Kuleshov

Lev Kuleshov is a Russian filmmaker who edited together a short film where a shot of an expressionless face was matched with various other shots such as a plate of soup, a girl in a coffin and a woman on a divan. The audiences believed that each time the face expression would change and they praised the subtle acting. The effect was that effective the audience said they were deeply moved by how sorrowful the actor looked after the image of the dead child. The audience was not aware that the same shot of the actor's face was re-used, and the effect is created entirely by its superimposition with other images to express how the character is feeling.

Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to the actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings. Kuleshov believed this, along with montage, had to be the basis of cinema as an independent art form.

The effect has also been studied and used by famous director Alfred Hitchcock. An example of when he used this is explained in the famous "Definition of Happiness" interview, where he explains in detail many types of editing. The final one which he calls "pure editing", is explained visually using the Kuleshov effect. In the first version, Hitchcock is squinting, and the audience sees footage of a woman with a baby. The screen then returns to Hitchcock's face, now smiling. In effect, he is a kind old man. In the second example, the woman and baby are replaced with a woman in a bikini, to which Hitchcock exclaims, "Now look, he has become the dirty old man."