Tour de force Mise-en-scène

[academyleader]

To what extent does a film's mise-en-scene have to be defined by filmmakers before any film is exposed? I ask the question in order to shift the focus of this discussion from the director to the other filmmakers necessarily involved in establishing the elements that comprise a film's coherent mise-en-scene. The director alone cannot create mise-on-scene. He or she must collaborate with at least the set designer and cinematographer to define a film's mise-en-scene. And their collaboration probably has to coincide with the establishment of the shooting script so that what a set looks like, where furniture is placed, how much space is required for camera movement, and even how much of a set has to be built, are fixed before shooting begins. Moreover, the scale of shots (the movement from long shot, to medium shot, to close-up, as well as matching action) has to be defined as this point too, or the editor won't have shots that cut together. If shot scale is taken into consideration, mise-en-scene also involves a film's decoupage. From this perspective, a director who joins a project when filming begins has little chance of doing anything other than what has already been defined in the shooting script.

[Awesome Welles]

I thought the point of this thread was to encourage people to discuss mise-en-scene when what seems to have happened is people are discussing the ramifications discussing mise-en-scene. This might be part of the reason mise-en-scene does not feature prominently in people's discussion of films though I would argue that many members here simply do not have the time to post at length on their appreciation of a film, incorporating mise-en-scene or not. Whereas the lively threads on rampant guessing and listmaking stay alive because they are sustained by quick retorts and additions by everyone whereas threads like this stay alive for a few days and then drift away as everyone gets bored. I am not criticising here, I think it's a great shame more threads like this aren't more active, and I tried to create my own for people to discuss (mise-en-scene discussion implied) their 'revelations'of this year, why they loved such and such a film so much and how they interpreted it. Unfortunately it suffered the same fate as I described above. As have many others such as discussions on Cinephilia!, Filmed American Plays, What makes a film boring? and Directors masterpieces in relation to their overall oeuvre, though they are on occasion jump started but it is shame there are so many other threads these types of discussions get lost in as it would be nice to have them more visible, which would hopefully encourage continuing discussion.

To try and avoid talking about talking about mise-en-scene I would just like to share that I first really discovered the importance of, and simplicity of (in some cases) of good mise-en-scene when I saw Twelve Angry Men, Lumet's task of filming a stage play in one room may sound like the mise-en-scene may be quite basic and even boring but I would make that case that in filmed plays it is even more important to transport the notion of the stage to cinema and Lumet succeeds brilliantly starting the film with the frame relatively open and space around the twelve men as the drama intensifies we get closer to the characters, Lumet's camera dropping slowly as the ceilings come in on us, the lighting gets darker, shadows more prominent as the faces of the jurors change before us. It all adds up to wonderfully atmospheric filmmaking and it's so simple, for Lumet to dramatically build the tension this way without just resorting, as a play would no dialogue and performance alone it really makes the film standout as a cinematic wonder and not just a filmed play. Of course it's horses for courses and this is why mise-en-scene is so important, I don't see any serious discussion of film as being valid without making consideration for mise-en-scene. I won't bother to go on to discuss the complexities other film's mise-en-scene as one poster suggested early on it makes me feel a little too self conscious at this time of night.

[zedz]

This is potentially a useful thread, but I don’t think we should get bogged down in definitions.

One reason I don’t use the term more often is that it’s really not that useful. Not because it’s too vague or ambiguous, but because it’s way too broad.

If you say, “the most important thing about Mizoguchi is his mise en scene”, it says almost nothing. You could say the same thing about Ozu or Yoshida. Even qualifying the term is not that helpful. You could arguably describe both Yoshida and Altman’s mise en scene as “decentred”, but there’s a huge difference between the eccentric, formalised framing and blocking of the former and the fluid, democratic arrangements of the latter. You need to be more specific to say anything meaningful, and as soon as you get down to specifics, there are much more useful terms available – framing, blocking, movement, décor, gesture – that also sidestep the definitional imprecisions of “mise en scene”.

