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Luigi Calingasan Conti 2008 18583

Prof. Roehl Jamon
Film 201
November 24, 2014

Developments in Film Theory:

Arguments Through Mise en scne

So I consider mise en scne as a means of transforming the world into a spectacle

given primarily to oneself yet what artist does not know instinctively that what is seen is less
important than the way of seeing, or a certain way of needing to see or be seen

- Alexandre Astruc

Film criticism is, at its core, an act of communication. On the one hand, the critic aims
to understand the inner meanings of a particular filmic product, by careful analyses of the
various elements put forth within, and outside of, the frame. On the other hand, the critics
purpose is also to make himself as clear as possible to his audience, by articulating how he
comes upon a particular conclusion regarding a filmic product. This is, perhaps, why the
language of film criticism often straddles a fine line between cinematic jargon and laymans
comprehensibility. The concept of mise en scne is a prime example of this sensibility.
Adopted from the technical articulations of the theater and the fine arts, mise en scne has
entered popular usage, thanks to cinematic scholars that have placed emphasis on its various
elements in the course of their writing for a popular audience. Throughout the history of film
criticism alongside that of the cinema, critics have referred to mise en scne with reference to
evolving political and sociocultural philosophies. Like the films that they are devoted to
analyzing, film critics, thus, become a critical product of their temporal location in history
discursive of the sensibilities that have shaped, and are shaped by, a continuously changing
society.

A Problem of Definition

Mise en scne literally means, in the original French, putting into the scene1. As a
derivative of the theatre, thus, cinematic mise en scne includes everything that overlaps with
it: setting, costume, the behavior of the figures, and the lighting. For some critics, this definition
is enough, referring to those elements which are staged in front of the camera at the time of
filming. However, this particular theatrical definition of mise en scne lacks reference to the
cinematic frames specificities. Whereas theatrical space is so often dead space, filmic space
is more dynamic, and can be manipulated by the centering function of the frame2. As a
consequence, some film critics tend to approach cinematic mise en scne as involving not only
the aforementioned elements, but also the composition of the frame, its movement, and the
whole cinematographic toolkit available to the filmmaker. According to this latter definition,

1
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008, p.112.
2
Barrett Hodsdon. The Mystique of Mise en scne Revisited Continuum: The Australian Journal of
Media and Culture 5.2, 1990, p.73.
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cinematography and special effects are both aspects of mise en scne, even though the former
is performed by, rather than placed in front of, the camera, and the latter is added to the image
in post-production3. For the purposes of the present discussion, the latter, more expansive,
definition will be followed.

Theoretical Beginnings: The Anti-Realistic Tendency

Despite the foregoing discussion on cinemas relationship with theater, it is pertinent to

remember that the moving image was at first a technological novelty, developed out of a
demand for entertainment and brought about by the flourishing of imperialism. The earliest
writings on film were concerned mostly with its value within the social sphere. At the time, the
first audiences were awed by how film managed to entertain while reproducing life, and
regarded film as a mere technical novelty. Luis G. Urbina, in Mexico City, for example, wrote in
1895:

The popular masses, uncouth and infantile, experience while sitting in front of
the screen the enchantment of the child to whom the grandmother has recounted a
fairy tale; but I fail to understand how, night after night, a group of people who have the
obligation of being civilized can idiotize themselves [in movie theaters] with the
incessant repetition of scenes in which the aberrations, anachronisms, inverisimilitudes,
are made ad hoc for a public of the lowest mental level, ignorant of the most
educational notions4

On the other hand, the very first critical studies in film began to emerge in appreciation
of the medium. At the heart of their inquiry was the question of whether it is art or merely a
mechanical recorder of visual phenomena. In what is now considered the first theoretical
articulation of the filmic medium, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study, the German
psychologist Hugo Munsterberg (1863-1916) answered in favor of the former. As with theater,
film according to Munsterberg relies on the elements of mise en scne (although this is to be
dubbed only by later theorists) to command the viewers involuntary attention: An unusual
face, a queer dress, a gorgeous costume, or a surprising lack of costume, a quaint piece of
decoration, may attract our mind and even hold it spellbound for a while5. The close-up, in
particular, is regarded by Munsterberg as an essentially cinematic technique that has
objectified in our world of perception our mental act of attention and it has furnished art with a
means which far transcends the power of any theater stage6. For Munsterberg, thus, the
representation of physical reality is the concern not of cinema, but of theater. While the latter is

