The Kuleshov effect

Необычайные приключения мистера Веста в стране Большевиков (Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane Bol’shevikov— The Extraordinary Adventures of Mister West in the Land of the Bolsheviks) 1924 U.S.S.R. Goskino (78 minutes) directed by Lev Kuleshov; written by Nikolai Aseev and Vsevolod Pudovkin; cinematography and editing by Aleksandr Levitsky.


An American naïf overcomes dire media perceptions and his wife’s fears to visit the new Soviet Union, fortified by high ideals and protected by a faithful cowboy companion in this ‘comedy about a Yankee’s curiosity, and his rewards.’ 

Round-bespectacled Mr. John West (Porfiry Podobed) of Brecksville, president of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), tells his wife Madge that he plans to visit the Soviet Union. Madge shows him ‘New York magazine’ illustrations that portray ‘Russian Bolshevik types’ as wild-eyed, hairy men in furs wielding hammers and sickles. She implores her husband to take along the faithful Cowboy Jeddie (Boris Barnet) to protect him. Jeddie is a stereotypical fresh-faced American movie cowboy in a checked shirt and a bandanna, with a lasso, six-shot revolver and spurs, a bearskin vest and chaps.  

This silent film by director Lev Kuleshov, the first produced in his famous Film Workshop, reinterprets and employs dynamic conventions pioneered by US film directors such as D.W. Griffith. Kuleshov wanted to parody what he referred to as the ‘maximum movement and primitive heroism’ of the American ‘detective’ film, as well as to lampoon presumed American attitudes toward Soviet Russia. It was the second film to be shot in the newly-organized state-run Goskino Film Studios.

Mr. West also is a ringer for the US silent film star Harold Lloyd. In numerous films, Lloyd played an early twentieth century American Everyman, often saving the day with his own death-defying stunts. Lloyd may be best remembered now for a scene in which he hung from the hands of a large clock over downtown Los Angeles.

In Kuleshov’s view, montage, the process of actually assembling the shots, is what renders the entire power of cinematic effect. In broad outline, Kuleshov wanted in film to replace the stage theatricality popular at the time with a scientific vocabulary of ‘signs’ depicting gestures, emotions and expressions, which could be shot and assembled into narratives which are sequences of changing scenes. He had been involved with early Formalists such as Viktor Shklovskii and Osip Brik, who also had collaborated with him on screenplays.  

An 11-minute madcap chase scene involving automobiles and horse-drawn sleighs, motorcycles, high building fire escapes and rooftops, is a good early showcase of Kuleshov’s theories and the ability of his Film Workshop. Soon after Mr. West and Jeddie arrive in Moscow, a street urchin lights off with Mr. West’s soft leather briefcase. Later, Jeddie, riding on the roof of Mr. West’s car as though it were a stagecoach, jumps off to recover a suitcase that falls off and gets separated from his boss. The chase scene shows Jeddie’s energetic high-speed but ultimately unsuccessful effort to catch up to Mr. West.

Chased by the police, Jeddie ends up crashing into a private institution where he meets Ellie (Valya Lopatina), a young American woman he knows who happens to be living in Moscow. Ellie is able to explain things to the police. But Mr. West ends up in the clutches of a band of ‘counter-revolutionaries,’ a criminal gang led by Count Zhban (Vsevolod Pudovkin), ‘once a fop, now just a small time criminal,’ Countess von Saks (Aleksandra Khokhlova), One Eye (Sergei Komarov) and others.

The ‘counter-revolutionaries’ tell Mr. West that he can be safe only with them. The Bolsheviks tore down Moscow University and the Bolshoi Theater, they say. And the gang exploits the New York magazine images of ‘Bolshevik types’ in a nutty convoluted plot to extort money from him.

A notable detail here is that the action passes numerous times by the former Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which Stalin’s government razed in 1931. (The post-Soviets rebuilt this in the 2000s.) 

In the end, Mr. West is rescued by the Bolshevik police. A senior official in a leather coat gives Mr. West a sightseeing tour of Moscow, showing him that Moscow University and the Bolshoi Theater still stand.

The film culminates in the official pointing out ‘typical Bolsheviks,’ starting with a military parade, panning to men-in-the-streets and concluding, surprisingly, with an image of Leon Trotsky. At the time, Trotsky, hated and soon eclipsed by Stalin, would have been the ailing Lenin’s heir apparent.

Mr. West admits that Americans have the wrong idea about of the Soviet Union. He even radiograms Madge, instructing her to ‘burn those New York magazines, and hang a portrait of Lenin on the wall. Long live the Bolsheviks!’

The Naked Truth

Hypocrites 1915 U.S. Hobart Bosworth Productions (50 minutes); written, directed and produced by Lois Weber; cinematography by Dal Clawson and George W. Hill; distributed by Paramount Pictures (Kino International). 

