Then, what is mise-en-scene? In origin this word , borrowed from the theater, meant literally "placing on the stage". It refers to the way in which a "written play" becomes a "staged play".Can it be translated in english by "film direction"? Yes and no. Let me quote here from a 1970 article by Orson Welles :"Just at this modish moment, everybody Linder 30-and his idiot brother-wants to be a film director. And why not?Let it be whispered that film directing(the very job itself) is often grossly overrated, Good paintings don't come from a bad painter, but good motion pictures are often signed by directors of the most perfect incompetence. Writers, editors and actors do his work,for him. His only task is to speak the words 'action' and 'cut'-and ~o home with the money. Such a man can, as we have seen wing his way through 50 years of film-directing and never be found out (Look, 11-3-70).

Obviously "mise-en- scene" and "authorship" in my vocabulary do not refer to such "film-makers".We called them "real isateurs" or "illustrateurs". Perhaps, here, a comparison with literary "authorship" can help in clarifying of notion of "mise-en-scene" Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote "One is not a writer because one has chosen to say certain things, but because one has chosen to say them in a certain way " This "certain way" is nothing else but what is usually called the "style" of the writer (author) Why should it be any different for cinema?

Let me evoke here the example of Brian Heap, a Jamaican story4eller who used to hold a workshop for young people in Kingston. He read to them a "news item" about bullying. The first time, he put on a raucous dance-hall tape and roared; the adolescents, in turn' raised their fists and roared ; then Reap put on piano music and read the piece with a sympathetic soft voice; the youngsters became subdued and some even cried. Ms Riane Eisler who mentions Heap's workshop in her 1995 book called "Sacred Pleasure", concludes that "how the stories are told can make all the difference" (footnote about Chekov's story). What the Jamaican story-teller did was "mise-en-scene"! ("Sacred Pleasure, Sex, Myth and the Politics of the BodyHarper,San Francisco,1995~She is the author of: "The Chalice and the Blade",1987)

In our Parisian group of the 50's and 60s we deemed that the "thought" of a film-maker appears through his "mise-en-scene". lndeed what matters in a film is the desire for order, composition, harmony, the placing of actors and objects, the choice of settings, the movements within the frame, the capturing of a gesture or a look; in short the intellectual operation which has put an initial emotion and a general idea to work "Mise en-Scene" is nothing else than the "technique" invented by each author-director to express the idea and establish the specific quality of his work. The "content" of the film does not matter as much as the "way" in which it is conveyed to the spectator Paraphrasing Buffon's phrase, I would say that "style" makes the man.

2

In any case,"images" have no meaning what so ever by themselves. Everyday, every minute, we register images which are the reflection of our environment. They acquire signification (if any) by dint of our conventions, by the ~~sense" we project into them. In other words, the image becomes mean ingtiil through its processing in our brains. In cinema the director-author injects meaning in the images through "mise-en-scene". But the "language" of cinema is not "images" as the "language" of literature is not "words". It is their organization by the author that creates the meaning. This "organizing process", is, in the case of cinema, "mise-en-scene"

Yet, "mise-en-scene" is more than the visual orchestration of the story. Speaking of the films of Nicholas Ray, Anthony Mann, Robert Aldrich and Richard Brooks, Jacques Rivette wrote in 1955: "Violence is their first virtue: not that facile brutality that made Dmytryk or Benedek successful, but a virile anger that comes from the heart and is to be found less in the script and the plotting than in the cadences of the narrative and in the very technique of the mise-en-scene. And the frequent recourse to a discontinuous, abrupt technique which refuses the conventions of classical editing and continuity is a form of the superior clumsiness of which Cocteau talks, born of the need for an immediacy of expression that can yield up,and allow the viewer to share in, the original emotions of the auteur... They are all the sons of Orson Welles who was the first to dare to reassert clearly an egocentric concept of the director. The other pole of creativity for these (four)directors is reflection Violence has no other purpose, once the ruins of conventions are reduced to dust, than to establish a void, in the midst of which, the heroes, completely unfettered by any arbitrary constraints, are free to pursue a process of self-interrogation and to delve deep into their destiny. That is what generates those long pauses, hose turns that are at the centre of Ray's films, as they are in the films of Mann,Mdrich and Brooks.Violence is thus justified by meditation each so subtly linked to the other that it would be imposssible to separate them without anihilating the soul of the film. This dialectic of themes reappears in the terms of mise-en-scene as the dialectic of efficacity and contemplation."( Cahiers du Cinema, christmas 1955)