3
Suzanne Spiedel. Film Form and Narrative in Jill Nelmes (ed.) Introduction to Film Studies. New York:
Routledge, 2011, p.87.
4
Carl J. Mora. Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society 1896-1988. Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1988, p.6.
5
Hugo Munsterberg. Hugo Munsterberg On Film: The Photoplay A Psychological Study and Other
Writings. A. Langdale (ed.) London: Routledge, [1917] 2002, p.84.
6
Ibid, p.87.
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governed by the same laws that govern nature, the former is free to be shaped and sculpted by
the inner movements of the mind.

The earliest masterpieces of the silent era emerged out of a conscious effort to
distinguish the medium from photorealistic presentation. The primary practitioner of this
tendency is the French magician Georges Melis (1861-1938), who substituted staged illusion
for unstaged reality, and contrived plots for everyday incidents7. Inspired by his theatrical
traditions, he utilized the extensive manipulation of mise en scne to create fantastical worlds.
In one of his greatest films, A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune, 1902), the moon
harbors a grimacing man in the moon and the stars are bulls eyes studded with the pretty
faces of music hall girls. By the same token, his actors bowed to the audience, as if they
performed on the stage8. Twenty years later, Meliss techniques informed new filmmakers at
the end of the First World War, forming the French Impressionist movement. During this time,
filmmakers sought to explore the cinema as an art, and the films that they produced displayed
a fascination with pictorial beauty and an interest in intense psychological exploration9. Their
theory is that cinema as an art form must create an experience that leads to emotions for the
spectator. To do this, they formulated the concept of photognie, a term that describes a
filmed objects expressiveness. By utilizing the properties of the camera, Impressionist
theorists believed that the medium of cinema gives us access to a realm beyond everyday
experience. What were the characteristics of mise en scne that French Impressionism
manipulated? For one, they used optical devices to enhance the image. Techniques such as
superimpositions, blurred shots, filters, and shooting into curved mirrors for POV shots were
utilized to create an impression upon the viewer. Other devices of mise en scne may be seen
in the lighting of objects to enhance their photognie as much as possible. French
Impressionists were also fond of using translucent objects to enhance a shots photographic
effect. Although most of the films at this time were shot on location, this did not prevent
Impressionist filmmakers to create compositionally arresting shots to enhance photognie,
such as when Louis Delluc filmed a character walking a country road with the sun opposite the
camera10.

This anti-realistic tendency also greatly informed German Expressionism. Beginning in

1908, proponents of this movement attempted to express raw, extreme emotions, in painting
through garish colors and distortion and in theater through emphasized gestures, loud
declamation of lines, staring eyes, and choreographed movements11. Responding to the
technical peculiarities of the photograph and of the nascent cinema, as well as to the nations
loss in the First World War, German filmmakers began exploring the removal of film from
reality. They did this by tapping spectacles, one of the most successful genres to emerge out

7
Siegfried Kracauer. Basic Concepts in Leo Braudy, Marshall Cohen, Gerald Mast (eds.) Film Theory
and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: OUP, 1992, p.15.
8
Ibid.
9
Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell. Film History: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003,
p.88
10
Ibid., p.97
11
Ibid., p.101
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Germanys postwar cinema. Emulating Italian cinema before the war, with historical epics such
as Quo Vadis? (DAnnunzio, 1924) and Cabiria (Pastrone, 1914), German filmmakers also
produced expansive epics that showcased plotlines derived from history and mise en scne
characterized by extravagance and enormity. But it is with the German Expressionist
movement that filmmakers at the time attempted to completely remove the medium from
reality. Expressionist filmmakers were guided by the principle of exaggeration, and this became
evident mostly in the films mise en scne. Of course, Robert Wienes Das Cabinet des Dr.
Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920) is to be mentioned in this discussion. Caligaris mise
en scne consisted of stylized sets with strange, distorted building painted on canvas
backdrops and flats in a theatrical manner12. Even the films lettering was noted as echoing
distortion. In one scene, the mad psychiatrists desire to imitate Caligari materializes in jittery
characters composing the words I must become Caligari, looming before his eyes on the
road, in the clouds, and in the treetops13.

