ART OF THE CINEMA
ART OF THE CINEMA
Foreword
IN THE PAST we had no cinematography—now we do. The establishment
of our cinema developed from Kuleshov.
Formal problems were unavoidable, and Kuleshov faced their
solution. He was slandered because he was a pioneer, because all his
energies were totally concerted in one clear direction, because he
knew no other way.
Film work was conducted in an atmosphere of extreme vagueness.
In order to break through the sticky and confusing tangle of seaweed,
a sharpened razor's edge was needed. Henceforth, an ascetically
rigorous direction came from the work of Kuleshov.
Kuleshov was the first filmmaker who began to talk about an
alphabet, an organization of inarticulate material, and who worked
with syllables, not words. This is what he stands accused of before the
court of muddled thinkers.
Some of us who had worked in the Kuleshov group are regarded
as having "outstripped" our teacher. It is a shallow observation. It was
on his shoulders that we crossed through the sargassos into the open
sea.
We make films—Kuleshov made cinematography.
—Pudovkin, Obolenski, Komarov, Fogel
Preface
"The Art of Cinema" is intended for:
1) Spectators
2) Executives of film studios
3) Filmmakers
To spectators because it is vital for them to know about the culture
of cinema, about the methods and means of film structure. Having
read the book, he will be better able to see films, better able to sense
and appraise them.
To executives because "Administration disappears, art remains."
Aside from the film apparatus, the studio, the laboratory, the business
office, distribution, and money, the head of a film organization must
be as well acquainted with film culture as is the viewer. A textbook
familiarity is better than complete absence of experience.
To filmmakers because we must not build our work solely on
individual experience and on "artistic inspiration." Tested methods,
the experience of colleagues must be recognized and studied. I want to
assist that process as much as I can.
—Lev Kuleshov
1: Montage as the Foundation of Cinematography
The purpose of my book is to familiarize the reader with my
work—the work of the Kuleshov group.
I will not deal with the state of this method at present, but rather
with how this method developed and what forms were found for it.
The fact is that the work which my group and I carried out in
cinematography began eleven or twelve years ago, and only in recent
years, thanks to the revolution, thanks to changes in production
organization, did it become possible for us to achieve meaningful
results.
At first these were gained with great difficulty, and I consider it
necessary to note those stages through which our work developed.
At the beginning of the First World War Russia's cinema was
fairly large-scale; it had begun to produce merchandise, which went to
the marketplace and returned a definite profit. Any number of people
leapt into cinematography—actors, directors, scenarists, cameramen,
all thirsty for easy earnings in a fresh field, but the film industry in
Russia was so disorganized that some of questionable intent leapt into
it. Thus, filmworkers consisted of a conglomerate of bandits, chiselers
—people without any education whatsoever, who were eager to
squeeze money out of cinema but who were uninterested in its cultural
growth.
What is more, filmmakers became obsessed with writing about
their work in newspapers and magazines. Some said it was a real art,
others that it was not, that it was altogether nonsense, and so on.
Shallow articles and superficially enthusiastic reviews appeared.
Even what seemed to be a critical controversy emerged, but it was not
serious.
It was at this time that a group of people, interested as was I in
serious cinematography, posed for itself a whole series of problems
and took up their solution. Above all, we reminded ourselves that in
order to determine just what cinematography was, it was necessary to
find those specific characteristics and those specific means of impressing
the viewer, which are present only in cinema and no other
art.
Let us say if we are to examine any other form of art, such as
music for example, that we should find a definite auditory content in
it. Sounds abound in nature, and these sounds, this musical material,
are fixed by composers into an ordered arrangement, placed into a
prescribed relationship to each other (i.e., organized into a certain
form) which is harmonic and rhythmic and thus emerge as a musical
work.
Similarly it was quite clear to us what happens in painting: color
too has a material form and it is this which is organized; so, in all
other artistic crafts, it was equally possible to determine exactly the
material of any given art, the means of its practice, and the method of
its organization.
important for us to locate the source of cinematographic impressibility,
and we knew if we did discover this means, that we should be able
to direct it to produce whatever effect was needed.
