eBook - ePub
Mise-en-scĂšne
Film Style and Interpretation
John Gibbs
This is a test
- 144 pages
- English
- ePUB (adapté aux mobiles)
- Disponible sur iOS et Android
eBook - ePub
Mise-en-scĂšne
Film Style and Interpretation
John Gibbs
DĂ©tails du livre
Aperçu du livre
Table des matiĂšres
Citations
Ă propos de ce livre
Mise-en-scène: Film Style and Interpretation explores and elucidates constructions of this fundamental concept in thinking about film. In uncovering the history of mise-en-scène within film criticism, and through the detailed exploration of scenes from films as Imitation of Life and Lone Star, John Gibbs makes the case for the importance of a sensitive understanding of film style, and provides an introduction to the skills of close reading. This book thus celebrates film-making as well as film criticism that is alive to the creative possibilities of visual style.
Foire aux questions
Comment puis-je résilier mon abonnement ?
Il vous suffit de vous rendre dans la section compte dans paramĂštres et de cliquer sur « RĂ©silier lâabonnement ». Câest aussi simple que cela ! Une fois que vous aurez rĂ©siliĂ© votre abonnement, il restera actif pour le reste de la pĂ©riode pour laquelle vous avez payĂ©. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Puis-je / comment puis-je télécharger des livres ?
Pour le moment, tous nos livres en format ePub adaptĂ©s aux mobiles peuvent ĂȘtre tĂ©lĂ©chargĂ©s via lâapplication. La plupart de nos PDF sont Ă©galement disponibles en tĂ©lĂ©chargement et les autres seront tĂ©lĂ©chargeables trĂšs prochainement. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Quelle est la différence entre les formules tarifaires ?
Les deux abonnements vous donnent un accĂšs complet Ă la bibliothĂšque et Ă toutes les fonctionnalitĂ©s de Perlego. Les seules diffĂ©rences sont les tarifs ainsi que la pĂ©riode dâabonnement : avec lâabonnement annuel, vous Ă©conomiserez environ 30 % par rapport Ă 12 mois dâabonnement mensuel.
Quâest-ce que Perlego ?
Nous sommes un service dâabonnement Ă des ouvrages universitaires en ligne, oĂč vous pouvez accĂ©der Ă toute une bibliothĂšque pour un prix infĂ©rieur Ă celui dâun seul livre par mois. Avec plus dâun million de livres sur plus de 1 000 sujets, nous avons ce quâil vous faut ! DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Prenez-vous en charge la synthÚse vocale ?
Recherchez le symbole Ăcouter sur votre prochain livre pour voir si vous pouvez lâĂ©couter. Lâoutil Ăcouter lit le texte Ă haute voix pour vous, en surlignant le passage qui est en cours de lecture. Vous pouvez le mettre sur pause, lâaccĂ©lĂ©rer ou le ralentir. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Est-ce que Mise-en-scÚne est un PDF/ePUB en ligne ?
Oui, vous pouvez accĂ©der Ă Mise-en-scĂšne par John Gibbs en format PDF et/ou ePUB ainsi quâĂ dâautres livres populaires dans Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative et Film e video. Nous disposons de plus dâun million dâouvrages Ă dĂ©couvrir dans notre catalogue.
Informations
Sous-sujet
Film e video1 THE ELEMENTS OF MISE-EN-SCĂNE
A Workable Definition
âMise-en-scĂšneâ is used in film studies in the discussion of visual style. The word is from the French, although it has been employed in English since at least 1833, and has its origins in the theatre. Literally translated it means âto put on stageâ, but figurative uses of the term have a long history. For the student of film, a useful definition might be: âthe contents of the frame and the way that they are organisedâ. Both halves of this formulation are significantâthe contents and their organisation.
What are the contents of the frame? They include lighting, costume, dĂ©cor, properties, and the actors themselves. The organisation of the contents of the frame encompasses the relationship of the actors to one other and to the dĂ©cor, but also their relationship to the camera, and thus the audienceâs view. So in talking about mise-en-scĂšne one is also talking about framing, camera movement, the particular lens employed and other photographic decisions. Mise-en-scĂšne therefore encompasses both what the audience can see, and the way in which we are invited to see it. It refers to many of the major elements of communication in the cinema, and the combinations through which they operate expressively.
