Audiovisual Correspondences in Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky: A Case Study in Viewer Attention

Cognitive film theory is an approach to analyzing film that bridges the traditionally segregated disciplines of film theory, philosophy and the psychological and neurosciences. Considerable work has already been presented from the perspective of film theory that utilizes existing empirical evidence of psychological phenomenon to inform our understanding of film viewers and the form of film itself. But can empirical psychology also provide ways to directly test the insights generated by the theoretical study of film? In this chapter I will present a case study in which eye-tracking is used to validate Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein’s intuitions about viewer attention during a sequence from Alexander Nevsky (1938).