Mise en jeu and Mise en geste

Sergei Eisenstein, Sergey Levchin

• Publisher: Caboose
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780991830176
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Theory & Criticism

Mise en jeu and Mise en geste was composed in January 1948, a few months before Sergei Eisenstein's untimely death. Here Eisenstein insists on subordinating all aspects of mise en scène to some unifying idea or principle inherent in the subject matter, transforming it from an incoherent jumble of staging decisions into a "legible text, " wherein the subtext of a given scene or event – its hidden meaning – may be writ large. Unlike Eisenstein's previous writings on mise en scène, this essay treats separately distinct elements of that notoriously catch-all category: mise en jeu (transposition "of the interplay of motives" into a sequence of concrete actions); mise en geste (transposition of character into gesture); and mise en cadre (recreating the specific effects of a poetic passage through shot composition). Unfinished at the time of his death, the essay has been reconstructed by the Eisenstein Centre in Moscow and is appearing here in English for the first time. "[Filming Balzac's Père Goriot ] is just like declaiming verse. A little too much emphasis on the period of the rhythm, and the recitation turns into a lifeless mechanical drone. A touch too slack on rhythmic delivery, and the distinct cadence of verse disintegrates into the baffling formlessness of semi-prose. A little too much emphasis on the circle [formed by the characters], and the mise en scène starts to lean towards ballet and conventional theatre. A bit too careless with the geometric figure, and the clear, distinct, meaningful mise en scène is sucked into the swamp of formless naturalism." — Sergei Eisenstein

Mise en jeu and Mise en geste

[The mise en geste of a character]

Back in the day Freud created quite a stir, proclaiming (demonstrating and substantiating) that a slip of the tongue and ‘false action’ [Fehlhandlung] are in reality neither a slip of the tongue nor false action, but one’s true intentions breaking through ‘masking action’ [Deckhandlung], by which—owing to outward conditions, demands and circumstances—they are obscured, disguised, ‘repressed’.

Along the same lines Konstantin Sergeevich [Stanislavsky] preached ‘subtext’ as the current of true meaning running parallel to the superficially conventional course of dialogue: true agenda under the cover of absolute appearances.

(Hemingway with his dialogues practically hits you over the head with it, whereas Chekhov gets there with impeccable understatement.)

With Konstantin Sergeevich said phenomenon is not tinged with the aggressive hues of ‘repression’, as in Freud, but the two are doubtless related.

Konstantin Sergeevich is, moreover, lacking the idea of these repressed motives ‘breaking through’ the surface.

Still, the palm of primacy is bestowed squarely upon ‘subtext’, peeking through the layers (the vestments) of visible text.

Subtext, as far as the Art Theatre is concerned, determines much of ‘what gets acted’—and that’s that.

And to a certain extent ‘what gets staged’, but only within the limits of ‘what gets acted’.

The fact that this same phenomenon must extend—beyond the actor’s psychological content and hence that of his actions—to the totality of plastic, spatial and aural expression (realisation), of action as well as all the other elements of a production as a whole, is essentially ignored by these schools of thought.

Generally speaking, this is what happens in real life—when we act. The difficulty arises when spontaneous action or intention must be furnished with motivation—justification.

This may be readily observed in an experimental setting.

There is a very simple hypnotist’s trick.

Under hypnosis the subject is ordered to perform a certain task at a specific time after he is revived.

Upon waking he will do just that, precisely at the appointed time.

I remember one such experiment in Minsk.

A young lady was put to sleep. She was ordered to open the window precisely seventeen minutes after she came to.

She did.

Nothing ‘magical’ about it.

Merely a difference in degree. For through hypnosis one is able to ‘neutralise’ those strata of consciousness, those nodes or areas of the brain that regulate (stimulate, retard, mobilise to counteraction, etc.) the automatic response, i.e., everything that resists unconditional, automatic execution of external ‘commands’.

Likewise, the basic goal of military ‘drilling’ is to remove any rational intermediate between a command and its direct (reflex) fulfilment.

This must be so automatised as to be more powerful and more effective than any other external stimulus, which might ‘normally’ dictate very different behaviour (basically—the efficacy of a command despite the instinct of self-preservation—as in an attack—to rush under a ‘hail of bullets’ or ‘charge the bayonets’).

There is very little room for reflection here; and the same is true of ideological ‘intoxication’ (similarly effecting automatisation of physical behaviour—by way of . . . self-hypnosis) or common physical intoxication, which impairs the analytical and rational faculties.

Roughly speaking, hypnosis paralyses the rationalising, self-determining faculty.

It achieves ‘absolute obedience’.

Nor is there any mystery in its ‘perfect timing’: this is an innate quality, suppressed by higher-order functions, but easily trained to operate with utmost precision (just as the eye may be trained to judge distances with precision to rival measuring instruments; just as there is ‘perfect pitch’, etc.—here we have ‘perfect timing’).

It is thought that the ‘sense of time’ is to be found in the organism not in the mechanisms responsible for ‘higher nervous activity’ nor in its more primitive branches [succursales] but in the most basic strata—in the tissues.

The most curious aspect of this whole process, however, is the work of motivation performed by the patient as the appointed time draws near—particularly if the assigned task is counterintuitive in given circumstances (which is typically the case!).

Our young lady did not simply open the window; rather, a few minutes beforehand she became quite agitated.

