"Mise-en-scene," what does it mean?

Raymond Burr takes it and doesn't like it from Robert Ryan, as Rock Hudson looks on in brotherly admiration, Horizons West, Budd Boetticher, 1952

Cahiers: For ten years Cahiers said that mise en scene existed. Now one has to say the opposite instead.

Godard: Yes, it's true. It doesn't exist. We were wrong. 

—"Let's Talk About Pierrot," Cahiers du Cinema 171, October 1965, reprinted in Godard by Godard, edited and translated by Tom Milne, 1972

As per Wikipedia, "mise-en-scene has been called 'film criticism's "grand undefined term"'" and while it's arguable that its literal French definition denotes something reasonably specific, over the years the term has become a kind of amorphous shorthand pertaining to visual language and directors we like. I recall a friend who went to NYU film school in the early '80s (one of her classmates was future video director and Two Lovers co-screenwriter Ric Menello) telling me about a faux-catechism that circulated casually among the students: "Who is [director X]?" "[Director X] is an auteur." "Why is [director x] an auteur?" "Because he has mise-en-scene." And there you had it. The non-specificity with which the term has tended to get thrown around enabled David Kamp and Lawrence Levi to make some good-natured sport of cinephiles in their book-length jape The Film Snob's Dictionary. And yet, it persists, kinda sorta, in part because, to borrow a notion Christy Lemire recently put forward w/r/t Apichatpong Weerasethakul, it's fun to say!

Yesterday I trekked over to the Film Forum to catch a double bill of early '50s Universal programmers directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Robert Ryan, and it did not begin auspiciously. The print of the first picture on the bill, 1952's Horizons West, while visually better than okay, had a completely fucked up soundtrack. What came out of the speakers were a lot of optical track artifact, almost nothing in terms of sound effects and music, and dialogue so thoroughly muffled and scratchy that even when paying very close aural attention, it was largely undecodable.

This state of affairs produced considerable disapprobation on the audience's part. The film was stopped, equipment was adjusted, and the film was started again; same bad result. This is a rarely screened picture and a lot of the New York cinephile usual suspects who are sometimes cited as lacking in social and hygienic graces were becoming discomfitingly restless; eventually the film was stopped again, management deigned to cancel the screening and substitute The Naked Spur in the double feature...and a few in the audience, myself included, suggested that since the immediate alternative would have been a dark theater for about an hour, why not complete the screening of the print, inaudible sound notwithstanding? "It'll be pure mise-en-scene," I remarked to a critic acquaintance who was sitting behind me. "It's not as if we're watching this for the dialogue," he noted. (The script and story were by Louis Stevens, a stalwart whose filmography dates back to the '20s.)

Indeed not. The lack of sound compelled, maybe even forced, us to watch the film with a different sort of concentration; to focus on what the visuals were telling us, shot by shot. The story is of a couple of brothers, Ryan and Rock Hudson, coming home to Austin, Texas after Civil War defeat, and how Ryan turns ruthless rustler and land-grabbed and brother Hudson is eventually forced into a position to bring his older brother to justice. Now Horizons West is not particularly noteworthy in the respects that mise-en-scene originalists might value; it was a low budget studio B-picture made using the resources available to said studio. The cinematography was by Charles P. Boyle, then in the middle of a multi-year run at Universal; he'd soon be tapped by Disney to shoot the Davy Crockett pictures. The set design...well, not to put too fine a point on it, but what Variety would call the tech credits are all executed at a level of professionalism that was a point of pride with name studio product. As for what Boetticher was bringing to the table, this picture was one of a bunch he made in the early '50s after his 1951 passion project Bullfighter and the Lady and it's kind of clear that he was doing these jobs as jobs but at the same time at least trying to enjoy himself a little. As such, the film plays like an exercise in solid, unobtrusive directorial craft. "A very quiet, elemental camera," was how Andrew Sarris described the Boetticher stylistic signature, hastening to add "elemental but not elementary." In Horizons West, it's both elemental and elementary. The pacing and alternation of a series of camera setups that's limited by constraints of time and budget is what we might call textbook excellence. The relationships between the characters is instantly established via the way they're placed in medium establishing shots, and as a given scene progresses, a simple cut to a tighter shot, combined with the acting (Ryan's squint on horseback, along with his dusty gray uniform, convey a not-poignant but rather cynical sense of postwar disillusionment, and comes to define his character) pushes those relationships and the action further. A quite beautiful example comes in a poker game that Ryan's character joins with Raymond Burr, playing a ruthless cattle baron whom Ryan eventually turns the tables on. The dealing and raising is shown via a couple of angles around the table; then, as Julie Adams, playing Burr's wife and, natch, a frustrating love object of Ryan's, walks in to the scene the camera settles on a simple straight-ahead medium shot of the three characters. And then something is said that slightly provokes Burr. The next setup is of a medium close-up of Burr, looking irritated. I infer that in shooting this scene, Boetticher knew that he had a limited number of setups he could execute, and in the approach to the terminus to the scene, every setup had to count. And so, while the editors cut away once or twice from the medium closeup of Burr back to the "master," Boetticher and Burr pack a lot of "action" into that medium closeup, including Burr giving a menacing squeeze of Adams' arm. 