But I don’t think Schreck was trying to start an arid argument over the ‘correct’ definition of mise en scene, but rather to jumpstart a thread citing brilliant or unusual examples of it, which I think is a fine thing. This forum is always at its best when we’re talking in detail about specific films and specific moments in them.

Mise en scene is not necessarily a term of value (and nor is ‘auteur’, I’d argue): mise en scene can be banal, hackneyed, forumlaic. When news photographers shoot an ‘expert’ in front of a wall of books (with the subject offset enough to show off that weight of learning), it’s mise en scene, just as it is when they shoot a vox pop with passersby and traffic in the background – but that doesn’t make it any less facile and crude. But then, at the other extreme, you can get those sublime moments when you get a perfect visual embodiment of an idea or a moment – those pictures that are worth not just a thousand words, but an infinite number, because they render words unnecessary.

My Darling Clementine, already mentioned here, is a great example. Ford at his best had a seemingly natural gift for impeccable, expressive shots. Even though he assimilated his Murnau influence rapidly in the late twenties / early thirties, they shared that gift for creating fully self-sufficient tableaux. Even in his second rate films where he clearly wasn’t fully engaged, the gift doesn’t desert him, it just has less invested in it. I really dislike Tobacco Road, but it’s nevertheless filled with exquisite Fordian shots – perhaps a handy illustration of the limitations of mise en scene.

I’m also interested in the fuzzier edges of mise en scene, such as ‘negative’ mise en scene (there’s probably a proper name for this I’m unaware of), in which what is excluded from the shot is significant. You can see this in Bresson’s use of offscreen space (as when his man escapes for the first time in A Man Escaped, but the camera remains placidly focussed on his evacuated position in the car), or in the climactic raid in A Brighter Summer Day, in which the mise en scene is there, but largely invisible, illuminated only glancingly through slashes of torchlight.

I find the tension between offscreen and onscreen space in such examples (which generally entails use of the soundtrack, thus raising another phantom turf war – to what extent is sound a part of the mise en scene?) really rewarding, and I also love it when directors build offscreen space into their mise en scene visually. Yang’s use of reflective surfaces is a great example, which suggests other great examples of mirrors in mise en scene:
Those hanging mirrors in Christensen’s The Mysterious X, illuminating areas of the set not directly visible;
the vicious, obsessive, destructive reflections in Fassbinder’s Chinese Roulette;
the paranoiac, revealing / concealing reflections in prime Pakula;
the bravura technical stunt at the climax of Mulvey / Wollen’s Riddle of the Sphinx, in which the camera does one of its 360 pans around a room crammed with mirrors, without ever revealing itself (if that isn’t heavy-duty mise en scene, I don’t know what is), until it finally comes to rest.

I’d also like to cite my favourite shot in Nosferatu (this is Schreck's thread, after all), which helps to illustrate how great mise en scene can be very simple and also how the alchemy of a moving frame and movement within the frame can operate.

It’s a shot of the Demeter sailing towards Wisborg, consisting of nothing but the sea and the ship. It opens with the ship in the distance, in the centre of the frame, calmly drifting, but then we notice that it’s sailing towards us at a slight angle, and that we’re simultaneously closing in on it. Without the shot ever losing its composure, and without the ship ever seeming ‘animated’ (it remains impeccably dead and adrift), it’s upon us in an improbably short time, passing out of the frame in the left foreground and leaving the quiet, still, eternal horizon – as close to an empty frame as Murnau gets in the film.

Compositionally, it’s bog-standard, but the combination of movement in, movement across and the duration of the shot creates a truly uncanny effect for me, a paradoxical calm motionlessness coupled with unfeasibly swift and inexorable progress. It’s an effect Murnau may well have been striving for with his pixillated carriages, but those just don’t work for me. This simple shot, however, resonates as one of the most super-natural in the film.

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

My personal cross to bear is that I have been to film school and taken courses on such concepts as "mise-en-scene" and "cinema dynamics" (the latter was so full of horseshit I had to buy new clothes), but I think this thread is worthwhile because there is something to be said for trying to glean filmmaker's intentions for their film based on the films themselves.