The acting, too, was highly stylized, as the figures in the narrative made jerky, dancelike
movements. Expressionist acting was deliberately exaggerated to match the style of the
settings. Conrad Veidt, who played a central part in the film, described the actor as being a
visual element within the film, and not merely as a living component of the action:

If the dcor has been conceived as having the same spiritual state as that
which governs the characters mentality, the actor will find in that dcor a valuable aid
in composing and living his part. He will blend himself into the represented milieu, and
both of them will move in the same rhythm14.

In terms of lighting, Expressionist films used simple lighting to illuminate scenes flatly
and evenly to stress the links between the figure and the dcor15. Compositionally, similar
shapes were juxtaposed within a frame, often through the technique of posing human figures
beside distorted trees or structures. Camera movement and peculiar angles were rare, and the
camera often shot a particular scene straight-on, much like the theater. Through such
manipulations of mise en scne, films and film theorists pondered the nature of the filmic
medium. Their answer was primarily the removal of reality from the frame, distorting it either to
express or impress emotion to the viewer.

Theoretical Advancement: The Realist Tendency

Not all film theory in the early years of the medium advocated for the dislocation from
reality. In fact, Siegfried Karacauer, in his influential study From Caligari to Hitler: A
Psychological History of the German Film noted the dangerous implications of the German
Expressionist movement. According to Kracauer, by representing the narrative as a tale told by
a madman, the film reflects the general retreat from the facts of German life, as well as the

12
Ibid., p.103
13
Siegfried Karacauer. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in Leo Braudy, Marshall Cohen, Gerald Mast (eds.)
Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: OUP, 1992, p.28.
14
Conrad Veidt. Faut-il Supprimer les sous-titres? Comoedia 4297. 27 September 1924, p.3.
15
Thompson and Bordwell, Film History, p.108.
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abuse of power and authority characteristic of German political institutions. He notes that, by
using highly stylized studio walls, the Expressionist cinema reveals a turning away from a
reality, which is haphazard and uncontrollable since it diverted the audience from serious
appraisals of social realities. In doing so, he essentially makes an argument that Expressionism
heralded and paved the way to the rise of Adolf Hitler16.

To be sure, the debate between realism and anti-realism has existed since before the
German Expressionist movement. The pioneers of the medium, the Lumiere brothers, were
themselves advocates of strict realism in their films. Their immortal first reels Lunch Hour at the
Lumiere Factory (Sortie des usines Lumiere), Arrival of a Train (LArivee dun train), and La Place
des Cordeliers a Lyon were shot in public places, with throngs of people moving in different
directions. These were the so-called actualities whose mise en scne are unstaged, natural,
and free of manipulation. Whereas the anti-realist tendency was informed by the theater, the
realist tendency was informed by another art form: photography. And yet film goes beyond it in
two respects: firstly, it captures movement itself, not only one or another of its phases; and
secondly, it seizes upon physical reality through staging of the action and its surroundings17.
Sound was also a very important factor in the development of the theoretical discussions
regarding reality. Although anti-realist thinkers and filmmakers moved for cinema to remain
visual at all costs, the advent of synchronous sound brought about a reawakening of
theoretical discourse in favor of realism as the social raison detre of the medium18. This
reawakening was also caused by the political situation in major film industries, where
dictatorships and authoritarian states began to control the filmic apparatus as a means of
propaganda.