We decided to begin our observations at the city's central cinemas,
but it became apparent to us that for our purposes these were not the
right places. First, a fairly wealthy public patronized these cinemas,
and in a wealthy and well-educated audience it is considered in poor
taste to display emotions: one must be reserved, and try to respond to
what is taking place. Second, at that time people interested in
romance frequented the more expensive theaters—where it was dark,
where there were loges, and this whole setting was a convenient place
to pass the time with a lady friend. And third, a rather large number
of psychologically disturbed viewers went to the more expensive
theaters, the "soul of Polonsky," the "soul of Maximov," "darling
Kholodnaya—or Coralli," etc.*
The public in cheaper theaters, less educated, much rougher and
more spontaneous, was not as neurotic and therefore reacted much
more directly to the effect of the action and entertainment on the
screen. Because of this, if that public was pleased by a particular scene
in the picture, it applauded, shouting its approval; whereas if
something in particular displeased it, it whistled and demonstrated its
indignation unmistakably. It was easier for us to observe this public
and to make our observations. Then it became apparent, first of all,
that it was not Russian films but foreign ones that were the most
popular.
It was foreign films that attracted the viewer most of all and forced
him to react. This was easily understood. The point was that the
technique of foreign films was finer than that of Russian films. The
photography in foreign films was considerably clearer and sharper,
the casting of actors more precise, the direction richer and more
absorbing. Hence, in their clarity and in their technical aspects,
foreign films attracted a larger audience than did Russian ones. Of
foreign films it was the American ones that elicited the maximum
* These were the most popular screen stars of pre-Revolutionary Russia. R.L.
Yet when we began to analyze the filmic picture, it was very
difficult for us to determine what emerged as its material, how this
material was organized, what is the integral, basic impression-making
means of cinema, what sets cinema apart from other forms of
performance and from other arts. But it was quite clear to us that
cinema has its own special means of influencing its viewers, since the
effect of cinema on the viewer was radically unlike the effect of other
entertainments and spectacles.
We then examined how a motion picture is constructed. In order
to determine the main strength of the cinematographic effect, we took
one strip of film, cut it apart into its separate shots and then discussed
where the very "filmness" which is the essence of filmic construction
lay.
Imagine that we have taken a passage of film in which superb
actors played superb scenes in superb settings. The cameraman shot
this scene very well. We projected this film onto a screen, and what
did we see? We saw a living photograph of very good film actors, a
living photograph of splendid sets, a well-filmed scene, a well-conceived
plot, beautiful photography, and so on, but without cinema
being in any one of these elements. It became perfectly apparent that
cinematography is a specific thing, a photographic device that gives
the illusion of movement, while what I was just describing has nothing
in common either with the concept of cinematography or with the
motion picture itself. In this example, we saw no specific methods of
affecting the viewer cinematographically. Having arrived at these
rather nebulous conclusions—that what we had viewed was not
cinema, that it had no characteristic peculiar to it—we continued our
research.
We went to various motion picture theaters and began to observe
which films produced the greatest effect on the viewer and how these •
were made—in other words, which films and which techniques of
filmmaking held the viewer, and how we could make him sense what
we had conceived, what we wished to show, and how we intended to
do this. At that time, it was wholly unimportant to us whether this
effect was beneficial or even harmful to the viewer. It was only
reaction, the greatest noise and applause. When it became apparent to
us that American films were best in terms of their influence on the
viewer, we took them for our study.
We began to analyze not only the separate shots of a film but
studied its entire construction.
We took two films, for example—an American and a comparable
Russian one—and we saw that the difference between them was
enormous. It became apparent that the Russian film was constructed
of several very lengthy shots photographed from a single position. The
American film, on the other hand, at that time consisted of a large
number of short shots filmed from various positions, because, it might
be explained, for the price of admission the American viewer demands
in return the maximum impressions, the maximum entertainment, and
the maximum action. It was necessary in the American film to pack
into the required number of reels the devil-only-knows how many
incidents and to display them in the most interesting way since, I
repeat, the American demands a full show for his dollar.
