A Few Notes on Montage vs. Mise En Scene
For the last several months I’ve been filming my thoughts on independent filmmaking, including an actual manifesto for a new independent film movement.
Some of the footage will be used in my feature documentary The Queer Case for Individual Rights, (which I’m preparing a work sample for right now as well.)
And some of it will be posted online in the form of several short videos, specifically for the launch of the nonprofit film organization The Auteur (in the very near future.)
I don’t want to say too much about the actual contents of the videos, other that than I’m talking about a pretty thorough examination of independent filmmaking and where we can realistically take it from here, if we want it to survive at all and be an accessible alternative to a film industry largely dominated by big budget American superhero entertainment.
Below: Flyer for John Cassavetes Film Retrospective ‘Gena and John: A Cassavetes Retrospective’ A Bregman Films Production (2001)
A Few Notes on Montage vs. Mise En Scene
Something I’ve been going over in the film theory notes I filmed is the differentiation between a montage(-dominated) type of filmmaking versus a mise en scene(-dominated) type of filmmaking.
And I say dominated because film generally uses a combination of both montage and mise en scene of course but one still tends to dominate, and that is because they have vastly different roots, and purposes, in film.
Montage, referring to editing, a filmmaking style heavily reliant on the editing of film sequences, originated in the authoritarian Soviet Union and was made famous by Sergei Eisenstein, particularly through Battleship Potemkin in 1925. While mise en scene is an actual theater term and mainly refers to the framing of a shot and everything in it, a single take of whatever length and everything that is happening in it, in terms of acting and the environment.
Editing is of course a tool heavily used in sequences of plotted events, whereas mise en scene ultimately relies on the directing of actors, and the story plots mainly unfolding as character reveals.
All theater plays are basically mise en scene. Most music videos fall under montage.
And so the directors favoring one or the other type of filmmaking style also come at filmmaking from different angles, (with different roots and purposes even, whether consciously or not,) the “montage director” is usually referred to as a technical director, and a “mise en scene director” is generally referred to as an actor’s director.
(Again, of course any director usually uses a combination of both filmmaking elements but usually still tends to favor one over the other, even ideologically.)
Sergei Eisenstein, D.W. Griffith, Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino, and the superhero genre directors in general, are usually thought of as technical (or stylistic) directors, and some masterfully so, while Carl Dreyer, Charlie Chaplin, Jean Renoir, Francois Truffaut, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet, Morris Engel, Shirley Clarke, John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, John Schlessinger, and Terrence Malick are considered actor’s directors, which doesn’t necessary mean they make it easy for the actor either but rather that they favor a more realistic analyzing of the human condition, over the advocating of usually unrealistic, or more thematic-based, premises and ideologies.
They accomplish this by employing more theatrical techniques instead of relying heavily on technology itself, focussing more on actors’ performances and the strength of the story itself.
(On some level I think that Martin Scorsese is mostly a montage director who actually very much wishes to be a mise en scene director. That’s why his films are consistently great and he’s not diminishing in quality, not succumbing to formulaic repetition and safe choices, but only getting better. He uses certain stylistic elements and works within certain genres but his stories are not getting any simpler but seem to mature as he does.)
Once again, just about all directors and just about all films combine elements of montage and of mise en scene of course.
And also, almost all artists and creative works exist on multiple levels, touching upon personal and subjective truths as well as more universal, thematic concepts.
Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is at once a character study of a man going through deep internal change, going from initially being an outsider to his own family to ending up running the whole family in a tightly controlled crime world.
It exposes enormous emotional reveals about the internal life of the main character but also encompasses large, universal themes, especially around the dilemma and the consequences of prioritizing loyalty to one’s family versus choosing to live one’s life as an individual.
Filmmaking, having originated in Europe, in France specifically, (and montage and mise en scene being French terms,) was in reality a continuation of older art forms, of theater and literature and still photography, which itself was a continuation of sorts of still painting, etc., and was treated with a certain artistic respect. And so filmmaking therefore has its’ European roots in mise en scene.
And it was the Soviet montage of Eisenstein, a filmmaking style which in the Soviet Union was used by the government specifically for propaganda purposes, of usually a patriotic nature, that ultimately became infused in the Hollywood style of filmmaking that is generally considered to be mainstream entertainment, or what we call the movies, (from “the moving pictures,” and as in “a story told in pictures.”)