As a result, filmmakers in states such as Germany, Soviet Russia, and Italy began to
make products that echoed socialist realism, a movement that advocated the reflection of
ideology. During this time, civil war films such as Chapayev (Sergei and Georgy Vasiliev, 1934)
and We from Krostadt (Dzigan, 1936) provided justification and continued support for the 1917
October Revolution. Biographies also fueled the appetite for historical reappraisals for
important figures of tsarist Russia, such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great19. Poetic
realism, on the other hand, became the norm in France, signaling a gradual break between the
cinema of fantasy, to a cinema of reality. This movement centered on characters in the margins
of society, echoing tones of nostalgia and bitterness20. In Germany, Leni Reifenstahls Triumph
of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1935) is perhaps the most notable example of this realist
tendency, using the documentary form to glorify Hitlers rising Nazi party and the fascist
ideology21. Although the realist tendency in cinema began to take hold in the years prior to the

16
Kracauer, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, p.30.
17
Kracauer, Basic Concepts, p.15.
18
Robert Stam. Film Theory: An Introduction. New York: Blackwell, p.20
19
Thompson and Bordwell, Film History, p.265.
20
Ibid.
21
Susan Sontag. Fascinating Fascism in Bill Nichols (ed.) Movies and Methods Vol. I. Berkeley: UC
Press, 1976, p.31
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outbreak of the Second World War, it was not until the post-war era that it took on its full form,
this time in Italy.

In the aftermath of the war, Europe lay in ruins, and the film industries that were so
lucrative prior to the war had the impetus to rebuild. As a country which was formally part of
the Axis powers, but which had also suffered under the Axis, Italy had lost its national identity
and therefore had to reconstruct it through the cinema22. The Italian political scene, eager to
break off from a recent history of fascism under Mussolini, began to advocate for left-leaning
ideas that would form the basis for a new Italy. Filmmakers moved from the studio to the war-
ravaged Italian streets and countryside, and began critical inquiry into the future of the nation
through Neorealism.

Mise en scne is one of the most distinctive features of Italian Neorealism. Films under
this movement are often thought to be on location, using nonfactors filmed in rough, offhand
compositions, but, in truth, the movement relies no less on artifice than do other film styles23.
Most interior scenes are actually filmed in studios, and sound is post-dubbed. The prototypical
realist film Vittorio de Sicas Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette, 1948) admittedly employed
non-professional actors, but the voices of the characters were supplied by other actors. Even
when filmed on location, moreover, scenes contain smooth camera movements, crisp focus,
and choreographed staging in several planes24. The musical score of the mise en scne as also
typically sweeping and operating, emphasizing the emotional development of the central
characters. These peculiarities, however, do not deviate from the realist tendency that
permeated postwar cinema. Italian Neorealism emphasized naturalistic mise en scne in direct
contrast to the pre-war anti-realist tendency of, for example, German Expressionism. Even a
brief comparative look at The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Bicycle Thief makes this point
apparent.

Hollywood Theory: Mise en scne in Genre Cinema

The foregoing discussion has so far given emphasis on the theoretical break between
realism and anti-realism, with emphasis on the mise en scne. Both branches occupy a unique
place in film criticism, with filmic productions also being consciously informed by a particular
realistic or anti-realistic movement. However, these developments mostly occurred in Europe,
especially in nations whose cinema industries are often dwarfed by a more real and concrete
dilemma: Hollywood.

The American studio system, formed and established alongside European cinema
during the early 1900s, created standardized approaches to establish firmer guidelines for
creating intelligible plots. Thus, was born the classical narrative cinema, centered on clear
chains of causes and effects, involving character psychology and consistent character traits.
Genres also emerged out of this development, relying on tropes and particular elements of the

22
Stam, p. 73.
23
Thompson and Bordwell, Film History, p.362.
24
Ibid.
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mise en scne to convey their narratives. A prime example of this is the Western. French film
critic Andre Bazin noted that John Fords My Darling Clementine and Stagecoach are the
classic examples of the genre, combining traditional narrative tropes with typically Western
mise en scne25. In this regard, geography is essential. Westerns are set in and around the
backdrop of the American West, with symbols that pertain to the setting, such as valleys along
the horizon, as well as mountains, rivers, and deserts, that dominate the landscape.
Iconography is also an essential element, with the characters within the narrative garbed in
identifiable symbols, such as the leather vests, cowboy hats, revolvers, boots and saddles,
and, of course, horses. Antagonists are also portrayed in Native American attire. In their classic
textbook Film Art: An Introduction, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson also make the same
assertions:

Iconography reinforces this basic duality [between civilized order and lawless
frontier]. The covered wagon and the railroad are set against the horse and canoe; the
schoolhouse and church contrast with the lonely campfire in the hills. As in most
genres, costume is iconographically significant, too. The settlers' starched dresses and
Sunday suits stand out against Indians' tribal garb and the cowboys' jeans and
Stetsons26.

