Article:

Pudowkins Experiment mit Kuleschow

In accordance with Groden & Kreiswirth 1997 may the Kuleshov effect – »the basis of film language « (Mitry 1998/1963) – be generously understood as »the inherent magic of the film medium itself, the creation of meaning, significance, and emotional impact by relating and juxtaposing individual shots«. The reality of such a Kuleshov effect sensu lato – »the meaning of a shot depends on its particular context« and »a change of the succession of shots in a sequence modifies the meaning of the individual shots and of the whole sequence as well« (Wulff 1993) – is virtually without doubt. The question remains, nevertheless, in what the interesting experiment which he, as Pudovkin told, carried out with Kuleshov, really consisted and whether the effect Pudovkin communicated, a Kuleshov effect sensu stricto, ever existed. »When considering the history of the reception of this experiment«, Möller-Nass wrote (n.d.), »the fact should stupefy, that there are such various descriptions and intepretations of that experiment«. ca. 40 descriptions disseminated up to January 2003 in the internet were classified, the configurations frequency-analyzed. The tradition of the »famous experiment« has seemingly since Pudovkin been subjected to processes of meaning attainment and meaning enrichment like those that have been reported in the 1930s by the British memory psychologist F.C. Bartlett: Creative psychology.