What were the kinds of edit cuts defined by Lev Kuleshov and the Moscow School?

Lev Kuleshov’s film workshops were the birthplace of Russian Montage. The Kuleshov students learnt that editing served three primary purposes while building a film. A cut could serve a narrative purpose. A cut could generate an intellectual response. The third kind of cut that the Kuleshov students discovered was a purely emotional one.

Watch this video on the Soviet Theory of Montage

 

The narrative cut allows the director to analyze the action into its most interesting elements and then re-synthesise these elements of an event into a powerful sequential action.

A flash-back or flash-forward is also a type of narrative cut.

The cross-cut is another kind of narrative cut.

 

The metaphorical cut or associational cut is a type of intellectual cut. A shot where workers are falling to the bullets of soldiers, can be followed by oxen being led to the slaughterhouse. Eisenstien uses this imagery in ‘Strike’. The audience  understood that the workers were being compared to dumb cattle being led to their death.

A contrast cut can also produce an intellectual response.

The parallel cut produces a third kind of intellectual response.

 

Emotional response can be generated by the very method of joining the strips of film together. here the method, rather than their content produces a kind of kinetic response that the director can control.

Rhythmic cuts in which a  director uses shorter and shorter lengths of film increases the tension and tempo of the action. The reverse can take place if longer lengths of film are joined together rhythmically.

The tonal cut is another method of hooking the viewer’s emotions. The use of steadily darker toned visuals can evoke a sense of darkness or heaviness, and the use of brighter visuals can bring a sense of lightness and joy.

Form cuts and directional cuts can also evoke emotional responses in the audience