Film noir is also a genre that is distinctly identified with its mise en scne. These dark,
pessimistic Hollywood films of the 1940s and early 1950s present a clear pattern of visual
motifs, making film noir one group of films that cannot be fully understood except through
analyses of mise en scne. J.A. Place and L.S. Patterson, in Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir
make it a point that the genre is principally identified with anti-traditional, low-key lighting: It
is the constant opposition of light and dark that characterizes film noir cinematography27. The
mise en scne of the film noir also serves to unsettle, jar, and disorient the viewer in correlation
with the disorientation felt by noir heroes. Place and Patterson observe:

[c]ompositional balance within the frame is often disruptive and unnerving.

Those traditionally harmonious triangular three-shots and balanced two-shots, which
are borrowed from the compositional principles of Renaissance painting, are seldom
seen in the better film noir. More common are bizarre, off-angle compositions of figures
placed irregularly in the frame, which create a world that is never stable or safe 28

In so analyzing distinctive genres through their mise en scene, film theorists have thus
acknowledged that stylistic elements of films and not just their narratives are significant in
their analysis. Furthermore, critics such as Bazin, Bordwell, Place, and Patterson, by unifying

25
Andre Bazin. The Evolution of the Western in Bill Nichols (ed.) Movies and Methods Vol. I. Berkeley:
UC Press, 1976, p.151.
26
Bordwell and Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction, p.328.
27
J.A. Place and L.S. Patterson. Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir in Bill Nichols (ed.) Movies and
Methods Vol. I. Berkeley: UC Press, 1976, p.330
28
Ibid., p.333
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particular films that indicate a distinct pattern, have recognized that mise en scne occupies a
pivotal role in the formation and identification of genres.

The Authorial Control of Mise en scne

Since the mid-1940s, French directors, screenwriters, and film theorists have been
concerned with the question of authorship. Who could properly be considered the author of a
particular film? Alexandre Astruc, in a 1948 essay, posited that the cinema had at that time
achieved maturity, and that it would attract serious artists who would use film to express their
ideas and feelings. The filmmaker-author writes with his camera, Astruc notes, as a writer
writes with his pen29. The first issue of Cahiers du cinema, published in 1951, provided a focus
for films with regards to their authors. For example, Diary of a Country Priest was reviewed as a
Robert Bresson film, and The Little Flowers of Saint Francis was reviewed as a Roberto
Rossellini film30. Francois Truffaut, in his famous essay A Certain Tendency of the French
Cinema published in the same periodical, declared that the new films would resemble the
person who made it, not so much through autobiographical content but rather through the
style, which impregnates the film with the personality of its director. Real talent, according to
Truffaut and the Cahiers critics, will come out no matter what the circumstances of the filmic
production31.

One of the more notable directors that came under the subject of Cahiers critics was
Federico Fellini (1920-1993). Andre Bazin, in 1957, had already noted recurring imagery within
Fellinis oeuvre, despite having made only five films at the time. He noted that the angel statue
in I Vitellioni (1953) reappears as the angelic wire-walking fool in La Strada (1954). Careful
scrutiny of Fellinis whole career will also reveal recurring motifs in the mise en scne. For
example, the director almost always returns to the circus, the music hall, the deserted road,
and the seashore locations that serve a particular purpose within his narrative. The seashore,
in particular, is a setting within the mise en scne of Fellinis films wherein he makes a
revelation about his characters. For example, in 8, the seashore is where the young Guido
experiences his first sexual encounter. In La Strada, the shore is where the film ends as
Zampano calls out to the dead Gelsomina in pitiful futility. In La Dolce Vita, Fellini also captures
the protagonist at daybreak by the seashore, where he lies hopelessly oblivious after a night of
debauchery. Auteur film critics also note Fellinis usage of dream sequences, indicated by a
mise en scne informed by surrealism and fragmentation. The music within Fellinis films are
also notable for their circus-like atmosphere, as well as for being penned by acclaimed
composer Nino Rota.