So it goes for the rest of the picture. There's a bit of visual poetry when Ryan first infiltrates the camp of dissolute war veterans that he's going to turn into his gang, a descent-to-hell resonance that's extremely pleasing...but for the most part, it's clarity and momentum and the necessary information placed in the correct space with little sense of fuss or strain. Which could, in a sense, be mise-en-scene.

UPDATE: In comments, I am chastised (not, thankfully, in the manner suggested by Emile Meyer's Lt. Kello in Sweet Smell of Success) by a concerned soul for not spelling the term under consideration properly. Honest, officer, I never could figure out how to work the accent grave on my Mac keyboard, try as I might. But this morning, before seven a.m., through dedicated research and application, I finally cracked it, and so, comme ça: mise-en-scène! And now, without hyphens: mise en scène! Unitalicized: mise en scène! And while I'm at it, Buñuel!

Comments

[Michael Adams]

BB does something similar to your example in Seven Men from Now. Gail Russell is torn between ineffectual husband Walter Reed and manly Randy Scott. BB has the couple drive away in their wagon with Scott, standing in the background, framed between them to underscore their emotional distance. Take that, Jean-Luc.

This excellent column is also a wonderful example of the distinction between you and Wells, who would have a hissy fit about the sound problem.

[Matt Zoller Seitz]

Boetticher is a master of -- can we just call it blocking for the camera? Because that's what I always thought mise-en-scene meant -- the positioning of actors in the frame in a way that communicates their relationships to one another, with camera moves or changes in distance indicating a shift in those relationships.

Mastery of blocking for the camera -- especially the moving camera -- is to my mind a pretty quick way of separating the artists from the hacks.

Especially today. Few contemporary filmmakers block shots in a meaningful way. I look at studio pictures from the pre-war era, ones directed by filmmakers that most cinephiles now consider undistinguished if they have an opinion on them at all, and there's a crackle to the staging, and a sense of purpose to how and when the camera moves, and how and when the people move in conjunction with the camera. Where did they get this talent? Is it a byproduct of having a bit of experience in theater? Most film directors from an earlier era did at least some work in theater before going to film -- do you think that's what's gone missing now, Glenn? Or might there be some other explanation(s)?

I got into BB's use of screen space a little bit in this 2009 video esssay:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/straight-shooting-20081204

[Glenn Kenny]

Well, Matt, not NECESSARILY theater experience/training...but I don't think Hitchcock was whistling "Dixie" when he told Truffaut, almost fifty years ago, as it happens, "The danger is that young people, and even adults, all too often believe that one can become a director without knowing how to sketch a decor, or how to edit."

[Jon Hastings]

Matt asked: "can we just call it blocking for the camera?"

I used to think something along these lines - my preferred mise-en-scene replacement was "composing and staging" - but I think "mise-en-scene" should be held on to and fought for.

One of my film teachers said English speakers should never use the word "montage", because it just means "editing", but I think that's wrong, or, at least, it's a mistaken way of thinking about language. "Montage" might translate as "editing", but, in use, it really means "editing with an expressive purpose". Likewise, "mise-en-scene" is "blocking, staging, and composing with an expressive purpose". To my ear, it certainly sounds a lot better to talk about a director's "mise-en-scene" than to talk about his "blocking, staging, and composing with an expressive purpose".