At last she blurted out: ‘Isn’t it stuffy in here!?’ (though it was nothing of the sort!)—at which point she made a beeline for the window.

The more ‘absurd’ the task, the more preposterous and more conspicuous the process of motivation will be.

So it is in real life, only somewhat more complex, so that the work of subtext and its dressing-up in ‘motives’ may range from the unconscious act to the calculated and deliberate masking of a true motive with a sham pretext.

Someone looking to finagle a dinner invitation will deliberately, ‘casually’ turn the conversation to the subject of food.

Also, a man suffering from alimentary dystrophy,¹ to give another example, will ‘unwittingly’, ‘in spite of himself’, steer the conversation back to food again and again.

The same is true of action.

The eyes of a hungry man, who has come on some unrelated business, will invariably be drawn to whatever food happens to be laid out on the table.

Put a man in front of a mirror and—no matter what he might be doing—you will witness his gaze returning obsessively to his own reflection.

Now.

Every motive has the habit of expressing itself directly in action (later we shall see how action—by way of pars pro toto—may be reduced to . . . a line of action, its ‘schematic representation’—at which point we will be dealing with . . . the line of mise en scène!).

A young man has married a girl, and for the first time he brings her to his room.

Closing the door after her, he explains to her that the door is fitted with a ‘French’ lock.

‘Locks by itself’.

This is ‘empty information’ and ‘there is nothing to act’ here, until we find a psychological key to this . . . lock—to this talk of the lock.

This ‘key’ is two-fold.

We find it first in the young man’s character.

And second, in the storyline.

The young man (I mean the young man and the scene from Vinogradskaya’s screenplay²)—Makogon—turns out to be a selfish, possessive type.

And soon the clash of character will drive the young woman (the heroine in this story) to leave him. (Personal drama behind the events of the plot.)

The ‘cloistering’ mentality, directed at the young woman, whom he has ‘taken’ as wife—is entirely characteristic of the young man.

The lock, ‘locking away’—‘surfaces’ in the very first conversation. (Makogon exhibits traces of the same mentality that keeps women—‘master’s property’—locked up in harems.)

But the immediate motive—to lock away personal property (acquired by way of marriage)—is displaced, its tawdry aspect neutralised by this explanation of the locking properties of this special—to a simple girl from the countryside outright exotic—lock.

(A detail such as this safety lock in the door is ‘revealing’ of Makogon’s character.)

How to act this episode? How to stage the action?

The secret to effective mise en scène—as opposed to life, which is largely a matter of abridgment and elision—is to unfold on stage the entire process (see our discussion of negating gesture, which explains the whole method in a nutshell—reclaiming the process from the binomial of logic and restoring it to the trinomial of dialectic: from intention–execution to the negation of negation³).

What will this look like in our case?

The whole of the interior process taking place inside Makogon must be transposed into action.

What ‘gets acted’ is not the scripted piece of ‘information’ about the lock, but the whole process that leads up to it.

The Art Theatre is aware of this on the level of ‘action’—using an internal process to arrive at correct delivery.

We must do the same more broadly, on the level of mise en scène.

We say: it is in Makogon’s nature to lock up the girl in a terem⁴ (to use a more familiar term than harem).

Corresponding act: lock the door (shut her in).

Action: closing the door, turn the lock.

There are two possible interpretations: a deliberate locking of the door and the involuntary (automatic) kind.

Which interpretation shall we follow?

How are they different?

They correspond to different nuances of character. Our choice then will be determined by the nuance that we wish to impute to Makogon.

The first option is somewhat crass. Entirely crass, rather. Primitive and prurient, if you will. It will effectively read as: ‘now that we’re married, let’s jump into bed’.

The second one is better. Flicking the lock automatically. Shutting himself in is probably in Makogon’s nature generally. Let us follow the second option.

We have also said that the remark about the lock’s special properties is a sort of ‘camouflage’, masking the true motive of the action around the lock.

For this ‘camouflage’ to appear, it must be made necessary. Necessary to mask the true motive. To hide the true motive behind seemingly innocuous ‘information’.

Where shall we look for this necessity? To be sure, in her action.

She is overwhelmed by the ‘opulence’ of his private—from now on their shared—room.

The lock clicks.

It snaps her out of her daze.

Naturally, her attention turns towards the lock.

To be sure, there is no ‘suspicion’ on her part.

This lack of suspicion will serve all the more elegantly to cue his ‘masking’ comment, intended not so much to neutralise her actual suspicion as to disguise his assumption that she must suspect him.

(The way a guilty man always imagines that he is being watched.) Hence a certain hastiness to ‘cover up’ the whole business with an explanation.

A moment to steady his nerves, then a pointedly calm and didactic account of the locking mechanism.

To emphasise this even further, she will, of course, ignore his explanations, absorbed once more in her enraptured survey of the room.

Incidentally, to stress the lyrical rather than materialistic nature of her delight, the actual ‘opulence’ of the room must be made if not exactly squalid, then at least as mindlessly conventional, uncomfortable and cramped as possible.

Thus the impulse to project internal conflict into sensible form, sensible fact, can generate a concrete situation—a unit of action, embodying and revealing the internal emotional mechanisms of particular characters in particular circumstanc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Mise en jeu and Mise en geste
• Translator’s Afterword
• Kino-Agora