To be sure, the present landscape of cinema still bears imprints of the auteur theory.
Directors such as Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan, and Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal,
and Lav Diaz, in the domestic scene, are held in high regard because of the stylistic

29
Alexandre Astruc, The Birth of a New Avant Garde: La Camera-Stylo in Peter Graham (ed.) the New
Wave. Garden City: Doubleday, 1967, p.23.
30
Bordwell and Thompson. Film History: An Introduction, p.416.
31
Stam, p.84
 Conti 9

peculiarities that permeate their body of work. However, the auteur theorys heyday has come
and gone, owing also to the vehement criticism that was aimed at it during the 1960s. It is,
nevertheless, a useful but not exclusive lens for analyzing films and filmic mise en scne as
works of art.

Matters of Form, Language, and Narrative: Mise en scne Today

As a result to a heightened sensitivity to film criticism during the 1970s, society was
influenced by a trend in theory that concerned itself with the study of cinema as a language.
The great Soviet filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, even in the early 1920s,
thought about films being governed by rules of grammar and organized into intelligible literary
structures. In the 1950s, film theorists and scholars borrowed from anthropology, linguistics,
and anthropology and other social sciences to create an intellectual movement that essentially
viewed each shot of a film much like a sentence in a novel or other written work. Although this
movement focused mostly in the relation of one shot to another (i.e. montage), the elements
within a single shot may be interpreted as conveying meaning in and of themselves. In this
light, mise en scne is an important factor in the language of cinema, with the subtlest of
details providing critical changes in what each shot or sentence is attempting to convey.

How does current film criticism tackle mise en scne? In a way, structuralism remains
the dominant theoretical framework. Critics such as Roger Ebert, David Edelstein, and Richard
Corliss still pertain to the vicarious elements of each film including (but not necessarily) mise en
scne to convey how they feel with the cinematic product. For example, in one of Eberts last
reviews, for The Spectacular Now (Ponsoldt, 2013), he writes:

When they make love the scene is handled perfectly by the director, James
Ponsoldt. Neither is a virgin, neither is experienced. They perform the task seriously and
with care, Aimee hands Sutter a condom and he puts in on and enters her carefully and
they look solemnly into each other's eyes. None of that wild thrashing about that
embarrasses older actors, who doth protest too much32.

Here, he analyzes the acting as part of the films mise en scne, evaluating whether it is
natural or unnatural, or whether it is performed well or performed poorly. The key element in
current film criticism or at least the predominant one is that the narrative is king.
Structuralism, in essence, was subsumed into narratology, invoked in order to dissect the
fundamentals of filmic storytelling. In doing so, film critics have essentially stripped down film
narrative with no reference to mise en scne even though the latter had dominated film
criticism for several decades33. Narratology views mise en scne as a mere ornamental overlay
and not as an intricate part of narrative dynamics in film. This is, perhaps because mise en
scne cannot be readily reconciled with purely literary constructs it is a visual, spatial, and
temporal element that eludes and will continue to elude the written word.

32
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-spectacular-now-2013
33
Hodsdon, p.81
 Conti 10

Conclusion

Much like films themselves, film criticism and film theory is an act of communicating
what the author believes is true. It does not attempt to convey objective observations in order
to justify a particular conclusion. And rightly so. Film flourishes as a form of social discourse,
and cinematic reality is made to be questioned. The analysis of mise en scne is but one in a
multitude of means by which this may be done. From questions of reality and illusion, to
questions of reality, authorship, and narrative, it is essential that filmic truth remains elusive.
Only then will we, as film scholars and practitioners, be able to make sense of our chosen
artistic endeavor.
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APPENDIX

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