In this respect Douglas Sirk who died in 1987, is a case in point. His Hollywood credits cover more than thirty features from HIThE~' S ~{Ai)MAN( ~;43),a sensationalistic saga of a c~ech vi~e destroyed by the nazis, to the remake of ~~TATION OF LIFE(l959)~a soapish story of the 30s.There is no genre he has not touched and no subject he has not tackled~Indeed one cannot find the slightest link or the remotest relation between the stories of THIEVE'S HOLLYDAY( 1946)in which the crook George Sanders becomes Paris Police Prefect, MYSThRY SUBMARI[NE( 1 950)about the destruction of a nazi sub in South Ainerica,THL~N~ER ON THE HILL(l952) in which nun~s~uth Claudette Colbert establishes the innocence of a condemned woman,THE SIGN OF THE PAGAN(1954)ABOUT about Attila,TARMSHED ANGELS,after William Faulkner's novel ,or A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE(195R.)a love story set in WW II. Moreover Sirk has always worked in the framework of studio restrictions with imposed scripts and actors. Yet his movies evince a remarkable unity of style and purpose.as well as a profoundly "poetic" temperainen~ How such a constancy could be achieved if Sirk was not a reaL "artisf' and had not been "loval" to the stories and a "servant" of his actors(Charles Boyer's performance in THE FIRST LEGION,1951, as ajesuit priest is considered as his best;the same can also be said of Charles Coburn's in HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY GAL, I 952).Sirk is certainly a great director,a real "auteur",a master of "mise-en-scene"!

So is Mfred Hitchcock,the irreplacable "master of susperse"~His 55 years old ~ real gem,remains flawless despite its far-fetched story.There is not one urinecessary image or bit of dialogtie in its one hour fifty-one minutes~the movie still sparkles with visual ideas such as the camera focusing on the razor while Gregory Peck comes down the stairs toward the psychatrist office. And how can one forget the finale in which the gun turns against the audience,as if everybody -all Humans-were guity~And this brings up another aspect of"mise~en-scen~" which consists in sok'ing problems posed by the shooting.One can find many of"prnblem-solvin~' in Hitchcock movies.ln his 1939 lecture at Radio City Mu sic Hall~ew York),Hitchcock said,among other thi ngs "One advantage that the talking

Even "non-autetir" directors might sometimes strikep~~y dir's. Thils Mitchell Leisen's DARLING HOW COULD YOU?(195 1) starts vividly.The camera focuses on the first page of a newspaper in which we see Theodore Roosevelt's picture and an article whose title informs that Teddy is going to speak at a convention~Tben the camera moves backward and the enlarged frame uncovers the reader seated in one of the first automobiles,near a town-house.The traffic in the avenue consists mainly of horse cars.From the house exits a kind of"nanny"in htjrry who looks for a ~ah _ This sequence lasts less than a minute and yet informs the viewer about the epoch and some of the characters.

Another example of'~idee de mise-en-scene~' can be found in the opening sequence of Rouben Mamoulian's DR JEKYLL AN~ MR .HYDE(l 932)~the ~ubjective'camera replaces Frederic March and enters the house,underlining,as it were,the fact that the drama takes place inside the prota~omst.A similar ide~ was used by Nicholas Ray in PARTY GIRL~l958);as it was out of question to reconstnjct buildings of

old ChicagQltay takes the precaution of annoucing in a flamboyant caption~Chicago in the early thirties"What do we see?A lowish-angle shot of skyscrapers painted on a backdrop with, on the left of the screen,a flashing neon suggesting the entrance of a mghtclubThe camera tilts down and pans toward the neon sign.Then there is a long tracking shot closing in on the scene as if to stress even more that from now on the action of the film will take place inside the studio-sets and,within them,inside the characters.. While stii~ deakng with the opening images of great movies,let me recalL John Ford's THE SEARCHERS (~56) In a dark room,behind a woman who slowly opens a door on a sun inundated desertic scenery,the camera,as if escaping from a murky cell_~hows in the distance a small cloud of dust from which emerges an approaching horse rider. Here the "idee de mise-en-scene"expresses Ford's temperament,his love of large open spaces.In the same vein,teliing the dramatic story of a locomotive ingeneer(after Zola's book),Jean Renoir opens LA BETh HL~~~~'E'( ~38) with a train rushing towards Le Havre and shows ingeneer Jean Gabin and his assistant at work:almost no dialogue;beautifiil shots of moving scenery.The train stops at LeHavre where we meet in a few rapid shots the other characters of the drama.This whole sequence doesn't take more than three or four minutes!

