Film Intro Series — staging 3/4 — in the beginning there was staging
(This is part of a lecture series that covers the following topics: the filmic image, staging, camera movement, editing, montage, sound, narrative, genre, non-fiction film, the future of cinema. It is adapted from my own film intro class. Patient readers: this is not bite-sized reading. Be prepared to spend the time to sit through a whole class. But I hope your time and effort will be amply rewarded.)
continued from previous part: this obscure object of mise-en-scène
Staging’s unique status in the stylistic history of cinema
Every technique has a history. And it often means different things then than what it means now. Staging is an imperceptible art retrospectively recognized. It is something that the cinematic art shares with theater. Although cinematic staging does differ from theater staging, in its early stages it comes directly from theater staging, so critics of silent cinema tends to dismiss it. Only sound cinema illustrates, retrospectively, the power of staging.
In the beginning, there was no camera movement (except on vehicles), no editing. But there was staging. As cinema was striving for its survival, it soon recognized the importance of a bourgeois audience. Naturally theater, a popular bourgeois entertainment at the time (not true…