Thanks to this commercial determinant of the American film,
thanks to the very tempo of American life, much more accelerated
than the tempo of Russian or European life, thanks to all this, what
caught our attention in the American film is that they consist of whole
series of very short shots, of whole series of brief sequences joined in
some predetermined order, as opposed to the Russian film, which at
that time consisted of a few very long scenes, monotonously following
one after another.
Working further, on comparing an American film to a Russian one
in order to test its effect on the viewer, we became convinced that the
fundamental source of the film's impact on the viewer—a source
present only in cinema—was 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. This is the basic means that
produces the impact of cinematography on the viewer.
The content of the shots in itself is not so important as is the
joining of two shots of different content and the method of their
connection and their alternation.
In American films, where shots very quickly alternate one with
another, the combination of these changes is clearly perceived by the
viewer. In a Russian film, shots changed very slowly, and the power of
the effect which should come from these alternations was, in Russian
films, incomparably weaker than in American ones.
Let us imagine, say, a fence ten miles in length. The first half is
painted red, the second half green. The person who painted this
wishes to elicit from a passerby a realization of the change of these
two colors—the interrelationship of green and red—an understanding
of how they vibrate together and are perceived.
Imagine too that for five miles you are walking beside the green
color, at which point it changes and for five miles you walk along the
red. Now imagine the fence is still longer—and another five miles is
painted blue. By the time you reach the blue section, you will have
forgotten that previously the fence was green, because you will have
spent so much time perceiving one and the same color. If this fence
were to change its color every yard—green, red, blue, red, blue, and so
on, for fifteen miles—you would perceive a combination of these three
color relationships all along the way.
The same happens also in cinema: during a long sequence, a
lengthy alternation of scenes, you are not aware of the whole
construction, the whole organization of the cinematographic material.
During short sequences, during brief alternations, the relationships of
separate sections, the general organization is made exceptionally clear
for you. You immediately perceive it.
Thus, we came to realize that the source of filmic impact upon the
viewer lies within the system of alternating shots, which comprise the
motion picture.
The joining of shots into a predetermined order from which a film
is made is technically called montage. Thus we announced in 1916 *
that the fundamental source of cinematographic impact upon the
* Kuleshov's first theoretical essays appeared in Vestnik Kinematografii. R.L.
begins to think black thoughts, decides to shoot himself, takes a pistol
from the desk drawer, puts it to his temple, presses the trigger, the
pistol fires—the man falls.
In Russia the scene would be shot in the following way: the
camera was set in place, facing the set, and it was reasoned thus: The
man lives in a room, therefore it is necessary to build a room. We
can't build four walls so—let's build three. In the room we must have
windows and doors. The room must have wallpaper, flowered
wallpaper, let's paper the walls. Paintings are hung on the walls.
Flowers are placed on the windowsills. There must be a chest and a
stove. We place all this in the room. The desk has writing implements,
just as in reality.
An actor sits at the desk, imagines that he is feeling terribly
despondent, takes a pistol from the desk drawer, brings it to his
temple and fires. The cameraman films this entire scene, develops it,
prints it, projects it onto the screen, and when the viewer looks at the
screen, he simultaneously sees the curtain on the windows, the
paintings on the wall, and so on. He sees a tiny actor among a large
assortment of things, and while the actor is performing the juiciest
psychological suffering, the viewer might be examining the leg of the
writing table or the painting that is hung on the wall—that is, the
spectator receives an extraordinarily distracted account of what is
taking place on the screen.
The Americans filmed things completely differently. They divided
each separate scene into montage sequences, into a series of shots that
made up each sequence; in addition, they shot each separate moment
in such a way that only its action was visible, only that which was
categorically essential. Even in a long shot they constructed scenery
so that details were not noticed. If they needed to achieve the
impression of a room, they would achieve it by some simple detail. If
the wallpaper design did not have a particular function, walls were
darkened, or blackened, and only those objects were left in the light
which were essential to the incident.
