Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic
Staging
[1] Introduction
[2] Revising Our Sense
of Feuillade
[3] Mizoguchi the Inexhaustible
[4] Cheerful Staging: Hou’s
Early Films
[5] Staging and Stylistics:
Some Further Business
[6] Misprints, Mistakes, and Missed
Opportunities
In the early 1990s I became keenly interested in cinematic
staging, the ways directors arrange and move their actors within
the frame. Staging is a powerful part of filmmaking, but there is
very little written about it, even by practitioners. Andrè Bazin
gave us many powerful indicators of what to look for, and Sergei
Eisenstein, in his concept of mise-en-shot, also offered
intriguing suggestions. In the last chapter of On the History
of Film Style, I sought to develop these theorists’
ideas and to trace some major norms of depth staging across the
history of cinema.
This account remained rather general, so I wanted to refine my
analysis of those norms and to explore how particular directors
had innovated or consolidated particular usage of them. The
result was this book, Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic
Staging, published in early 2005 by the
University of California Press.
What artistic resources does cinematic staging afford? The first
chapter is an introduction to the problem, reviewing efforts to
think about staging as an integral part of the director’s
craft. The technique is at once theatrical (involving acting and
ensemble-performance factors) and pictorial (demanding an
effective two-dimensional composition). Here I propose a
systematic way to think about style in cinema, arguing that in
narrative filmmaking, the directing of attention to key
information in the frame is a crucial concern (although not the
only one). My effort is to trace out some primary functions which
style performs in cinema. I conclude by examining staging in
contemporary U.S. cinema, both Hollywood and off-Hollywood, as
constrained by what I’ve called “intensified
continuity” style.
The central chapters examine four filmmakers, considered in
chronological order: Louis Feuillade, master of the French silent
serial; Kenji Mizoguchi, the great Japanese director; Theo
Angelopoulos, the Greek filmmaker who rose to prominence in the
1970s; and Hou Hsiao‑Hsien, the distinguished Taiwanese director.
Each chapter analyzes the director’s principal staging
strategies, situated in relation to the norms of his time, both
national and international.
The book is mostly an effort in theoretically guided film
criticism, but a final chapter broadens out to ask how analyzing
cinematic staging can contribute to the theory of style in film.
Once more, this project is part of my ongoing effort to explore
how a “poetics of cinema”—one attentive to craft
practice, design principles, and aimed-for effects—can enlighten
us about movies.
While writing the book, I made notes on issues which might be of
interest to readers but which would break the flow of the
argument on the page. It occurred to me that a website would be
an ideal vehicle for these supplementary ideas. Thanks to the
Internet, I can expand the book in what I hope will be fruitful
ways. [1] Introduction
[2] Revising Our Sense
of Feuillade
[3] Mizoguchi the Inexhaustible
[4] Cheerful Staging: Hou’s
Early Films
[5] Staging and Stylistics:
Some Further Business
[6] Misprints, Mistakes, and Missed
Opportunities
|