And I'm not sure anyone should run away from these phrases because they're not always used clearly or they sometimes take on a mystical character. That's part of our heritage, too, and while I respect the clarifying gestures of scholars like David Bordwell, I find an absence of poetry in his poetics as a result.

[Griff]

Glenn, this is simply one of the finest and most thoughtful pieces you've ever posted. I almost wish you could introduce a screening of that damaged HORIZONS WEST print! I'd show up.

[Jaime]

Yes, mise-en-scene also concerns the transition between one frame and the next, whether the shot remains the same, or cuts to another.

And the decor, from junkyards to dead space to luxurious parlors. If you stripped Minnelli's films of their sets and dressed everyone in sackcloth, well, they'd probably still be kind of great, but they wouldn't be, ya know, boss.

There's more to camerawork than by-the-numbers decryption of how the characters relate to one another based on where they're standing.

When Sirk created the famous "Jane Wyman trapped in a television screen" image for ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, it's not great simply because future cinema studies majors could fawn over their own ability to recognize the shot's "meaning." Every other aspect of the scene matters - including its place in the context of the rest of the movie, which certainly concerns itself with more cosmic emotions and energies than just "break free of your suburban prison."

Or, bringing it all back to Hitch (hat tip to you, Glenn), the "reflection" moment in UNDER CAPRICORN wouldn't have had nearly the same power if you handed the same scene over to, say, Fred F. Sears.

[Christian]

" The lack of sound compelled, maybe even forced, us to watch the film with a different sort of concentration; to focus on what the visuals were telling us, shot by shot."

This is a great way to watch a movie, as I've discovered this year while running on a treadmill in my basement. The treadmill is noisy, and I run early, while everyone is still in bed. The treadmill doesn't wake them, but if I were to put on a movie, with the sound on loud enough to hear over the treadmill, all four kids and my wife would soon be downstairs, glaring at me and asking me turn down the stereo.

So I've put movies on without the sound, just to provide something to stare at while I work out. The results are startling. I won't list all the films that I've "seen" in a different way by watching them with the sound off, but I'll cite the most recent: David Cronenberg's "Spider," which I'd never seen before watching it with the sound off. I was fascinated by the mise-en-scene, and then sat down several days later to watch it one evening with the regular film soundtrack turned on, etc. Turns out I liked the movie less with the sound on (although I still kinda dig it).

[Jaime]

Some of the greatest examples of '50s mise-en-scene: the empty, mayonnaise-colored walls in Fritz Lang's American films. The poetry of cinema (hat tip to you, Jon H.) sometimes results in the confounding of our ability to manage what we are seeing/feeling, let alone transcribe our experience into words. One reason why Lang is one of my very favorite directors is his uncanny ability to take ordinary genre material and turn it into something like a panic attack.

This is not to say such things aren't worth studying and discussing and unpacking, but there's more to it - if I wasn't already clear - than whose head is at what angle to whose elbow, and such.

[jbryant]

Matt: Point well taken about supposedly "undistinguished" directors of yore. I'm currently partway through a rewatch of Arthur Lubin's IMPACT (1949 -- not pre-war, but still apt), and shot after shot is filled with interesting framing, staging, blocking and camera movement. I doubt this had an 'A' budget, but the sets are quite impressive, as is the mix of studio and location work.

[The Siren]

Oh Glenn, this is wonderful to read, and as clear and unfussy an explanation of mise-en-scene as I have encountered.

But I confess some sympathy with Tom Shone's contention that mise-en-scene is (mis?)used in so many different ways that it can be terribly hard to know what's meant. You can read him arguing with Nick Davis about it here: http://tomshone.blogspot.com/2010/07/state-of-web-film-criticism-part-2.html. That's why I avoid it in my own writing; it isn't a term I can anchor to my own experiences watching movies. Unless I maybe go with you to see The Bullfighter and the Lady and they turn the sound off.

Amen to @Matt. One **could** move from that observation, to a much less stringent form of auteurism than the one that currently prevails, were one so inclined...