PACE ~LND RFIYTHM

In his 1939 lccturc,Hitchcock insisted on the "pace and rhythm" This is indccd an esscntial part of what we called in the ~Os and 60s "mise-en-scene"Tn my first meeting with the Spanish director Juan ~ardem in the mid-fifties,he told me that "rhythrn" was the measure of a good movie.Without it,a film,no matter how well conceived and played,would be a failure.Curiously,he seemed to attribute a successfiil "rhythm" to chance!Many directors refer to "rhythm" as some sort of a "mysterious"irgredient which might appear (or not )after the completion of the movie.Facing "lack" of it they try to compensate through editin~ music, added commentary,etc.To Hitchcock it is up to the director to "create" it "I think that pace in a film is made entirely by keeping the mind of the spectator oceupied.You don't need to have quick cutting,you don't need to have quick playing,but you do need a very tuli story and the changing of one situation to another~You reed the changing of ore ircident to another~so that all the time the audierce's mind is occupied"( ~ 939 lecture).He refered to the tendency in modern novels and stage plays to abandon stor"' in favor of charactenzations and psychologyMotion pictureshe added,need "quite an amount of story" He gave as reason the fact that the audience, after an hour, starts to get tired and needs "the injection of some

dop~o keep thern occupied rnentaiW"as ~ng as you can sustain that and not let up,you have pace~That i~ why suspense is such a valuable thin~".It seems that Hitchcock equates suspense and rhythm.Let me quote again from his 1939 lecture". you must design your incidents and your story shape to mount up.I always think the film shape is very much like the short story.Once it starts,you haven't time to let up.You must go through and your film must end on its highest note.It must never go over the curve.Once you have reached your high spot,then the film is stopped Now one of the things that is going to help you hold all these things together and provide you that shape is the suspense. Suspense,I teeLis a very important factor in nearlv all motion picttires.!t can be arrived at in many different ways.To me there is no argument that a surprise lasting about ten seconds,however painflil,is not half as good as suspense for about six or seven reels.! think that nearly all stories can do with suspense.Even a love story can have it.We used to feel that suspense was saving someone from the scaffold,or something ~ike that,but there is also the suspense of whether the man will get the girl.! really feel that suspense has to do largely with the audience's own desire or wishes"

Hitchcock distinguishes two types of suspense he calls objective and subjective. The first one is of the '~hase' typethe audience see it directly on the screen.The subjecuve suspense lets the audience experience it through the eyes or mind of one of the characters~On this type~e said"'Instead of doing it ,say as Griffith used to do,by cutting to the galloping feet of the horse and then going to the scafforld4nstead of showing both sides,! like to show only one side.In the French Revolution, probably, someone said to Danton:"Will you please hurry on your horse",but never show him getting on the horse.Let the audience worry whether the horse has even started.That is making the audience play its part".

In most recent action-packed movi es directors use both types]t sometimes amount to what I would call a kind of~'mechanicaliy" propelled suspense,as for example in the DIE HARD films.While watching,the audience remain gliied to the screen,but once the movie stops.they forget it.With directors like Wolfgang Petersen(AIR FORCE ONE,for instance)the effect is more subtle and many scenes linger in the mind of viewers long after they have left the theater.

Rhythm and pace are masterly introduced in the RE-EDIT OF TOUCH OF EVIL"(l 998).The suspense was already present in the 1958 release despite the manipulated editing by Universal studio.Once again Orson Welles nrnves his great directorial and acting talents.The three-minute no-cut opening track

shot remains unmatched in film history~it superbly defrnes the characters and their environment and sets the pace.Camera movements become part of the story and convey the suspense while characters develop their intricacies~Every shot illustrates brilliantly the directorial work of Welles both on the lev& of rhythm and And what we used to call "idees de mise-en-scene".Even in the original studio release against Welles's own plan,it was a great movie.The director's presence is felt all along and the movie proves how an "auteur" can transform the "stupidest" script into a masterpiece ofarttAs one critic noted"'The camera itself is almost a character"(Stephen Hunter in W Post sept 18, 98)

[In the absence of rhythm, movies seem verbose!