The main body of this chapter looks at some of the different elements of mise-en-scĂšne, in order to illustrate the range of creative options available to film-makers and to introduce some of the ways in which critics have found the visual field expressive.
Lighting
When I was an undergraduate, I remember studying a shot in Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) which makes a great deal of the expressive power of lighting: the long take which begins the second sequence of the film. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), whose father has just been convicted of treason against the USA, is conducting a soirĂ©e. As she and her drunken guests dance or talk, they are illuminated evenly and unremarkably. However, as the scene progresses, Alicia directs her attention towards a silent guest in the foreground of the image. This man sits with his back to the camera, at the very edge of the light which falls on the others. He says nothing when Alicia accuses him of being a party-crasher, or even when she expresses her admiration for him. We know little about this figure, but we may perhaps have identified the silhouette as belonging to the filmâs male lead, Cary Grant.
The organisation of light, actors and camera makes possible a series of suggestive readings. Cary Grantâs darkened silhouette makes it look as though he was sitting in the row in front of us in the cinema. We join Grant in his observation, we are behind him, we share a similar perspective. Grant is scrutinising the inebriated and incautious Bergman, as are we, but we cannot scrutinise Grant. In retrospect this can be seen as an informing image for the film: Cary Grantâs character remains an onlooker for most of the movie, and continues to view Alicia judgementally. He does not speak in this sceneâlater in the movie he refuses to tell Alicia that he loves her, to an almost sadistic degree. (Andrew Britton goes so far as to call Devlin, Grantâs character, âthe most detestable leading man in the American popular cinemaâ (1983: 8).) By associating our view with that of a character who turns out to be an extraordinarily unpleasant heroâand by doing so in a way that draws attention to our own status as members of an audienceâthe film opens the possibility of a critique of spectatorship.1
Costume
George M. Wilson, the philosopher and film theorist, writes about the creative use of costume in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) in his book Narration in Light. Discussing the events that take place after the fatal shooting of Plato (Sal Mineo) outside the Planetarium, Wilson writes:
Jim reaches down and zips up the red jacket that he had given Plato a few moments before, and Judy replaces a shoe that had fallen from Platoâs foot. Echoing the earlier images of the temporary âfamilyâ the three kids had briefly formed, these actions have the look of an attempt by the parents to bundle their children against the cold. The gesture, taken in this way, is pathetic and ironic. Jimâs father then bends down and places his jacket on Jimâs shoulders. ⊠With the red jacket born away on Plato and with the adult jacket now worn by Jim, an exchange of âuniformsâ has been effected. The jacket of rebellion is gone, and, as Jim returns to Judyâs side, he wears the token of his new and more acceptable status. (1983: 187)
A further detail, not mentioned by Wilson but entirely in keeping with the sense he makes of the scene, is the physical resemblance between Judy (Natalie Wood) and Jimâs mother (Ann Doran). As Jim (James Dean) introduces Judy to his parents the two couples are framed separately but symmetrically and, if we have not noticed the similarity before, the correspondence of hairstyle and colour of dress is strikingly apparent (Judy no longer wears her distinctive green sweater, nor the red coat she wore in the filmâs opening sequence). In these ways, the film suggests that Jim and Judy are being subsumed into the world of adult society and, more chillingly, being transformed into younger versions of Jimâs parentsâa bleak prospect given all that has come before. Only Plato, in Wilsonâs words, is âthe truly intransigent rebelâ.
Colour
Wilsonâs reading of the jackets partly depends on his sense that the film is drawing one of the familiar cultural associations with the colour red, âits traditional association with rebellionâ (1983: 187). Colour is an important expressive element for film-makers, and is often mobilised by means of costume, which has the advantage of a direct association with a particular character. It might equally, however, be a feature of the lighting, the set decoration, or particular props. Richard Dyer has written about the use of colour in Home from the Hill (Vincente Minnelli, 1959):
The film revolves around a conflict between a man (Robert Mitchum) and his wife (Eleanor Parker). The husbandâs den in the film is painted a deep, blood red all over and is furnished in a âmasculineâ way, with leather armchairs, rifles and hunting trophies. The rest of the house is the womanâs domainâit is decorated in off-white, with chintzy patterns and in upper-class good taste; she wears pastel colours that blend in with the setting. The house is thus divided dramatically between the male and female parts, as is the family itself. The use of colour, however, goes beyond this, through the way it relates to a blood symbolism that runs through the film. He is associated with blood, with hunting, with death, whereas she is aloof from this, cold and bloodless. Their son (George Hamilton) has to choose between these two sets of values and life-styles. The blood connection goes further still, to subconscious associations of bloodâand fearâwith maleness and femaleness. Thus Mitchumâs room is engorged with blood, as an erect penis, whereas Parkerâs domain is drained of blood as in menstruation. (1981: 1154â5).