[Jason Haggstrom]

I learned the term in an academic setting where I learned Bordwell & Thompson's definition. They define it as being all the elements in the shot, but not having to do with the camera or the editing. Specifically, they define the aspects of mise-en-scene as setting, costume and makeup, lighting, and staging (movement and performance). To quote from their book, FILM ART (8th ed., pg 112):

"In the original French, mise-en-scene means 'putting into the scene,' and it was first applied to the practice of directing plays. Film scholars, extending the term to film direction, use the term to signify the director's control over what appears in the film frame[...] In controlling the mise-en-scene, the director stages the event for the camera."

[Mr. Milich]

Mise-en-scene = what's in the frame.

Evian = naive spelled backwards.

And so on.

[Casey Tourangeau]

Glenn, this is why I read you and always will. Fucking outstanding.

[preston]

A professor of mine at CCNY in the early '90s insisted that we watch films (or at least scenes) MOS. (For the life of me I can not remember which prof or I'd gladly give the credit with gusto.) Anyhow, I travel a good deal and see a lot of stuff on airplanes. I almost never engage the audio and just watch over the corner of my magazine. You really can tell the difference between TV and films through the visual editing (even the crap films.) The 'mise-en-scene' as it were, is apparent in all these ways defined previously, from background setting to camera movement and use of space with the actors. Sure its mysterious, but watching without sound you know if you can follow the story or not simply on visual information (if that matters to you.) Its a facinating exercise actually, and I apply that test to the films that I make just to see if it makes sense on visual terms or if I'm depending on specific dialogue/audio devices to tell that part of the story. Fantastic post as always.

[Hauser Tann]

From Jason Haggstrom's quote of Bordwell & Thompson's Film Art: "In the original French, mise-en-scene means 'putting into the scene,' and it was first applied to the practice of directing plays. Film scholars, extending the term to film direction, use the term to signify the director's control over what appears in the film frame[...] In controlling the mise-en-scene, the director stages the event for the camera."

The above is certainly not incorrect. (Save for the spelling of the term [if one is going to go to the trouble of using the French term, I'd be so bold as to suggest that one spell it correctly...]. The correct spelling is "mise en scène"—grave accent on the 'e', no hyphenation.)

I would add that "mise en scène" is sometimes used simply as a synonym to "direction" (or "réalisation" in French) as understood in its broadest acception. In this usage, the term would certainly encompass the film's soundtrack, a dimension that is excluded even in Bordwell & Thompson's explanation of their "extended" definition.

The Cannes Film Festival's "Prix de la mise en scène" would be a prominent example of an usage of the term in its broadest acception. (Note: the official English translation appears to be "Best Director Award".)

[Glenn Kenny]

"If one is going to go to the trouble of using the French term, I'd be so bold as to suggest one spell it correctly." Yeah, sure thing, Percy Dovetonsils. Except I can't make the accent grave work on this particular keyboard. As for the hyphenation thing, yeah, my bad, think I'll go cut my wrists now. Ciao.

[David Ehrenstein]

Mise en scene is the je ne sais quoi du cinema.

"The script was awful, the actors stunk."

"Ah, mais quelle mise en scene!"

[Jason Haggstrom (haggie)]

I left the book at the office, but I do believe B&T used the accent. Blame me on that for being too lazy to look up how to type it.

I'd also like to give a "here, here" to MZS's remark that "Few contemporary filmmakers block shots in a meaningful way." Too many are obsessed with simply cutting from one medium or close-up shot to another, and moving the camera around for no apparent reason. On the flip side of that, I'm blown away by how tasty Spielberg's camera movements are in talky scenes. Rather than cut, he does exactly what you describe and often moves the camera in time with characters and stops it when everybody has repositioned themselves (a la Kurosawa, who was masterful at this style of blocking + camera movement). I also seem to remember reading that he doesn't typically storyboard these scenes, but composes them on set.

On a side note, I'm kinda horrified to see my mug up there among all the pretty shapes that I'm so used to seeing around these parts. It just doesn't seem right. Note to all, don't ever sign in here with Facebook...

[Peter Nellhaus]

On a somewhat related note, I saw a movie with the aforementioned Mr. Ric Menello in which the sound went out for a few minutes at a critics' screening. I supplied a bit of dialogue not approved by John Huston for "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean". It was a briefly amusing moment for those in the immediate vicinity.