Besides that, everything was shot in what is called close-up, that is,
when it was necessary to show the face of a person suffering, they
viewer, that is, the means on which it was necessary for us to work
prior to anything else (leaving for a given period all other cinematographic
elements, perhaps for several years ahead) is montage, that is,
the alternation of shots.
Montage is the organization of cinematic material.
Hence, it became perfectly clear that separate shots, separately
connected pieces of film, still did not constitute cinema, but only the
material for cinema. We knew, of course, that for the preparation of
this material it would be necessary to apply the strictest discipline and
that extremely intense work would be needed in order that the quality
of this material be of the highest order. But then we could not find
time for this, since everything was so filled with theatricality, a false
approach to cinematography, and such a total lack of understanding
of the cinematic process, that temporarily it was necessary to set aside
work on the actual material, to label it extraneous for the moment,
and to direct all our attention and our labor toward the organization
of material, toward the organization of the film, that is, toward
montage.
For these reasons, we then proclaimed something that was not
entirely accurate, namely, that it was not important how the shots
were taken, but how these shots were assembled, how the motion
picture was assembled. Let the material be wretched; the only
importance was that it be well organized.
At the time that was a definite political step. Otherwise it would
have proved impossible to bridge the gap in those minds upon which
our work depended, because they were simply unable to grasp the
grand scale at one swoop. We could not win on all fronts at once. The
basic battle of our cinematographic faction, we announced, was the
battle for montage, for the very basis of cinematography, and not for
separate shots, nor for the material, which had to wait to be studied.
Fast montage was then called American montage; slow montage,
Russian.
Moreover, by means of constructing their films according to the
principle of rapid montage, the Americans produced effects never
before seen by us. Let us visualize a scene: a person sitting at a desk,
showed only his face. If he opened the drawer of a desk and took a
pistol from it, they showed the desk drawer and the hand taking the
pistol. When it came to pressing the trigger, they filmed the finger
pressing on the trigger, because other objects and the surroundings in
which the actor worked, were irrelevant at that particular instant. 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.
Consequently, before beginning our experimental work and attaining
any new results, we found our first working slogan contained in
the following: "Separate shots of cinema film constitute cinematic
material. Since we do not yet have the opportunity to work on the
content of film material, we proclaim that for a period of time content
will virtually cease to exist for us, and it will even be irrelevant for us.
For the present we are working on a method of organizing the given
material, that is, on montage, since montage is the main source of the
power of cinematic effectiveness. That effect is evident only in
cinematography and the optimum impression is attained only through
the montage, when that montage is not merely of ordinary scenes, but
of scenes filmed by the American method of shooting, that is,
employing scenes in which every given sequence shows what is
essential for the viewer to perceive, and shows them in the closest and
clearest shots possible."
These were the basic conditions which we set forth prior to
beginning our work. That was about ten or eleven years ago.
Now we are studying something entirely different in cinema. Yet,
all that we are now concerned with grew from these basic premises.
The method that I am discussing yielded rather prodigious results:
all that is well done in Soviet cinema is made by this method. All
European and Soviet cinematography works according to this method
but the Americans originated it. Now, having developed and used
what was conceived by the Americans, we are carrying the work to a
new frontier—the frontier of cinematic culture. But if the basis of
cinema's effective influence had not been in our hands, then, of
course, we would have never been able to achieve any results, for
without mastering the material of film, we would have been unable to
contribute anything.
Having established the work on montage as being foremost, we
began to analyze montage itself and to establish its basic properties
and methods.
What I am going to deal with now will, I think, appear simply
amusing to everyone, it is so naive, so primitive, and so obvious. But
at that time (and that time was rather recently) it seemed to be such
incredible "futurism" that a bitter battle was waged against it. It was
often necessary for our group, for my colleagues as well as myself, to
discontinue our work because we were such formalistic revolutionaries.
In my own case, it went so far that I had no money at home, no
shoes to wear, and all because I was developing a particular
cinematographic principle, which was simply "not acceptable."