Perhaps that is antithetical to what's being said by some here, but I'll elaborate with an example of a film that I believe has something close to a perfect "mise-en-scene":

Although not really regarded as a towering cinematic work, I've seen Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three many, many times, and have the film closely burned into the center of my cerebral cortex. The mise-en-scene, if you will, of Sargent's film, very clearly illustrates an intent on his part to highlight key aspects of either a)dialogue, b)staging of actors and key props and/or c)the characters themselves. Basically, as has been reiterated here, I personally believe "mise-en-scene" to be what is inside the frame (and, its not said enough, perhaps what is heard and how it relates to its corresponding images), and not the framing itself (which, being a clearly subjective artistic factor, can be made into another thread). Also, I relate "mise-en-scene" to how images directly affect the preceding and subsequent images. So, yeah, editing.

Sargent's film, to my unprofessional eyes and ears, has something as close to perfect "mise-en-scene" as I've yet seen (Mind you, I've seen at least a hundred films better than this one, but I'm just using it for the purposes of this discussion). Take for example the scene where Matthau realizes the advantage he has over the criminals in the subway after their ransom money has been delayed; the way Sargent (or whoever the editor was) conveys a sense of excitement in Matthau's character directly affects the staging of his scenes. There is not much actual camera movement, only a little to follow actors slightly around a designated area. The camera stays on Matthau as he comes to his realization. A quick shot of him turning on his mic button. Low-angle shot of him gleefully lying to his nemesis, emphasizing a certain growing confidence in his character's dire situation. The intent of the director is clear: make Matthau look like the one in control. In my eyes, mission beautifully, economically accomplished.

Although maybe economy isn't what we're going for here? Perhaps what I said was too simple or non-illustrative a point, but I'm basically saying that the study of "mise-en-scene" is not really worth arguing about, and that we should just enjoy what others find so enjoyable about our favorite films. What I get a kick out of is seemingly figuring what intent the director had, no matter how much I personally disagree with it. And maybe's that a futile exercise, but it makes me enjoy films all the more.

Wow, pontificate much? I need to give this film school malarkey a dirt nap. I don't think I even added anything to this already mucky thread.[/i]

[Sloper]

It’s hard to talk about the effectiveness of a film’s mise-en-scène for the same reason that it’s hard to define exactly what the term means: it’s an aspect of artistic creation that has to work naturally and (seemingly) effortlessly if it is to work at all. Those last three (very great) examples cited can of course be taken apart and analysed, but as several people have said it’s hard not to feel pretentious while doing so, perhaps because such analysis feels like a betrayal of something that has been worked over to seem as natural and un-forced as possible.

However, I feel no qualms about being pretentious, and zedz’s post really set me off, so I have a few things to say about Nosferatu. That shot of the boat is a perfect choice to illustrate the brilliance of the film’s mise-en-scène. It ties in with a lot of the imagery in the first half of the film, which links the evil of the vampire with the lowering Carpathian mountains that Hutter has to traverse to reach his destination. The shots of the mountains are the first really unsettling ones in the film, and there isn’t much to them – but such shots punctuate the whole sequence of Hutter’s sojourn at Orlock’s castle, usually indicating the change from day to night.

A good example of how they are used comes just after his arrival at the inn. We have been shown the intimidating mountains several times, and have seen a sinister jackal/wolf emerging from them, so they’re very clearly identified with the forces of evil. Hutter wakes up the next morning and looks out of his window onto an improbably idyllic scene: people and animals are frolicking in the foreground, and just behind them, in the middle of the shot, is a large tree that seems to shelter them. Far in the distance, and also perfectly situated in mid-frame, is the mountain, now shrouded in daylight and barely visible – a perfect visual expression of how the vampire’s power is obscured during the day, but still present and waiting, threatening us with its shadow.

What such moments establish about Orlock is that he is in some sense a malevolent force of nature; he perhaps represents death itself. He feeds upon the earth, and his ability to open doors without touching them (or just walk straight through) almost suggest that he has no tangible existence; it’s significant that he just disappears at the end, and that Hutter and Bulwer might remain unaware of his having visited Ellen that night.