[Gordon Cameron]

>Mastery of blocking for the camera -- especially the moving camera -- is to my mind a pretty quick way of separating the artists from the hacks.

Totally agree. The more I study narrative movies, the more important blocking seems to me. When I was a young film student, camera movement in a vacuum was what interested me most (so many unmotivated dolly-ins in our student flicks!), but now I'm more impressed with the coordination of camera movement and actor movement in a narrative context.

[Jaime]

Wow, people are really impressed by MZS's "ideas," i.e. that cinema is about where actors are standing in relation to each other and the camera. Okay then.

[Matt Zoller Seitz]

No, Jaime, I don't think that's the "only" thing cinema is about. But it's good to try to establish an order of importance when we're talking about the different elements. Otherwise the term becomes an elegant but meaningless synonym for style. Color coordination and hairstyles are part of it too, but not as important as composition, camera movement, blocking and cutting.

[Gordon Cameron]

>Wow, people are really impressed by MZS's "ideas," i.e. that cinema is about where actors are standing in relation to each other and the camera. Okay then.

I don't know where he said that, nor where I indicated being impressed by it. My response, at any rate, is confined to the context of directorial technique in narrative cinema -- how to use camera movement to enhance and underscore the story, etc. Obviously "cinema" in a grand sense can encompass a great deal more than that. Probably my thoughts are to no small degree contaminated by my film school training, which was very Hollywoood-focused, production-focused, and narrative-focused.

[jbryant]

Well, it's not as if directors DON'T have to concern themselves with where the actors are in relation to each other and the camera - generally speaking, of course.

As for "camera movement in a vacuum," I still shudder when I recall wasting a couple of hours on a set in film school by using a mini-crane to execute a shot that really only required a slight tilt and dolly back or zoom out. My production professor popped in during this, and just gave a wry smile, knowing we crazy kids had to get it out of our system.

[Jason Haggstrom (haggie)]

@Jaime: I'd say that the interpolation that MZS made from Glenn's observations--that greater attention was paid to designing shots around blocking for the camera in the early decades of filmmaking than is today--is a subject worth discussing.

[Simon Abrams]

The way I've understood mise-en-scene was the way a director fills a frame and how it fills it. It's the relation of objects with people, with the camera to the objects in the frame, with blocking, with set design, costumes, lighting, etc. It's the over-all effect of how one presents information in any given scene. But I readily admit that this is a reductive view of the phrase, which apparently encompasses multitudes of interpretations.

[Jaime]

Matt, I'm not really in favor of establishing any such thing. As a 96.9%-pure auteurist I tend to do a few things strangely:

1) I try to remain open to how a director directs instead of imposing an "established" set of ideas. Lang isn't Boetticher isn't Kurosawa isn't Antonioni isn't Anger and so on.
2) Use what I find as a "lead" as opposed to a "criterion."
3) I try to listen as well as I see - cinema is affected by sound as much as image. "We didn't come here for the dialogue," ho ho. Funny, but I hope that doesn't indicate any moviegoer's actual philosophy.
4) People standing here and there, in relation to each other and the camera, that might be of paramount importance to one director, but not another. Maybe it's also the easiest thing for people to latch onto. To me it's just one thing. I'm about to head into RED DESERT. Blocking for the camera will rank anywhere from 1st to 29th and is likely to change from shot to shot, even frame to frame.

If that isn't rigorous enough, oh well.

[Jaime]

I agree with Simon's take most of all.

[jim emerson]

I think there are some pretty good definitions of "mise en scène" above (hey, just because we don't have a pithy equivalent for the term in English doesn't mean it doesn't mean anything!) -- blocking of the actors and the camera is part of it, but it's more comprehensively the arrangement of all elements within the frame in the course of each shot, which may or may not involve camera movement. (It also involves deciding when and where to cut into the next shot.) That's a useful concept to keep in mind (and I'm with MZS that it's the essence of moviemaking), even if (as Siren says) I find using the term "mise en scène" myself to be a little awkward outside of a classroom context.

[Simon Abrams]

Holy shit, Jaime Christley agreed with me!