The primary property of montage, which is now perfectly clear to
everyone, but which had to be defended rabidly and with inordinate
energy then, consists in the concept that montage creates the
possibility of parallel and simultaneous actions, that is, action can be
simultaneously taking place in America, Europe, and Russia, that
three, four or five story lines can exist in parallel, and yet in the film
they would be gathered together into one place. Ten years ago this
elementary concept demanded an incredible struggle for it to be
firmly established.
All the fundamental principles of montage, which I shall discuss,
were first used by me in the film Engineer Price's Project [1917-1918].
In shooting Engineer Prite's Project we encountered a certain difficulty.
It was necessary for our leading characters, a father and his
daughter, to walk across a meadow and look at a pole from which
electric cables were strung. Due to technical circumstances, we were
not able to shoot all this at the same location. We had to shoot the
pole in one location and separately shoot the father and daughter in
another place. We shot them looking upward, talking about the pole
and walking on. We intercut the shot of the pole, taken elsewhere, into
the walk across the meadow.
*
we found we were missing one piece—we did not have the meeting
between Khokhlova and Obolensky, who by that time were no longer
available. So we then took Obolensky's and Khokhlova's overcoats—
and, against the background of Gogol's Monument, shot two other
people's hands being clasped in greeting. We intercut a shot of these
hands and, because prior to this shot we had shown Obolensky and
Khokhlova, the substitution remained absolutely unnoticeable.
This brought a second experiment to my mind. In the first one we
had created an arbitrary earthly terrain; along a single line of
movement we created an arbitrary scenic background. In the second
experiment we let the background and the line of movement of the
person remain the same, but we interchanged the people themselves. I
shot a girl sitting before her mirror, painting her eyelashes and brows,
putting on lipstick and slippers.
By montage alone we were able to depict the girl, just as in nature,
hut in actuality she did not exist, because we shot the lips of one
woman, the legs of another, the back of a third, and the eyes of a
fourth. We spliced the pieces together in a predetermined relationship
;ind created a totally new person, still retaining the complete reality of
I he material. This particular example likewise demonstrated that the
entire power of cinematic effect is in montage. With the material alone
one can never achieve such unique, seemingly incredible things. This
is impossible in any other spectacle excepting cinema, in addition to
which none of this is achieved through tricks but solely by the
organization of the material, solely by bringing the material together
into this or that order. Let us take a simpler test: A person stands near
;i door. This is filmed in a long shot. Next, we go to a close-up, and in
llie close-up the head of another person is photographed. In this way,
you can splice the face of Alexandra Khokhlova with the body of
Nata Vachnadze, and again this will not be through trick photography
but montage—that is, by the organization of the material, rather than
by a technical gimmick.
After we had obtained such real achievements, after we felt a
particular strength within ourselves, we established two other things.
Itefore this, we had an argument about whether the particular
This was the most ordinary, the most childlike thing—something
which is done now at every step.
It became apparent that through montage it was possible to create
a new earthly terrain that did not exist anywhere, for these people did
not walk there in reality, and in reality there was no pole there. But
from the film it appeared that these people walked across a meadow
and the pole appeared before their very eyes.
A few years later I made a more complex experiment: we shot a
complete scene. Khokhlova and Obolensky acted in it. We filmed
them in the following way: Khokhlova is walking along Petrov Street
in Moscow near the 'Mostorg' store. Obolensky is walking along the
embankment of the Moscow River—at a distance of about two miles
away. They see each other, smile, and begin to walk toward one
another. Their meeting is filmed at the Boulevard Prechistensk. This
boulevard is in an entirely different section of the city. They clasp
hands, with Gogol's monument as a background, and look—at the
White House!—for at this point, we cut in a segment from an
American film, The White House in Washington. In the next shot they
are once again on the Boulevard Prechistensk. Deciding to go farther,
they leave and climb up the enormous staircase of The Cathedral of
Christ the Savior.* We film them, edit the film, and the result is that
they are seen walking up the steps of the White House. For this we
used no trick, no double exposure: the effect was achieved solely by
the organization of the material through its cinematic treatment. This
particular scene demonstrated the incredible potency of montage,
which actually appeared so powerful that it was able to alter the very
essence of the material. From this scene, we came to understand that
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.
