each shot (p. 49).

Kuleshov American films have much greater impact on

viewer than pre-revolutionary Russian films, due to greater clarity and emotional force enabled by editing and close-up.

This method of filming only that moment of movement essential to a given sequence and omitting the rest, was labeled by us the American method, and it was thus placed in the foundations of the new cinematography which we were beginning to form (p. 50).

Kuleshov

2) Kuleshov effect: The basic strength of cinema lies in montage, because with montage it becomes possible both to break down and to reconstruct, and ultimately to remake the material (p. 52, my emphasis).

Shots filmed in different times and places can be edited together to create a new earthly terrain that did not exist anywhere or a non-existent person (pp. 52-53).

Kuleshov Montage can also remake the material by

altering the work of the actor. Neutralizes or adds to actors expression, thereby creating emotional effects.

With correct montage, even if one takes the performance of an actor directed at something quite different, it will still reach the viewer in the way intended by the editor, because the viewer himself will complete the sequence and see that which is suggested to him by montage (p. 54).

Sergei Eisenstein 1898-1948 1918: civil engineering student. Joins Red

Army in Civil War. Agit-theater.

1920-24 joins Proletkult. Agit-attraction theater. 20 productions.

Strike (1925)

The Battleship Potemkin (1925)

October (aka Ten Days that Shook the World)

Old and New (aka The General Line) (1929)

Alexander Nevsky (1939)

Ivan the Terrible Part 1 (1946)

Ivan the Terrible part 2 (1948) Sergei Eisenstein

Central concept: montage. Cinema is, first and foremost, montage (p. 14).

What is montage? French = editing. Kuleshov: organization of

shots.

English = group style in Soviet Union, 1925-1933. 10 filmmakers, 30 films.

Eisensteins Film Theory

Montage Style

Constructive editing: few/no establishing shots; close-up/medium-close-up shots; no 180 degree rule.

Rapid and superfluous editing. Graphic contrasts between and within shots. Temporal contraction (jump cuts). Temporal expansion (overlapping editing).

Constructive editing

Rapid editing

Beyond the Shot (1929): montage = 1) combination of two representations that gives rise to a concept contained in neither representation.

Copulative hieroglyphs--combination of two hieroglyphs is regarded not as their sum total but as their product, i.e., as a value of another dimension, another degree: each taken separately corresponds to an object but their combination corresponds to a concept. The combination of two representable objects achieves the representation of something that cannot be graphically represented (p. 15).

Eisenstein on Montage

But--this is montage! Yes. It is precisely what we do in cinema (p. 15).

Montage = 2) collision. Is not an idea composed of successive shots stuck together but an idea that derives from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another (p. 27).

I opposed him [Pudovkin] with my view of montage as a collision, my view that the collision of two factors gives rise to an idea (p. 19).

Eisenstein on Montage

Definition of montage: collision of two representations that gives rise to new idea or concept.

Montage = universal. Not specific to film. Rather, film exemplifies it. Can be found in Japanese poetry, figurative art, and theater: the hieroglyphic (montage) method has penetrated the very technique of acting in Japanese theater (p. 18).

Eisenstein on Montage

Why does Eisenstein think montage is universal? Razumovsky epigram: According to Marx and

Engels the system of the dialectic is only the conscious reproduction of the dialectical course (essence) of the external events of the world (p. 23).

Human history and mind are dialectical: thesis--antithesis--synthesis. Because mind works dialectically, film form must be dialectical in order to influence it. Montage is dialectical.

Marxism

1) Perceptual: primitive-psychological using only the optical superimposition of movement (p. 36).

By creating a collision between 2 or more shots, creates an impression or idea of movement not present in either.

Example: machine-gunner (p. 35).

Dialectical Film Form

2) Emotional: associational montage as a means of sharpening (heightening) a situation emotionally (p. 36).

Example: trench and cannonball (p. 38).

Dialectical Film Form

Associational montage

Associational montage

3) Intellectual: we must also mention here the case in which the same conflict tension serves to achieve new concepts, new points of view, in other words, serves purely intellectual ends (p. 39).

Examples: God and Country sequence (p. 40).

Dialectical Film Form

Intellectual montage

Dialectical Film Form

Here a conflict arises between the concept God and its symbolisation. Whereas idea and image are completely synonymous in the first Baroque image, they grow further apart with each subsequent image. We retain the description God and show idols that in no way correspond with our own image of this concept. From this we are to draw anti-religious conclusions as to what the divine as such really is . . .

Dialectical Film Form

. . . Similarly, there is an attempt to draw a purely intellectual conclusion as a resultant of the conflict between a preconception and its gradual tendentious discrediting by degrees through pure illustration. The gradual succession continues in a process of comparing each new image with its common designation and unleashes a process that, in terms of its form, is identical to a process of logical deduction. Everything here is already intellectual conceived . . . (p. 40).

Dziga Vertov (1896-1954) 1916-1917: studies medicine at

Psychoneurological Institute (perception) in Petrograd. Futurist circles (sound).

Civil War 1918-1922: agit-trains and Kino-Week (newsreel film journal).

1922-1925: Kino-Pravda (newsreel film journal) and 1-3 reel films.

The Anniversary of the Revolution (1918) and The History of the Civil War (1921).

