> That's what I don't get about mise-en-scene. Isn't it the same as
the more pedestrian phrase composition?
For me, composition is an element of mise en scene, but mise en scene cannot be reduced to composition (though there is not one universally accepted defiintion of mise en scene which is famously undefineable).
I was just watching THE AVIATOR. In one sequence Howard Hughes and Katherine Hepburn are in the bathroom. Scorsese establishes their positions in this space with a brief overhead shot: Hughes is on the edge of the tub and Hepburn is on the floor tending to his cut foot.
Hepburn launches into a speech about the dangers of fame. Blanchett puts tremulousness and fear into her voice and Scorsese frames it so that she is on screen left and there is just an expanse of white space to her right (the underside of the vanity which we know/figure out from the information provided in that overhead shot).
For the first time in the film, Scorsese has allowed an expanse of blank space to fill the screen (he filmed it in 2:35 so it is widescreen to the max). Suddenly that empty space starts to be unsettling, matching the unease in Hepburn's words and Blanchett's presentation of them. Words, performance, composition, shot duration, and contrast with all previous shots combine together to impart a sense of nervousness and fear that far exceeds what any one element could convey alone. Watching Blanchett's gestures and listening to her delivery of the dialogue makes I understand what she is talking about. Mix in the unsettling white space next to her and I feel it deep inside me. That for me is the power of mise en scene.
> I like reading that kind of language in relation to painting, but if I'm
> watching
television and hear Meadow say to Tony "What I said was, the state can crush
the individual" and Tony says "New Jersey?" it isn't the composition of the
scene I'm primarily interested in.
You can choose to ignore the composition. It is not required that you pay attention. But with the work of directors I believe are great such as Howard Hawks and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, while you could get a great deal of enjoyment focusing on the dialogue and performance alone, you would (in my opinion) cheat yourself of a much more robust experience by not focusing on visual composition, editing and use of space (including off screen space) as well.
Appreciating mise en scene requires me to pay attention to many formal elements at the same time as well as watching the film as an integrated whole. TJ says it is similar to what he does when we go to a concert: he hears the work as whole, but also hears each section and can even tell me when an individual player is out of tune. The best I can do is respond at a much more the rudimentary level.
> I don't think that means I don't see the composition, just that I'm
> focused
elsewhere.
Which is fine. But for me it is hard to focus just on one area to the exclusion of others. In other words, it is hard to shut off the training it has taken so many years and countless screenings to attain. Just as I re-write bad prose in my mind as I read it, I re-direct a bad film as I watch it.
> Ford said, "When you can decide that putting the horizon at the top of
> the
frame or the bottom of the frame is better than putting it in the middle of
the frame,
you may, someday, make a good picture maker. Now get outta here."
Composition is certainly plays a part, but the goal is not "prettiness," but the creation of the complex web of meanings/emotions/sensations that is mise en scene. If you isolated the shot from THE AVIATTOR I wrote about above, you would see nothing special about it. It acquires its power from Scorsese making it part of the overall mise en scene of his film.
Also, John Ford was notoriously dismissive of talk about artistry and movies, especially when it came to his own movies. This is true of many directors of Classical Hollywood (though when the scholars and interviewers came calling, they were more than happy to oblige. They knew they were artists. They just hated admitting it).
Brian