The Kuleshov Effect and The Godfather

Last week in my film studies class, I showed portions of The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing, including a brief overview of montage theory and a recreation of the so-called Kuleshov Effect.  Lev Kuleshov was a Russian filmmaker in the 1910’s and 20’s who created an incredibly short but incredibly influential piece of film.  In it, Kuleshov cut from a shot of a well-known actor (Ivan Mozzhukhin) to a bowl of soup.  He cut again back to a repetition of the same shot of Mozzhukhin, and then another cut to a young girl on a funeral bier, back to the same shot of the actor, cut to a scantily-clad young lady, and then back to the actor.

Even though the shot of the actor is identical in each juxtaposition, the audience’s interpretation of the actor’s emotional outpouring is changed. The audiences were said to have “raved about the acting” in the sequence.  Even though I know the truth of the identical shots of the actor, I still think he looks hungrily at the soup, sorrowfully at the dead girl, and lustfully at the lady.

Today in class, as I was showing an example of parallel editing from The Godfather (the baptism/assassination scene), a student pointed out that Michael’s facial expression becomes darker and darker as he renounces “Satan,” “all his works,” and “all his pomps.” I said, “Yeah, what a great actor, huh?” And another student pipes up and says, isn’t that just like the guy with the bowl of soup and the dead daughter? I mean, is it the acting or is it the cutting?” … I hadn’t thought of that.

See for yourself. You should, of course, watch the whole scene (you probably won’t be able to help yourself), but the real Kuleshov-effect-in-question bit begins around 3:40 into this clip.

Well? Is it the acting, or it the cutting? Clearly, it’s not actually identical shots of Pacino here, but I think the student may be right on the money.  It’s certainly worth thinking about.