UC Merced Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society Title Semantic, Aesthetic, and Cognitive Effects of Flashbacks in Film Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ff5c86b Journal Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 33(33) ISSN 1069-7977 Authors Sevenants, Aline d'Ydewalle, Gery Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Semantic, Aesthetic, and Cognitive Effects of Flashbacks in Film Aline Sevenants ([email protected]) Géry d’Ydewalle (gé[email protected]) University of Leuven, Laboratory of Experimental Psychology 102 Tiensestraat, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium Abstract guidelines for preserving continuity, which is still the prevailing standard in classical Hollywood cinema (Griffith, Principles of narrative and intellectual film editing were 1969). Griffith employed the new technique of montage investigated by assessing the semantic, cognitive, and primarily for heightening the dramatic tension. However, the aesthetic consequences of inserting flashbacks. A short Russian avant-garde filmmakers were the first ones to use the narrative film was presented, either with flashbacks or in montage techniques very systematically. Vsevelod Pudovkin chronological/linear order. In Experiment 1, the gravity (1893-1953), often called the second greatest film maker next of the acts committed by the two main actors was to Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948), considered montage as a perceived to be more salient in the linear than in the process of construction: Shots are like bricks that, joined flashback version (based on Osgood’s semantic together, build a sequence (Pudovkin, 1958). He maintained differential ratings). Aesthetic assessment did not vary as that concepts were best developed by successively presenting a function of the linearity. In reconstructing the movie shots, which refer to the same general idea. This is called segments into the right order, the linear film condition “narrative editing”. Based on several experiments with Lev showed a better match with the chronological ordering Kuleshov (1899-1970), Pudovkin suggested that viewers’ than the flashback condition. In Experiment 2, pupil size expectations, inferences, deductions, and associations guide of the viewers, as a measure of mental load, was perception of montage sequences. registered on-line. In the flashback version, mental load Kuleshov conducted a series of experiments, called "films was heightened due to the flashbacks disrupting the linear without film", and developed the notion of the "Kuleshov story grammar. In the discussion about distinctive effect" in which, through montage, each shot acquired a advantages of intellectual versus narrative editing, different shade of meaning according to its place in the intellectual editing lost the case in the present study. sequence. He inserted identical frames of the actor Ivan Flashbacks did not enhance aesthetic judgments, and Mazouchin (1889-1939) between scenes of different events linearity emphasized the semantic features of the leading (shots of a bowl of soup, a girl, a teddy bear, and a child's actors with less consumption of mental resources. coffin) and asked viewers to describe the actor’s facial expression. Viewers interpreted the frames in accordance with Introduction the nature of the adjacent events, although the actor’s facial The year that the film was born is considered to be 1895. The expression had not varied at all. Kuleshov proved that two race to be the first to present “living photographs” was won shots projected in succession are not interpreted separately by by the Skladanowsky brothers in Berlin on November 1, the viewer; in the audience's mind, they are integrated into a 1895. The presentation of the Lumière brothers with their whole. The meaning of a shot depends on its context, a technically superior cinematograph in the Grand Café in Paris general principle that has so strongly been stressed by Gestalt on December 28 of the same year, however, is considered as psychology. the point of departure of modern film technique. In the first After studying Kuleshov's montage experiments, Eisenstein motion pictures of the 1890’s, filmmakers positioned the became convinced that in cinema one could manipulate time camera and filmed until the spool to hold the film ran out. and space to create new meanings, especially if the images This means that the entire scene consisted of one single shot, were not to be merely linked to create an impression of showing continuous limited action at one place. continuity, as Kuleshov and Pudovkin suggested, but David Llewelyn Wark Griffith (1875-1948), often referred juxtaposed (Eisenstein, 1949). Eisenstein stressed that to as the founding father of the classical Hollywood Cinema, montage is the basic and unique characteristic of cinema, the is generally recognized as the inventor of film montage. Ever basis for its distinctive power as a medium and for its since, montage or editing (i.e., connecting different film shots aesthetic principles. In particular, he theorized that the and segments) has historically been accepted by film makers collision or conflict between temporally and spatially and film theorists as a crucial parameter of the film medium. unrelated or unmatched shots or scenes could give rise to a Griffith claimed that an individual shot, rather than the scene, new concept eliciting special emotional and cognitive constitutes the central element of cinematic language. He reactions in the audience. therefore made use of a large amount of cuts and shots. In According to his theory, the maximum effect of screen order to safeguard the temporal and spatial logic and linearity expressiveness can be gained if the shots do not fit together despite the large number of different shots, he developed perfectly but create a shock to the viewer. This is called “intellectual editing”. Eisenstein proposed that the viewer 1064 organizes the film’s spatial and temporal structures, linking which the plot (i.e., the actual presentation of events in the shots and scenes logically and chronologically, provoking story) moves back to show events that have taken place emotions, and creating expectations. This implies that earlier than ones already shown. It is a portion of the story meaning and aesthetic experience are based on the that the plot presents out of chronological order (Bordwell & arrangement of film units. In contrast to Eisenstein, Pudovkin Thompson, 2004). From the plot order, the story order is felt that editing should be based on principles of ordinary inferred. If story events can be thought of as ABCD, then the viewing, stressing the perceived or experienced continuity of plot containing flashbacks presents something like BADC. In the story, causing Pudovkin’s films to be much closer to most Hollywood films, the flashbacks are fairly simple and it Griffith and the classical narrative Hollywood cinema. takes little mental effort to reconstruct the story order. But A narrative is a chain of events in cause-effect relationship some films provide us with the challenge of unpredictable occurring in time and space. Thus, a narrative film provides presentations of story events. the viewer with a sequential and highly systematic input of An example of the latter is Sergio Leone’s Once upon a visual information: Each informative fact (e.g., an action, a time in America (1984) , with a non-linear plot-structure. shot, a scene …) is not only related to the preceding and to the Spanning five decades in the lives of two men, the sprawling following one, but also to the whole story. As the viewer story, which moves continuously among 1922, 1933, and watches the film, he or she picks up cues, recalls information, 1968 on New York City's gangster-ruled Lower East Side, is and anticipates what will follow. The film shapes particular memorably conveyed through flashbacks, flash-forwards, expectations by summoning up uncertainty, curiosity, dreams, and fantasies. The film was initially released in the suspense, and surprise that has to be satisfied or cheated US as a 2 1/4-hour, studio-edited version of the original 3 3/4- during the progression of the film. hour version. This was an attempt to organize Leone's epic Every perturbation of the continuity of the narrative (e.g., chronologically to make the film “easier” and more by means of intellectual editing, a flashback, a accessible. There are currently at least five differently edited hallucination …) causes a perturbation of the interplay versions. between the elicited expectations and the answers provided by The distinction between narrative and intellectual montage the film: Spatial and visual continuity becomes distorted, and is at the level of the story line. At the perceptual level, there actions and events change their meaning. This limits the are also mainly two opposing viewpoints, the classical and the integration, the restitution of the content, and the structure of modern one. The classical viewpoint (e.g. the Hollywood the message. Denis (1972) showed that minor chronological concept of editing; see Bretz, 1962; Mascelli, 1965; Reisz, disturbances in a sequential visual message significantly 1953/1968; Wurtzel, 1983) is characterized by the Formal lowered the capacity of participants to recall items of Editing Principle: There are certain empirical rules information conveyed by the message. In a second concerning good perceptual editing which film makers