In the US, on the East Coast, specifically in New York, and coming in mainly from Europe, mise en scene techniques became an integral part of the theatrical scene. But when film production moved West and settled in Hollywood, especially after the Talkies made film production really explode, montage, of editing and now sound, became Hollywood’s preferred filmmaking style. In Hollywood’s Silent Era however the default filmmaking style had been miss en scene.
On the other hand, a lot of filmmaking that does not rely on the Hollywood Studio System for financing, still continues to use mise en scene a lot. That is basically the independent filmmaking scene within the US, and worldwide, (also called world cinema.)
And so this is often referred to, besides the term independent filmmaking, as cinema, and it is meant to be treated and respected as art really. And as in art over entertainment, though art can certainly be entertaining.
But art’s preoccupation, (just like philosophy and science’s preoccupation,) is ultimately with truthfulness, not with escapism.
Art, and so art cinema, is meant to provoke thought, to reach critical conclusions, regarding the human condition in particular, whereas mainstream Hollywood movies are meant to prevent one from thinking, and to escape instead.
Art cinema usually moves at a pace that seems closer to real time, and often relies heavily on acting performances.
Entertainment bombards you with fast edited images, and relies heavily on evoking symbolisms.
Both forms of story telling even have similar roots in Greek plays’ three act structures, though European storytelling allows for a lot more meandering because of its’ own philosophical and literary cultural roots as well.
But in American storytelling the three-act structure found a home in screenwriting, except screenwriting under the Hollywood Studio System eventually took the three-act structure to a simplified extreme instead, and infused it with supernatural heroics as opposed to at least human heroics, due to its’ political and religious culture.
European artists since long tended to primarily focus on creating and inventing, whereas Americans quickly became crafts- and business people, mainly focusing on manufacturing and selling, and the art of filmmaking in the US reflected that, becoming a Hollywood business instead.
So film can provoke critical thought, or it can prevent it, just by using different techniques, specifically the two main different techniques of montage and mise en scene.
It is pretty telling that a mainstream form of entertainment has certain ties to propaganda.
It is of course an even way longer standing fact in world history that visuals traditionally have been used as a means to convince those people in particular who were illiterate, meaning usually mostly the poor, and which have always been the vast majority, of basically whatever the elite few in charge wanted to convince them of.
Ultimately it doesn’t even matter so much what the convincing, by the elite few and through visuals in particular, is of, and rarely is it of something good, but what matters crucially is that it can so easily convince the masses.
Because by favoring a montage style of filmmaking, a mainstream form of entertainment, over a mise en scene form of art, one favors escapism over the ability to think critically.
And the consequences of not being able to think are mind-control.
All Articles Written by Gabriella Bregman (TM). All Pictures Owned by Gabriella Bregman (TM). All Rights Reserved (2020)
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Brief Bio:
My name is Gabriella Bregman, I am a Writer-Filmmaker-Producer.
I identify as a Gender Nonconforming Lesbian, (“non-op”) Trans-Masculine, am Bi-Racial (white & Asian,) from the Netherlands, and Los Angeles-based.
My pronouns are: they/them/theirs.
I also go by Orlando, as in Gabriella Orlando Bregman, (in a nod to Virginia Woolf.)
I am currently in production of a Feature Documentary titled ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights’ through Los Angeles-based Film Production Company Bregman Films.
The Documentary is about LGBTQ US-Immigration Exclusion-Policy, including my personal story of US immigration discrimination as International Film Student under DOMA (Defense Of Marriage Act, 1996–2015.)
It is based on the book ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights & Other Essays’ (2020.)
The John Cassavetes Film Retrospective ‘Gena and John: A Cassavetes Retrospective’ at the Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles is a Bregman Films Production (2001.)
I am the Founder of a Nonprofit Film Organization The Auteur (2020)(theauteur.org) and an accompanying Film Theory & Film Criticism Publication The Auteur: An Independent Filmmakers Publication at medium.com/theauteur
A small book of Film Theory essays titled ‘Notes for a New Independent Film Movement’ will also be published in 2020, including a 4-Point Film Manifesto for a new Independent Film Movement.
And a related, untitled Feature Documentary project is in early development stages.
Thank you for reading,
The Auteur
An Independent Filmmakers Publication