When Orlock’s boat is approaching Wisborg, it is the sea – like the mountains, an unstoppable force of nature – that brings him. In the shot that zedz talks about, it is indeed the almost imperceptible quality of the boat’s progress towards us that makes it so unsettling. It moves naturally, inexorably, its sails filled only by the breath of the equally unstoppable death-bringer hiding below deck. The shots of the boat arriving in Wisborg – such as the one where it rocks up and down on the sea, as though one of the four horsemen of the Apocalpyse were riding it, or the one where it simply drifts into the harbour – also have a sort of ‘natural’ quality to them. So the apparently effortless qualities of the mise-en-scène, and its dependence upon forces of nature such as the mountains and the sea, are intimately related to a central theme of the film.

The term, mise-en-scene, suggests an act of 'putting' things into a shot, and I guess quite often it isn't so artificial; more a case of 'putting' the frame around the right mountain. The scene in the park in Antonioni's Blow-Up is another good example: a simple park comes across as a meticulously designed set, conveying perfectly everything the scene is trying to say. As Schreck said before, mise-en-scene is a term intended to define the director's compositional power, and as such it's very useful when you want to say why a particular director is particularly great.

And as Hypno says, this stuff can smack of film-school bullshit, which is probably because it’s the sort of thing that can be killed stone dead by too much talk – but what the hell.

[King Prendergast]

An excellent explication of this topic can be found in the section titled: "Redefining Mise en Scene," in Chapter 6 of Bordwell's On the History of Film Style.

[filmsyncs]

But I tend to not associate editing with mise en scene. Bad editing can ruin a director's mise en scene... good editing can enhance it. But I think it's improper to include everything the director has an effect on under the category "mise en scene". And it's tough to delineate shot lengths imposed by the director from edits thought up by the editor and ex post facto approved by the director... latter case not a directorial contribution.

Good points.

I don't use the term mise en scene. If we agree that it means everything visually captured in a scene, then scene composition is a fine term. If it means more than that (to some) fine too, but then it becomes too broad to mean much. Seems like a lose/lose.

[Tom Amolad]

I wonder if anyone here who's devoted more time to DVD extras than I have can point to some DVDs that have good commentary tracks or film essays from people who can talk intelligently about mise en scene. In particular, I'd love to hear what's good for classical American cinema, since, unless someone tells me otherwise, I tend to assume any extras on a pre-1970 film released by a major studio are aimed more at the nostalgia crowd than at the film studies crowd. Tips of freestanding film essays would also be appreciated (I've heard tell of a film of one of Manny Farber's lectures, but I gather it isn't available commercially).

[Sloper]

Tag Gallagher is pretty good on this kind of thing - he does a cheap and slightly clumsy, but very insightful video essay on the Second Sight Letter from an Unknown Woman, focussing largely on the mise-en-scene. And I gather he's a fairly prolific writer.

[colinr0380]

Sticking with Criterion discs for the moment I found the Alexander Sesonke essay read by Peter Bodganovich, as well as the Christopher Faulkner scene analyses, on Rules of the Game as particularly good examples of drawing attention to the structure of the film, the length of the shots, the contrast between interior and exterior spaces (and of course the upstairs/downstairs contrast), the placement of characters in frame (both composed and moving towards, away, in and out of frame), and showing how all these elements build to give us more information about the characters and their relative status and relationships with each other than in the dialogue, as well as adding a sense of irony to otherwise straightly played scenes, such as the final speech by the Marquis restoring the world to rights.

I also liked the moment in the Flesh For Frankenstein commentary where Maurice Yacowar talks of a confrontation between the Baron and his wife in which his watching assistant, who begins as the centrally focused main character of the scene, starts getting pushed further and further to the side of the frame as the other personalities assert their power over the composition, and the way that sense of being 'pushed out' works to motivate Otto in later scenes.

