If you are like me, you absolutely love to watch and discuss movies, sometimes from a purely entertainment perspective, more often from a theoretical perspective: analyzing how a film has been crafted and how effective various technical and creative choices have been. And, as a graduate student I was extremely fortunate to have access to an amazing collection of movies spanning multiple eras and countries: hundreds upon hundreds of rarities, world classics, and historically significantly works collected for educational benefit of doctoral Film Studies students. After watching a few dozen it dawned on me that I really didn’t know how to process what I was seeing beyond their entertainment value: why were the propaganda films so effective? What made the classic films from Japan classic to that culture? What films should be preserved for future generations by a nation’s archives, and why?
First of all let me make the distinction between the words ‘movie’, ‘film’, and ‘cinema’. Technically, film is what you used to put in a camera to make a ‘movie’, but nowadays you can use the terms interchangeably. When I say “movie”, I mean a movie generally made with the intent of entertaining audiences, while a “film” is a movie made with the intent of being artistic or culturally relevant. Both can be entertaining, both can be artistic, but at the very least, a “film” to me is a movie that came to be seen as art in some way, even if it is an example of bad art. ‘Cinema’ refers to movies and films as an industry, so “Japanese cinema” means the various movies, companies, directors, actors, and so on in Japan.
So I am a lover of film, I love watching movies that I consider to be artistic, like the Japanese film Rashomon, even though there are lots of movies I love, like ALIENS. Then there are big budget movies that go on to be considered artistic films, like Apocalypse Now, or low budget sci-fi movies like Invasion of The Bee Girls that take on value through their cult status as movies considered entertaining for their cheap quality. The comedy group The Three Stooges also had their artistic as much as comedic moments, with some surprisingly clever dialogue occurring every so often in their run of 190 short films between 1934 to 1959. The Soviet sci-fi propaganda film In The Dust of The Stars also merits consideration as a film in that though it was cheaply made, its place in film history as a vehicle for Communist ideological reinforcement makes it a kind of dark art: cinema as social engineering.
To watch a film critically for the purpose of understanding it requires one to be able to read the language of film: the alphabet that makes up the poetry of the flickering images onscreen. As notes make music, or form makes painting, so too does lighting, camera angles, editing, sound, and so on make what you see seem like it was always that way. So how do you “read” a film? It just requires knowing a few key words and phrases, and soon you will be able to see so much more in the films and movies you see.
First of all, film theory is made up of categories through which you can understand how and why a film/movie gets your attention: sound, color, lighting, editing: camera angles and shots, and what is known as mis-en-scene. Having a basic education in these few subjects at least is the core of film appreciation, and though many seem rather obvious on their own, it is the particular combination of the eight categories that makes Steve Spielberg’s Raiders of The Lost Ark a grand adventure, or Ridley Scott’s Prometheus a bleak, genetic nightmare. I am leaving out the actual script, as it is more of a literary concern and is also kind of covered by the actors’ delivery (under film styles).
As I am a musician I will begin with sound. Modern movies since the early 20th century have been “talkies”, movies with actors speaking in them. “Silent” movies in the past had no recorded dialogue, but had written dialogue on the screen and live musicians playing the piano along with the movie as a soundtrack. With the arrival of the talking picture, music playing underneath various scenes was added for extra effect. What kind of music great affects the emotional impact of a scene: lifts it to great emotional heights, or completely destroys it if not emotional congruent. Ever notice how many horror films have that scratchy sounding violin during scenes where something terrible is about to occur? That is no coincidence. It is industry standard. Something high pitched and grating on the nerves psychologically signals to the viewer, “this is something bad”. It is in our human nature to not like such sounds and the film’s director manipulates us into believing what he wants us to believe in that particular moment. You will also notice that a director will also sometimes choose to put music underneath a horrible scene that is the complete opposite. This is because the contrast of music vs. visual creates a type of tension that seems to make the horror of the moment more horrible. Once again this is an artistic choice, and if we are really engaged with the movie we don’t notice these things. This deep engagement with a movie is called “suspension of disbelief”, meaning we are so ‘into’ the movie we forget it is just a story we are watching on a screen. Many if not all film techniques are done to suspend disbelief or take advantage of it. It is what makes watching a play or a film so enjoyable. You will read innumerable stories of people going to the theater as a way of escaping the grind of everyday life and being swept up in the “magic” of movies. Films and movies take us to new worlds, and show us things that spark our imagination. They also teach us or show us things we don’t want to see but often need to see or at least think about. And a major part of this world making is how sound is used.
