Friday, August 28, 2009

A few sentences typed in the middle of the night in January and never expanded upon. But maybe they don't need expansion.

A director is responsible for both mise-en-scene and mise-en-abyme. I don't mean the literary definition or the facile application of the term that leads to discussions of structure or plotting, dream sequences, "framing stories," pictoral effects and other nonsense. I mean that every movie has both qualities. Mise-en-abyme can be defined as how a film reflects on the world of images and on its own production. That hall of mirrors we call the history of cinema. In the present, the need to define this aspect is increasingly relevant.