Art is a form of expression; a way in which we communicate a story, a thought, emotion, or an idea with highlights to the skill and craft involved. In film persons can craft movies to create stories by shooting footage then cutting, arranging, and pasting it together; in an effort called editing. Shots have to be arranged, like paintings or photographs, in a way to help explain the scene. The shots and editing become different elements of the art, the same way paint and the brushes would be a part of a painting. A film has to be arranged skillfully and in a manner that is original and unique to itself to be called art.
The brush strokes of film would be editing. As a brush delivers and presents its audience with paint; editing takes and arranges footage shot somewhere else and gives them a cohesive story. Hitchcock states that “pure cinema is pieces of film assembled.”
Sergei Eisenstein argues that the intellectual power and emotional weight of a film is in the use of montage. He explains montage, “The old film-makers...regarded montage as a means of producing something by describing it, adding individual shots to one another like building blocks...But in my view montage is not an idea composed of successive shots stuck together but an idea that DERIVES from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another (the ‘dramatic’ principle.)”
To Eisenstein montage is not just editing pieces of the film together, but rather an emotional segment in a film placed strategically to create a new idea using images by creating conflict through the use of editing. It allows film to become something more, to create something with those pieces that previously did not exist on their own. Those pieces are the shots, composed of the mise-en-scene.
Mise-en-scene could be compared to the paint in a painting; the composition of everything on the screen, the bare elements assembled in editing. Film composition uses techniques found in painting, drawing, and photography. Shots in a well crafted film are composed as skillfully as great music. Arnheim writes that “film art developed only gradually when the movie makers began consciously or unconsciously to cultivate the peculiar possibilities of cinematographic technique and to apply them toward the creation of artistic productions.”
Peter Wollen writes Hitchcock’s, “own menu of ingredients ran as follows: ‘Lighting creates mood, the camera dramatic impact, music stirs the emotions, colour has an aesthetic effect, widescreen provides showmanship and spectacle, all of the elements needed for the machinery of the production.”
All of these add to the visual elements of what the audience sees in a shot. Truly artistic filmmakers make use of changing the camera’s perspectives on recognizable objects, giving fresh takes with “constancy of form,” by shooting common objects in new angles.
Paul Begin writes “Mise-en-scene does in space what montage does in time.”
Therefore if montage creates new ideas that we would otherwise not surmise then so must mise-en-scene.
Arnheim states, “Film resembles painting, music, literature, and the dance in this respect-it is a medium that may, but need not, be used to produce artistic results.”
He says that a post card and military march are not considered art and just as most movies should not be considered art. With the possibility of being art, how should artistic merit of a filmmaker be deciphered? Begin writes that “Often a director’s style depends on his or her attitude toward mise-en-scene versus montage.”
Montage and mise-en-scene should not be viewed as competing elements, but pieces of film used to compose ideas and emotions the filmmakers are trying to convey. An artist knows the tools and techniques needed to convey the message and grasp a balance of montage and mise-en-scene appropriate for the particular film. Many films simply tell a story, when they become art is where the skill and craft excel.
Films have the capability of being art, and they have the ability to not be art. The deciding factors lie in the use of the elements, and how they are composed together, and the manner in which they are arranged. To shoot and assemble is not art, but to skillfully go about it and craft a movie in a way presenting the audience with ideas and ways of seeing things in an original way brings it to be. For film the main components of its art is the mise-en-scene and montage. When skillfully they are composed together they create a film that is every bit as artistically rendered as a well crafted painting.
Bibliography:
Begin, Paul. "Buñuel, Eisenstein, And The 'Montage Of Attractions': An Approach To Film In Theory And Practice." Bulletin Of Spanish Studies 83.8 (2006): 1113-1132. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Feb. 2012.
Rudolf Arnheim. “From Film As Art,” Film Theory and Criticism (New York: Oxford, 2009)
Sergei Eisenstein. “Beyond the Shot [The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram]” Film Theory and Criticism. (New York: Oxford, 2009.)
Wollen, Peter. "Theory And Practice." Journal Of Media Practice 6.2 (2005): 73-81. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 9 Feb. 2012.
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