Music aside, pure sounds are categorized under two different types, known as diegetic or non-diegetic: the sounds made in the film by the actual characters and props, and the ones added in later. More often than not you are hearing non-diegetic sound where you think you are hearing diegetic sounds, as movie sound editors add sound in spots where the microphone levels were too low on the set, etc. It is one way of telling if you are watching a poorly constructed movie, the dialogue will sound like it is on the movie set, then suddenly take on a strange, “dry” studio quality for no reason. Whoever did the sound either didn’t have the right equipment for a variety of reasons or is just not that good at their job. Sometimes there will be other types of errors involving sound, such as incongruities in volume not caused by recording or editing. For example, in the movie Water World, Kevin Costner’s character is conversing with Dennis Hooper, who is standing at least 30 or 40 feet above him on the deck of an oil tanker boat. Hopper is shouting his dialogue downward, but Costner is practically whispering his dialogue back. There is no way that Hopper would be able to hear his responses even with all that metal around him to echo off of. Unfortunately, the disparity between the two is so obvious that the viewers “suspension of disbelief” is totally interrupted. So whoever was in charge of making sure that the scene stayed true to a general sense of reality really slipped up.
Next is color. This is primarily the cinematographer and lighting director’s job: to work together to make sure the movie is lit and recorded in such a way as to fulfill the artistic vision of the director. The lighting director might get the right amount of ruby red light in a scene, but if the cinematographer doesn’t do his job right, the red might come out looking crimson on the movie screen. So how a scene is lit and how the color appears in the film are very important parts of the language of film. For example, the Ridley Scott film Bladerunner is legendary for its gorgeously bleak cinematography and colors. Through color it is clear that the setting, a grimy looking post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, will be a very major part of the plot and nature of the various character’s interactions. It is not a happy looking place (at least for the poor), immediately foreshadowing the unhappy events of the story. The lighting, along with the dazzling electronic score by Greek composer Vangelis, immediately tells you a major part of the story you about to see: this is a place of struggle and futility.
The way I like to describe how light works in a movie is like the clothes actress Sally Field wore in her role on as the lead character in the 60s television show Gidget. The eternally cheerful fifteen year old surfing-obsessed Gidget invariably concocted a scheme every week to “fix” some interpersonal problem amongst her friends and family, only to make matters worse (in some rather hilarious ways). Part of Gidget’s charm was her outfits, subconsciously reinforcing the development of the character. Like her clothes, Gidget was a bouncy, happy, and always true to her ideals of kindness, truth telling, and healthy living, the living equivalent of the bright, saturated color, simple, tasteful clothes she wore. No matter what her anxious overbearing sister, psychology-spouting brother-in-law, and chummy father said or did, Gidget always bounced through Life and the waves, cheerily trying to make things right in the world (as her clothes subconsciously make clear). It is why saturated (happy, romantic, bright) color is almost invariable used in movies like romantic comedies, and drab, bleak de-saturated colors are used for tragedies and various dramas; colors almost totally drained of their color. An opposing case though is made by the Italian horror film Suspiria, by director Dario Argento. The saturated colors are vibrant, backed by a jarring, The Exorcist style score by the Italian prog rock band Goblin, yet the manner with which they are employed serves to elevate the growing evil of the story (which is often ignored for the sake of the cinematography and sound track). Suspiria is considered one of the more important films in the giallo genre, a pre-cursor to (and significant influence on) American slasher films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and Friday The 13th.
