Title: Propaganda film - Wikipedia
Headings: Propaganda film
Propaganda film
Contents
Tools used in propaganda film
Rhetoric
The Kuleshov Effect
See also
References
External links

Content: Rhetoric
Making the viewer sympathize with the characters that align with the agenda or message the filmmaker portray is a common rhetorical tool used in propaganda film. Propaganda films exhibit this by having reoccurring themes good vs. evil. The viewer is meant to feel sympathy towards the "good side" while loathing in the "evil side". Prominent Nazi film maker Joseph Goebbels used this tactic to invoke deep emotions into the audience. Goebbels stressed that while making films full of nationalistic symbols can energize a population, nothing will work better to mobilize a population towards the Nazi cause like "intensifying life". The Kuleshov Effect
After the 1917 October Revolution the newly formed Bolshevik government and its leader Vladimir Lenin placed an emphasis on the need for film as a propaganda tool. Lenin viewed propaganda merely as a way to educate the masses as opposed to a way to evoke emotion and rally the masses towards a political cause. Film became the preferred medium of propaganda in the newly formed Russian Soviet Republic due to a large portion of the peasant population being illiterate. The Kuleshov Effect was first used in 1919 in the film The Exposure of the Relics of Sergius of Radonezh by juxtaposing images of the exhumed coffin and body of Sergius of Radonezh, a prominent Russian saint, and the reaction from the watching audience. The images of the crowd are made up of mostly female faces, whose expressions can be interpreted ambiguously.