A politician gives a stump speech over a sign that announces ‘My Platform Is Honesty.’ The Naked Truth—an unselfconsciously nude woman—appears on his platform holding a mirror, unseen to all but the film audience. The image in Truth’s oval mirror fills the screen: the same politician appears at a table taking payoffs from a uniformed policeman and a series of shady-looking people. The crowd jumps up shaking its fists and pointing at the politician.

This vignette is one among many nice touches in this absorbing century-old silent film, a social commentary written, directed and produced by Lois Weber in 1914 at almost the same time that her peer D.W. Griffiths was making The Birth of a Nation.

Weber’s visually inventive and entertaining allegory compares modern and medieval times, using the same cast to play modern roles that correspond to their medieval personas; Truth (Margaret Edwards) scampers disinterestedly across time unseen by all, usually in a double-exposed image.

The director signals her intent by following the film’s title with a formal portrait of herself inscribed ‘Sincerely yours, Lois Weber,’ and then a line from Robert Browning’s narrative poem The Ring and the Book: ‘What does the world, told a truth, but lie the more.’ (Later she gets to John Milton.)

A small number of the principle actors are introduced serially, shown in medieval and then modern costume while seated on an elevated throne. But they are identified only by their medieval titles: Gabriel the Ascetic (Courtenay Foote), The Woman in White (Myrtle Stedman), The Abbot (Herbert Standing) and The Queen (Adele Farrington).

The action begins with a large pair of ornamental harp-shaped gates—The Gates of Truth—opening into a grove. Truth gambols from the outside in, and the gates sweep shut behind her.

A minister in church gives a passionate sermon on ‘Hypocrisy.’ The minister—Gabriel the Ascetic—is a gaunt young man of woeful countenance. Weber’s montage of faces, gestures and stylish women’s hats is beautifully composed. Many of the prosperous-looking middle-aged congregation are yawning and rolling their eyes, winking, checking their watches. Three senior vestrymen grumble together, and boys in the choir are looking at a newspaper. The minister also has admirers: the Woman in White and another heartsick woman (Vera Lewis); others appear to pay attention.

After the sermon, the Abbot (a senior vestryman) and his wife approach the minister, and the title reads: ‘Great sermon this morning.’ Afterward, directly outside the church in top hats, the senior vestryman catches up with three grumbling middle-aged congregants and the title says: ‘Ask for his resignation but keep my name out of it.’

Inside the church, the minister remonstrates with the newspaper-reading choir boy. The broadsheet headline reads: ‘Why the Truth Has Startled Wicked Paris,’ with a half-page reproduction of a painting showing a naked woman holding aloft a shining mirror before a fleeing modern crowd—the French painter Adophe Faugeron’s 1914 La Verité. 

Settling in a chair near the altar with the newspaper and a soulful look, the minister sinks into a reverie. And then he rises from the chair, transformed into Gabriel the Ascetic, a figure in monkish robes, to lead his congregation up a steep hill to Truth. The admiring women and several congregants try to follow but all ultimately fail.

A title reads: ‘Truth is ever elusive.’ And she steals from a hollow tree, frolicking through the wood just ahead of Gabriel. When he catches up to her, he says: ‘Since my people will not come to you, come to my people.’ They leave the grove together through The Gates of Truth she was shown entering when the story opened.

The medieval heart of the drama brings to mind the roughly contemporaneous illustrations of Howard and Katherine Pyle. The gaunt Gabriel is a monk working in secret on a sculpture. His Abbot, formerly the senior vestryman, is shown regaling the other monks eating and drinking at the monastic board. When Gabriel finishes his sculpture, the Abbot allows him to present it ‘to the people.’

The screen title on the big day says: ‘The people gathered as on a fête day.’ This gathering is another gem of early cinematic montage. The Abbot himself unveils Gabriel’s sculpture. A lethal pandemonium breaks out because ‘People are shocked by the nakedness of truth.’

No one can see the ‘nude truth,’ the thing simply unadorned; it is only when that figure, veiled, is stripped bare as The Naked Truth that people get incensed (and still do not actually see her). 

The half-dozen vignettes which follow are set in the turn-of-the-century US. Truth, led by Gabriel, holds up her mirror to politics and other human activities and institutions. In ‘Society,’ a well-heeled crowd is making merry in a sumptuous drawing room. The women are bare-armed and show lots of shoulder. Gabriel enters and invites an attractive sophisticate on a couch to see Truth with her mirror.

‘Truth is welcome if clothed in our ideas’ the sophisticate replies, handing Gabriel a diaphanous shawl. Gabriel tries to cover the woman with the shawl of her own ‘ideas,’ and then he leaves with Truth. The woman departs with a male friend, trailing the shawl. (We mention this detail because the sophisticate is Jane Darwell, who later played Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath.)

In the end, ‘ever elusive’ Truth scampers back to her grove—and Gabriel’s vision has a surprise ending.