(Note: For horror fans reading this post, Italian horror director Mario Bava’s 1971 movie A Bay of Blood is considered the progenitor of slasher movies, especially from the angle of being a gory “morality” tale. What I mean is that the common theme among a significant number of such movies is one of people getting “punished” by the evil characters in the film. For example, some teens go camping to get away from their parents to smoke marijuana, drink, and have sex. Out in the woods or in a lake there also happens to be an evil threat that spends the rest of the movie killing these teens in a variety of painful ways, sending the message that they wouldn’t have been in such trouble if they had stayed home and not drank, had sex, and smoked marijuana. In this context, the evil human/entity acts as a sort of deliverer of karmic justice, to an extreme degree. A Bay of Blood is no different: various people plot to get their hands on the money and property of a deceased elderly woman, and in the process of plotting and deceiving they end up murdering each other and their lovers, who they are all seemingly plotting against with each other’s lovers. Finally, a husband and wife remain, seemingly set to claim the property and get away with their crimes until their children, playing with a shotgun they found, accidentally kill them and happily run off to frolic near the bay, thinking their parents are “playing dead”. All that gory violence committed by the various adults, and a single act by innocent children finally undoes all the wickedness that has transpired.Also worth noting is that the makeup are by Carlo Rambaldi, who would go on to win Academy Awards for his work on the sci-fi horror film ALIEN, and family oriented sci-fi classic E.T.
Next up is editing. This is so incredibly vital that one could almost say that the editor is the “real” director of the film. How a film goes from shot to shot, scene to scene is the core, the heart of it. Bad editing makes this really clear. One small displacement of the flow of a scene and everything is ruined. The exception to this rule is the cult film, many of which have been saved from being lost by being pieced together from a variety of incomplete working prints. Thus, there are small, unavoidable jumps where little chunks of dialogue are missing, the actors suddenly travel across the room without moving, the underlying music skips a beat, and so on. There is a bit of nostalgia in this too, as many drive-in films that my generation saw as a kid were old beat up prints that had been traveling the drive-in circuit for so many years that it was a miracle they didn’t completely fall apart just loading them into the projector. Editing is the art of piecing together the various shots and the respective angles from which hey were made. If an actor is talking, is the story best told by doing an extreme close up (of the actor’s face), or is a medium shot (from the waist up) the way to go? This is why directors do multiple takes of a scene. Even if they have a great take using two cameras, they will have to decide which angle was the best one to use in the film and which of the actor’s takes was the best one. It is thus easier to understand why being a movie actor is so hard, when we see the actor in a solo medieval scene but forget that the actor is looking back towards a camera and various workers in jeans and T-shirts. Then, the best take is connected to another take and another scene and so on until we have a full-length movie. As someone who once edited his own video visuals for a musical tour, I can tell you it is a really hard job: lining everything up perfectly while having to choose what fits the story and what final result represents you as an artist with light and visual form. Camera angle is also a very powerful tool for filmmaking. Shooting a scene using a camera that “looks down” on the scene makes the actors look small, like you are God watching from above. Shooting from a low angle makes the actors look down at you, which is a more menacing effect (thus you saw a lot of 1980s videos showing rappers looking down at the camera in a circle; it reinforced the concept of power and social resistance). Another basic angle is known as the oblique or Dutch angle: basically tilting the camera so that the horizon is not perfectly flat. This angle is good for creating tension, or demonstrating things are not under control, e.g. having an actor stumble down a street while the camera very slightly tilt downward to the right side, making the street look like it is tilting downward to the left.
So you can see that even with the four aspects of filmmaking we have discussed: sound, color, and the editing of camera angles and type of shots, the creation of a film can become very complex and technical. The films of vaudevillian Buster Keaton are an amazing example of how minimal technology combined with genius level physical comedy can create film that has remained adored and relevant for 100 years. Keaton, a silent film star in the 1920s, was so good at falling and flipping that the police were often called to the theater to arrest his father for onstage child abuse! Keaton would then have to demonstrate that he was fine and that their act was a series of carefully staged pratfalls. It is astounding to watch Keaton films: few camera angles, no color, no sound, minimal editing, and brilliantly choreographed stunts that have yet to be equaled. Keaton is most famous for the “window” stunt where he stands in front of a house that is blown apart by strong wind and the entire front (heavy lumber) wall of the house falls over on top of him, seemingly about to actually kill the actor. He is “saved” in the nick of time though by the fact that he is standing on the exact spot where the house’s top floor window lands, popping through the wall unharmed. That one scene (from the 1928 film “Steamboat Bill, Jr.”) is a textbook on filmmaking, let alone physical comedy.
