The Kuleshov effect is a phenomenon where viewers interpret two sequential shots differently compared to a single one. It was named after Russian filmmaker and theorist Lev Kuleshov who conducted an experiment by editing a short film showing the expressionless face of actor Ivan Mosjoukine between shots of a bowl of soup, a girl in a coffin, and a woman laying on a divan. While his reaction was always the same, the idea was to suggest that he was hungry after the soup, sad after the girl in the coffin, and perhaps lustful after the woman on the divan.
The experiment tried to demonstrate the power of editing on a viewer’s reactions and emotional responses to scenes.
It’s a concept that stuck with me since I was introduced to it at university and I always forget its name so I wrote it down here. So next time you and someone else watch a movie scene or even read a body of text and you both get two different reactions, think of the Kuleshov effect.