Film Studies 101 — Mise-en-Scene
Literally meaning “Putting in the scene” or “Placing the scene”, the concept of mise-en-scene helps to identify different aspects that actually adds depth to a movie or a play. According to the British Film Institute, it is simply put as everything that we see on the screen. The idea of mise-en-scene is rooted in the theater plays where setting the stage is an essential component of putting up a play. However, the definition of mise-en-scene has seen a dynamic change over the years — from focusing on the props set on the stage to the angle in which the frame is captured in the reels. In the entirety of it all, it does include the performance of the characters as a significant aspect.
The movie, Hugo (2011) chosen to explain mise-en-scene is an interesting, rather a reflective way of looking at mise-en-scene itself since Georges Méliès is one of the pioneers of the idea of framing a scene. He is known to have made hundreds of short fantasy and short-trick films in his Star Film Studios, picking every prop and character in the frame carefully. This gives us an ideal perception of a scene in a film, further developing characters and the narrative according to the background, thus engaging the audience with a constant theme and ideology.
Martin Scorsese uses this technique quite well in the film Hugo, creating an impression of realism while going back in time. One might call it a children’s movie but the director exceeds the expectation of how one can view it as just a movie for children. Based on the book, ‘The invention of Hugo Cabret’, the plot revolves around an orphan, Hugo who has been repairing an automaton with his father before his death and wishes to “bring it to life” while setting the clocks right in the railway station in Paris in the 1930s. The constant blue lighting gives a frozen identity, miserable to be perceived by Hugo until he finds a friend, Isabelle who works with her godfather, Georges Méliès at the toy shop. The lighting thereafter constantly has a parallel shift to the warm colors of copper and yellow as Isabelle helps Hugo in fixing the automaton and finding a key to its heart shaped lock.
The main plot seeps into another narrative upon the discovery of the real identity of Georges Méliès, who is one of the most credible founders of motion pictures in the 19th century. The screening of films was back then just an exhibition through Kinetoscopes and on observing Lumiere brothers, Méliès converted his magic and circus tricks and set the real onto reel through silver screen. This historical essence of film-making was captured as a parallel narrative to Hugo’s adventure by Scorsese, while actually paying a tribute to Méliès himself.
Frame from the Film to Understand Mise-en-Scene
The frame selected for comprehending mise-en-scene in the film is a part of scene where Hugo and Isabelle are listening to Rene Tabard, the author of the book about the history of cinema as he goes onto explain what a legend Méliès was in the development of cinema. The frame encompasses a picture-perfect shot of Méliès and his ladylove Jeanne d’Alcy as they are being photographed as a couple by a photographer which is actually Martin Scorsese playing himself. The setting is sort of an inception of a film within a film, or a photograph within a frame, or even a mise-en-scene within a mise-en-scene. The frame includes the main characters, Méliès and his wife, Jeanne in front of their glasshouse, which was constantly used as a location for shooting their films while one can see the photographer showing his back to the camera while holding a camera to click their photograph, not revealing his identity at the beginning of the scene. The production design can be seen as early 20th century prior to the beginning of the World Wars, by embarking architecture and the camera in the frame of that particular time.
The color dominant in the frame is a dark shade of grey, that can be understood as the symbol of the darker times ahead, here being the Second World War. However, the color very well matches with the costumes worn by the characters in the frame which are pin suits and a gown with hats, very much complimenting the post-industrial culture of Europe. The makeup is not extravagant but it captures the fine lines of the age of success the couple had reached at that point in making cinemas and for Scorsese as well.
The brilliance of this frame can be explained through the depth of space and the aspect of blocking in cinema. The relationship between the background and the foreground here is layered. The foreground for George Méliès and his wife posing for the camera is his architecture, the glasshouse — the space where he engages in to make films. This has a significant meaning for him to have it as a background. On the other hand, when the real audience view it from the camera angle set for the film, the foreground can be identified as Scorsese clicking a picture of the couple, that being his background — the space that he looks up to. The comprehension of this scene has meaning beyond the time that it shares on the screen. The idea of setting up your own studios gives Scorsese a dream like narrative as a person who is admiring the entirety of making films, while making a film about it. The essence of it all lies in the fact that he is capturing a frame within a frame. The idea of a mise-en-scene is at its peak for it reaches a philosophical point here. Blocking as a concept can be viewed quite differently as Scorsese, as a director appears as a character on screen, making a movie from behind the camera to in-front of the camera adding a whole new dimension of who him having been a part of the audience for Méliès and evolved to be a director making a movie on Méliès.
So..
In one of his interviews, Scorsese mentions that he did not see a direct link between Méliès and his film initially. He says, “For me, it was the little boy that made me want to do the film. It was his story. It was only later that people around me, people I was working with, began to draw the links between the film and my work in restoration and rediscovering filmmakers”.
Although, one would see him as Hugo, the direct comparison of him being an admirer Méliès can be interpreted as a personal way of revisiting and unfolding the story of making stories. This concludes on the usage of magic by Méliès is further encountered by Scorsese by incorporating 3D technique, creating magic in a liberating sense of modern cinema.
So, one can regard that the concept of mise-en-scene has a dissolved into the perception of the history of the particular being examined and not just the components that can be viewed to be building the scene at that moment. The history of the scene, the story behind the scene is what helps in capturing the composition of the frame, that helps the director to convince the audience that the story is not just about the protagonists. And that is what Méliès was hoping to do through his films and what Scorsese tries to capture, in the act of photographing Méliès and in the entire adventure of making Hugo and being Hugo.
References:
Martin Scorsese on “Hugo”: A very personal film. (2012, April 23). Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/martin-scorsese-on-hugo-a-very-personal-film/.
Martin Scorsese interview: ‘Hugo’ starring Asa Butterfield and Chloë Moretz — Time Out Film. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.timeout.com/london/film/martin-scorsese-on-hugo.