This week I wrote my first essay in my time at RMIT for my contextual study, Cinema Studies. The essay asked us to analyse a single shot in a film and interpret what all of the mise-en-scene elements are telling us about the film at that point in time.
I went into this task fearful. We could choose quite literally any shot from one of three films that we would watch over the next three weeks.
The first of the films was Play Time, a 1967 French visual comedy directed by Jacques Tati which had elaborate sets and mise-en-scene. I found it a challenging film to watch, and even more so to study, with the camera work creating this feeling of a ‘fly on the wall’ experience for the audience. Some shots were so packed with content and unconventionally framed that it was impossible to analyse every element in the single viewing of the film.
The second film was a German expressionist film released near the end of the silent film era, titled Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. This was the first film I’ve seen of this nature, but its influences were quite clear on the film noir genre, at times feeling like a Hitchcock thriller. It was an enjoyable film for me, and I found myself amazed at some of the stylistic choices and elaborately built shots for a film released in 1927. A famous shot in this film follows the husband as he walks through the marshlands to meet his mistress. It was one which we discussed I length in class. This long take has so many elements built into it, hinting at the sinister events which would follow. This otherwise romantic meeting hints at a trance like state for the husband through actor movements, music and setting. It was emphasised that every element of the shot serves a function of some sort. After this lesson, I was sure that this would be the film I would write about.
That is, until I saw Max Ophuls Letter from an Unknown Woman. This 1948 melodrama was a captivating experience for me, helped by the fact that I watched it without the interference of others. The narrative presentation was much more familiar to me, but once again I was intrigued by the use of mise-en-scene in this film. Its narrative also presented a strong sense of character which builds over the course of the entire film. I had already started writing some stuff for Sunrise, but immediately after viewing this film I started thinking about alternative ideas. I had less than a week before submission, but I was confident in getting my way through it.
I ended up choosing to write on Unknown Woman for my essay, choosing what some people title the second of a ‘twin shot’ in the film to focus on. This shot shows protagonist Lisa climbing the stairs up to lover Steffan’s apartment, him guiding her every step of the way. It is called part of a ‘twin shot’ because it replicates the camera placement and movements from an earlier shot in the films narrative from years earlier, which instantly associates these two moments together. I spent a large portion of my essay looking further into this idea, portraying this shot from multiple perspectives of the same character from different periods of her life and the perspective of the audience. The way this blends together in only a single shot to present so many ideas to the audience at once is simply remarkable, and was certainly enjoyable for me to explore.
This has had a clear change in how I look at studying films, and has caused a very sudden change in my thought process towards the creation of these shots. This is something which I hope to be able to build upon across my time at RMIT, as I feel like I am lacking in practical experience and tend to rely on improvisation or choosing set shots by simply looking at function alone. I would like to be able to confidently stray from this in the future, presenting more complex and stylistic work in the future that have the mark of a well thought out media product.
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