Finally we have what is called mise-en-scene (meez-on-sen), a French phrase that basically describes how a movie “sets the scene”. A great example is the space prison in the movie Alien 3. It is a rusty, damp, dark, claustrophobic, loud and threatening place, filled with dangerous prisoners and a fragile social order easily thrown into chaos at a moment’s notice. Enter then Ellen Ripley, alien hunter and sole human survivor of the crashed space ship the Sulaco. Also on board the Sulaco, unbeknownst to everyone, is an egg that spawns an extremely dangerous alien with acid for blood. The alien is soon attacking and devouring the prisoners, and they have no weapons to fight with. The site and setting of the movie, and the circumstances of the people involved, create a very effective mise-en-scene of panic, shadows, lunacy, and terror. The acting, lighting, scenery, how various objects are placed in and around the set for a particular shot, it is all part of the overall mise-en-scene, and in the case of Alien 3, it is all extremely effective.
(Note: various scenes from classic films are often paid tribute to in the mise-en-scene of other films, i.e. becoming part of the visual language of future productions, in a sense the “grammar” of film studies. For example, the scene from John Ford’s classic western The Searchers where John Wayne and another character return to the burning, destroyed homestead of a relative is reflected in the scene from Star Wars where Obi Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker return to Luke’s home and find it on fire, his relatives murdered. Thus, if a person studies film they eventually start seeing noticeable themes and metaphors inspired by cinematic history that take a work from movie to film.)
It also happens to be why I absolutely love the mise-en-scene of the movie DUNE (directed by David Lynch) and will argue endlessly with fellow film fanatics about its quality. DUNE is constantly given negative reviews by everyone, including David Lynch himself. The script, the costumes, the soundtrack by the rock band Toto, the pace of the plot, it has all been called bad to some degree or another. But a case could be made in the positive for all such aspects as well. Each has qualities of excellence that cannot be denied, even without an acquired taste for the overall film. It contains actors world renowned for their great skill (Sir Patrick Stewart, Jürgen Prochnow, Max von Sydow, etc.), the staging is completely original and intricate, the cinematography is perfectly designed for the tone of various scenes and overall emotional/spiritual underpinnings of the film, and so on. No matter what, there is absolutely no other movie like it. With completely original mise-en-scene, DUNE has a look and feel to it that is so original, and so perfectly unique. The book upon which it is based (DUNE, by Frank Herbert) is the best selling sci-fi novel of all time, and it too is quirky and completely original, like nothing else: why not the movie version too? I can make an objective technical argument for the quality of DUNE, and I have no doubt that in the future it will be considered more than just a cult classic, based on a closer look at the more unique qualities of its mise-en-scene.
On the flip side of these two films is one such as Tokyo Story by Yasujirou Ozu, released in 1953. It is shot in such a simple and organized manner that it is almost completely devoid of camera motion. It is also shot at ground level to accentuate how vital the act of sitting is in Japanese culture, since traditional Japanese flooring (tatami mats) is designed for sitting to eat, sitting to read, laying on the floor to sleep, and so on. Ozu’s use of this perspective as mise-en-scene is very brilliantly utilized, and Tokyo Story remains a classic of world cinema as well a virtual textbook on cinematic minimalism.
These categories are the sort of thing that makes watching film with a critical eye so incredibly fun and soul satisfying. For example, I have seen all 190 short films by The Three Stooges. Not all are great: many reuse older footage, many of the jokes are dated, some jokes are racist, and so on. But there are also moments of physical comedy and dialogue that are absolutely hilarious, and you never know when you will come across a real treasure unless you watch all 190, if not at least a few dozen. Seeing all 190 also gives a person more insight into the popular tastes of the day, what was or was not considered acceptable behavior and language on film between 1934 to 1959, and how a few simple sound effects and physical actions (slipping, punching, pie-throwing) could be turned into 53 odd hours of classic cinema, classic visual literature that can be read over and over as the years and decades pass.
So next time you sit down to watch a movie, pay extra attention to the sound, color, lighting, editing, camera angles, shots, and mise-en-scene. You’ll be amazed at what you see.
Daniel Schnee 