Now to proceed: After we shot this scene, at the time of editing,
* This was the greatest cathedral in Russia and once stood opposite the Moscow Art
Museum and Lenin Library, but was demolished on Stalin's orders, to make space for a
gigantic Palace of the Soviets, which however was never built. On the site now is a large
open-air swimming pool. R.L.
face in the portrait was serious. The montage was so edited that we
involuntarily imbued a serious face with a changed expression
characteristic of that playful moment. In other words, the work of the
actor was altered by means of montage. In this way, montage had a
colossal influence on the effect of the material. It became apparent
t hat it was possible to change the actor's work, his movements, his
very behavior, in either one direction or another, through montage.
When we began making our own films, constructed on this
principle of montage, we were set upon with cries of: "Have pity, you
crazy futurists! You show films comprised of the tiniest segments. In
(he eyes of the viewer the result is utter chaos. Segments jump after
each other so quickly that it is thoroughly impossible to understand
(lie action!" We listened to this and began to think what method we
could adopt to combine shots so as to avoid these abrupt shifts and
Mashes. Let us say that in a certain shot we have a moving train.
Moreover, let us say it is swaying from right to left on the screen,
while in the final frame of the previous shot the train occupied a
position in the left-hand corner of the screen. However, in the first
frame of the next sequence, the new subject took a prominent position
in the right-hand corner of the screen. If you join these shots together,
that visual leap from one side of the screen to the other will produce
I he sensation of an abrupt jump, will produce a nervous irritation
which will disturb the viewer, not giving the impression of a smooth
transition. Therefore, the direction of motion of the last frame of the
preceding shot and of the first frame of the successive shot must
coincide; if they do not, an abrupt jump necessarily takes place.
If one shoots a round object and intercuts it with a square one,
then this should be borne in mind. If one shoots a close-up of a face
but intercuts it with a face slightly smaller, watch out for these
involuntary flashes and jumps.
2: The Material of Cinematography
let us now consider an analysis of the cinema's material. We have
ipiickly considered the time factor of the motion picture's construcpsychological
state an actor experiences is dependent or not on
montage. There were those who said that here is something which
could not be altered by montage. We had a dispute with a certain
famous actor to whom we said: Imagine this scene: a man, sitting in
jail for a long time, is starving because he is not given anything to eat;
he is brought a plate of soup, is delighted by it, and gulps it down.
Imagine another scene: a man in jail is given food, fed well, full to
capacity, but he longs for his freedom, for the sight of birds, the
sunlight, houses, clouds. A door is opened for him. He is led out onto
the street, and he sees birds, clouds, the sun and houses and is
extremely pleased by the sight. And so, we asked the actor: Will the
face reacting to the soup and the face reacting to the sun appear the
same on film or not? We were answered disdainfully: It is clear to
anyone that the reaction to the soup and the reaction to freedom will
be totally different.
Then we shot these two sequences, and regardless of how I
transposed those shots and how they were examined, no one was able
to perceive any difference in the face of this actor, in spite of the fact
that his performance in each shot was absolutely different. 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.
I saw this scene, I think in a film by Razumny:* a priest's house,
with a portrait of Nicholas II hanging on the wall; the village is taken
by the Red Army, the frightened priest turns the portrait over, and on
the reverse side of the portrait is the smiling face of Lenin. However,
this is a familiar portrait, a portrait in which Lenin is not smiling. But
that spot in the film was so funny, and it was so uproariously received
by the public, that I, myself, scrutinizing the portrait several times,
saw the portrait of Lenin as smiling! Especially intrigued by this, I
obtained the portrait that was used and saw that the expression on the
* Kombrig Ivanov, 1923, shown in the U.S. as The Beauty and the Bolshevik. R.L.