In the response to my Assessment 2 submissions, Robin mentioned wondering how I would view the distinctions between the notion that a film is the composition of a multitude of shots made into a whole, perhaps a montage, verses the idea of the ‘wholeness’ of a single shot, or a tableau. People have mentioned tableaus to me before but I don’t have a full understanding of what it is, and have never considered them from an angle of coverage. I decided to do a mini investigation on this.
A straight Google search of the word’s meaning brings up multiple explanations. These range from simply just “a picture”, to descriptors such as “vivid” and “graphic”. A variation of the theatre phrase “tableau vivant” describes a “living picture”. According to this article, tableau refers to “the arrangement of people and objects within the confines of your cinematic frame” – but it is special because it requires a specific mastery of composition and staging. All of the examples that this article provides show frames that are very complex and filled with information, so it seems that a to make a good tableau you must pay attention to composition and plan intricate visual details. For example, Wes Anderson’s shots are celebrated for their artistic quality because he uses meticulously planned out centre-point framing (examples below).
Wes Anderson // Centered from kogonada on Vimeo.
In another article, David Bordwell discusses tableau staging. He admires the subtle blocking in a shot from Panic In The Streets (1950) which uses the actors’ movement to create different frames instead of cuts. The director adopts depth staging and wide angle cinematography, which seems to be another important element to consider for tableau. Bordwell says that “cinematic space–the space captured by the camera–constitutes a pyramid, extending narrowly away from the lens, and so it favors depth”. This is unlike theatre where the actors move across the stage.
For something that suggests a connection to painting and photography, I find the tableau to be incredibly cinematic. Although a good tableau is described as something you would want to hang on the wall like the painting, its power as a cinematic tool is in its presentation of three dimensional space and its relationship to the shots surrounding it. It is a distinct approach to the moving image, and the amount of careful consideration that needs to go into the tableau shot’s composition, aesthetic quality and meaning is really admirable.