I must have missed this thread earlier but reading through the previous comments I think I would agree with Herr Schreck that mise en scene is important to understand. Though beyond saying that audiences do not recognise the term (which I would argue that many people would, if not as consciously as other elements that inform the totality of mise en scene such as performance or cinematography, and so would perhaps attribute the greatness of a scene elsewhere than its total composition), I would go so far as to say it is perhaps not just audiences who have forgotten it but also filmmakers, and I think we could further discuss this from the idea that many directors, especially in modern 'Blockbuster' films seem to be more managers of mountains of material they receive rather than engaged participants in the filmmaking process - when many filmmakers in action movies are faced with mountains of A, B, C....Q etc cameras all shooting a scene, they do not have to make compositional choices until much later in the editing room (as they 'build a performance' from fragments). I sometimes wonder if this is what leads to well made, but extremely impersonal films, as you get the impression that the director was never really present on set (as in the Bond films, where separate directors are brought in for the dramatic elements and all the action sequences are farmed out to the second unit, a disconnect which became more and more obvious during the Brosnan series in particular. Though even in this process some directors are more suited than others, Martin Campbell for example has rebooted the series twice now with Goldeneye and Casino Royale, and seems to work better in this framework), or if they were present, not 'mentally' there! Someone like Peckinpah could plough their own furrow through masses of material (and apparently upset conventional editors in the process if the Straw Dogs commentaries are to be believed), or Antonioni could craft that final sequence of Zabriske Point from multiple speed cameras, but it seems as if you really have to be in complete control of your craft, and more importantly completely engaged with your story and aware of what you want to 'say' in the finished sequence to do this.

I do not really see this happening very much now, more a retreat into conventionality of what worked before and budget used to change anything that does not test well and on the other extreme the Mumblecore movement - where lack of technique is celebrated but unlike Cassavetes without any motivation behind that removal. "There's no there there".

This is one of the reasons why I find Lars von Trier so fascinating as, for all the faux naturalism of the Dogme movement (which seems to have just been a personal project to connect more with actors and escape from his stifling over-determined visual style), he often has an artistic purpose behind making a film that motivates its production.

I would also agree with zedz though when he stated that in some ways mise en scene is too expansive a term. I much prefer talking about what a director does with his material in the context of a particular film - how the mise en scene affects the content and its appropriateness for the material - and then continue by comparing that to the style of their other films to see if this brings up interesting questions, or philosophical shifts towards their filmmaking (as far as such shifts can be determined just by viewing the finished films).

[Jun-Dai]

I generally use (or rather, don't use) the term mise-en-scène to refer more to the choice of what to put in the frame, and to some extent the arrangement of those things in relationship to each other. So in this sense, the choice to have a large gun in the frame and almost nothing else during the climactic scene of The Man Who Knew Too Much is a matter of mise-en-scene. The lighting, camera angle, etc.—not so much.

Another way of thinking of it: I would define a film's visual style as having two major aspects: mise-en-scène and cinematography. Some aspects of lighting, camera movement, choice of film stock, color grading, ENR,j etc., I would largely put under cinematography. Art direction, staging, decisions about what's in the frame and what's not in the frame, off-stage elements, etc., I would put under mise-en-scène.

Composition I would put somewhere in the middle. The choice to frame a shot as a long shot rather than a medium shot is a choice of mise-en-scène. The choice to use a telephoto rather than wide lense is more a choice of cinematography, though it will affect the mise-en-scène. The choice to have a narrow depth-of-field is more one of cinematography, but could certainly be seen as both.

Lighting is a bit more complicated, where I would say that as lighting reveals decisions about the presence of light sources (or the creation of shadows) it is an aspect of mise-en-scène but as it creates or reduces contrast, or affects depth-of-field, etc., it is an aspect of cinematography. This is not to say that lighting choices are cleanly divided between the two, but that there are two ways of thinking about lighting: as an indication of the presence of a light source or a tool for creating shadows on the one hand, and as a means of affecting photographic style on the other (e.g., increasing light to allow for slower film stock or higher f-stop, using diffuse lights to create a softer look, etc.).