Kino-Eye (1924); Stride, Soviet! (1926); A Sixth Part of the World (1926); The Eleventh Year (1928); Man with a Movie Camera (1929); Symphony of the Donbas (Enthusiasm) (1930); Three Songs of Lenin (1934).

Assorted feature-length and short documentaries (1937-54). Dziga Vertov

Vertovs Film Theory

1) Anti-fiction films (including montage fiction films). Why?

Medium-specificity: due to written scenario, fiction films are mere literary skeleton[s] covered with a film-skin (p. 36).

Fiction films impose upon audiences the burden of . . . emotional experiences (p. 11). Kino-drama clouds the eye and the brain with a sweet fog (p. 48).

Vertovs Film Theory

2) Must liberate camera from human perception.

Until now, we have violated the movie camera and forced it to copy the work of the eye. And the better the copy, the better the shooting was thought to be. Starting today we are liberating the camera and making it work in the opposite direction--away from copying (p. 16).

Vertovs Film Theory

Inherent limitations/failings of human eye and superiority of camera over human eye.

Imperfections and shortsightedness of the human eye (p. 14); camera is more perfect than the human eye (p. 15).

Camera perceives more and better (p. 15). Why?

Vertovs Film Theory A) Mobility: The position of our bodies while

observing or our perception of a certain number of features of a visual phenomenon in a given instant are by no means obligatory limitations for the camera (p. 15).

The camera is free of the limits of time and space (p. 18). Temporal and spatial mobility.

Spatial mobility: editing can put together any given points in the universe, no matter where [it has] recorded them (p. 18).

Vertovs Film Theory

I am kino-eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it. Now and forever, I free myself from human immobility, I am in constant motion, I draw near, then away from objects, I crawl under, I climb onto them. I move apace with the muzzle of a galloping horse, I plunge full speed into a crowd, I outstrip running soldiers, I fall on my back, I ascend with an airplane, I plunge and soar together with plunging and soaring bodies (p. 17).

Vertovs Film Theory

Temporal mobility: Editing: The coffins of national heroes are

lowered into the grave (shot in Astrakhan in 1918); the grave is filled (Kronstadt, 1921); cannon salute (Petrograd, 1920); memorial service, hats are removed (Moscow, 1922) (p. 17).

Vertovs Film Theory

Fast, slow, and reverse motion: [The camera] experiments, distending time, dissecting movement, or, in contrary fashion, absorbing time within itself, swallowing years, thus schematizing processes of long duration inaccessible to the normal eye (p. 19).

Because of its mobility, film allows for the possibility of seeing without limits and distances (p. 41).

Vertovs Film Theory B) Human vision is disorganized and confusing:

The viewer at a ballet follows, in confusion, now the combined legs of dancers, now random individual figures, now someones legs--a series of scattered perceptions, different for each viewer (p. 16).

To record and organize the individual characteristics of lifes phenomena into a whole, an essence, a conclusion--this is our immediate objective (p. 47).

Vertovs Film Theory Within the chaos of movements, running past, away,

running into and colliding--the eye, all by itself, enters life. A day of visual impressions has passed. How is one to construct the impressions of the day into an effective whole, a visual study? If one films everything the eye has seen, the result, of course, will be a jumble. If one skillfully edits what's been photographed, the result will be clearer. If one scraps bothersome waste, it will be better still. One obtains an organized memo of the ordinary eyes impressions (pp. 18-19).

Vertovs Film Theory

Organization of visual phenomena by editing according to theory of intervals.

Intervals (the transitions from one movement to another) are the material, the elements of the art of movement, and by no means the movements themselves. It is they (the intervals) which draw the movement to a kinetic resolution (pp. 8-9).

Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

Vertovs Film Theory

C) Film can reveal what is invisible to naked human eye: kino-eye as the possibility of making the invisible visible (p. 41).

Compares camera to telescope/microscope: the eye of the microscope penetrates where the eye of my movie camera cannot. The eye of the telescope reaches distant world, inaccessible to my naked eye. What about the camera then? (p. 41).

Vertovs Film Theory

Camera opens the eyes of the masses to the connection . . . between the social and visual phenomena interpreted by the camera (p. 35).

Reveals social relations and forces governing visual phenomena that are invisible to naked human eye. How?

Vertovs Film Theory Until now many a cameraman has been criticized for

having filmed a running horse moving with unnatural slowness on the screen . . . or for the opposite, a tractor plowing a field too swiftly . . . These are chance occurrences, of course, but we are preparing a system, a deliberate system of such occurrences, a system of seeming irregularities to investigate and organize phenomena (p. 15).

Revelatory techniques depart from normal human perception: fast motion, slow motion, reverse motion, etc.

Kino-Eye (1924)

Vertov on Kino-Eye

In disclosing the origins of objects and of bread, the camera makes it possible for every worker to acquire, through evidence, the conviction that he, the worker, creates all these things himself, and that consequently they belong to him (p. 34).

Anti-commodity fetishism. Film, too, is a commodity. Hence, reflexivity in

Man with a Movie Camera.

Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

Reflexivity in Man with a Movie Camera

Reflexivity: artifice of artwork is foregrounded.

1) Reveals that workers have made film. 2) Reveals how they have made film. 3) Reveals movement to be an illusion. These things are normally invisible to

viewer.

Eisenstein