Often elements of mise-en-scĂšne will work, as is the case with the âblood symbolismâ here, in patterns developed across the length of a film.
Props
Andrew Klevan has written about such a process of patterning in Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949), where he argues that particular household objects in the film âcollect meanings through repeated usage, and develop associations throughout the narrativeâ (2000: 146). Late Spring is a film about a young woman, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who lives happily with her father Somiya (Chishu Ryu) but who is eventually encouraged, rather against her will, to marry and leave the home which father and daughter had shared. Klevan argues that âNoriko and Somiyaâs particular interaction with domestic objects delineates their emotional progressionâ:
Norikoâs bentwood chairs, for example, are first seen in her room where Aya and Noriko sit and chat; unlike Somiya, both Aya and Noriko seem to prefer not to sit on the floor. At the start of the film, therefore, it might be claimed that the chairs carry a straightforward meaning: they represent the âmodernityâ of the two women because they are a Western style of furniture. Any emotional resonance gained by the presence of the chairs, however, is achieved by their development within the narrative situations. On both occasions when she is followed up into her room, Noriko settles into her chair with her back towards Somiya and her aunt. The chairs are the furniture to which she flees for comfort and protection, but are also where she ends up appearing confined.
At the end of the film, after Noriko has married, the film returns to her father left alone in the house:
Now the sadness which Somiya feels can be expressed through the use of Norikoâs chairs: his sitting on one of the chairs both recalls her absence and conveys an unfamiliar position for him. Thus, a household chair, never pushed to the centre of attention, always deployed or relocated without emphasis, is able to encapsulate both Somiyaâs loss and the disruption for him in these final moments. (2000: 146â7)
DĂ©cor
V.F. Perkinsâ âMoments of Choiceâ, an article which should be much better known than it is (see Appendix, for details), examines the range of areas of decision-making involved in film direction, and provides a series of examples of the ways different elements of mise-en-scĂšne (although the word is not used) can be employed expressively. As an example of dĂ©cor, Perkins turns to Jean Renoirâs much admired film, La RĂšgle du Jeu (1939):
A justly famous scene in La RĂšgle du Jeu ⊠gains much of its effect from Renoirâs use of decor. At the start of a country-house party, the aristocratic hostess, Christine, is obliged to confront the gossip surrounding her relationship with a young aviator, AndrĂ© Jurieu. She does this by introducing him to her other guests as a group with a speech in praise of pure friendship. The scene is set in the chĂąteauâs entrance hall and the decor is a perfectly credible arrangement of doors, pillars and open space. But Renoirâs disposition of his actors and camera turns the space into a theatrical arena as Christine takes AndrĂ© âcentre stageâ to present him to the others, grouped at a little distance to constitute the audience, while her husband and his friend look on anxiously and at last proudly from âthe wingsâ. The sense of Christineâs performance as one governed by strict rules, where a wrong move threatens disaster, emerges from another parallel that the decor permits: the camera sees the floor, with Christine and AndrĂ© moving across its black-and-white marble tiles, as a chess-board. The power of the scene largely derives from the tension between Christineâs nervously awkward sincerity and the demand implied by the theatre/chess-game image for the precise execution of a delicate manoeuvre. (1981: 1143)
Action and performance
At an important base level, mise-en-scĂšne is concerned with the action and the significance it might have. Whilst thinking about dĂ©cor, lighting and the use of colour, we should not forget how much can be expressed through the direction of action and through skillful performance. A very great deal of significance can be bound up in the way in which a line is delivered, or where an actor is looking at a particular moment. The effects that Perkins attributes to Renoirâs film are in part suggested by the performances, and would not be possible without them.
Critics have often found writing about performance and the complexities it can suggest very difficult, but this should not lead one to overlook the extent to which performance is central to our understanding of narrative film, nor the...