Mise en Scène and Film Style From Classical Hollywood to New Media Art

Styles of filmmaking have changed greatly from the classical Hollywood system, with its emphasis on narrative and character, to the current digital era of YouTube and installation art, where audiovisual spectacle takes command. The ways in which film critics and scholars have analysed these transformations in film style have also often changed. This book explores two central style concepts from the history of audiovisual criticism and theory, mise en scène and dispositif, to illuminate a wide range of film and new media examples. It argues that we need an open, inclusive and truly international approach to understand anew both old and current film and media works.

Adrian Martin is Professor of Film Studies at Goethe University, Germany, and Monash University, Australia. His books include Phantasms, Once Upon a Time in America, The Mad Max Movies, Last Day Every Day and What is Modern Cinema?. He is co-editor of the online film journal LOLA and the book Movie Mutations.

Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Prologue: At the Ballet Ruse
1. A Term That Means Everything, and Nothing Very Specific
2. Aesthetic Economies: The Expressive and the Excessive
3. What Was Mise en scène?
4. The Crises (1): Squeezed and Stretched
5. The Crises (2): The Style It Takes
6. Sonic Spaces
7. A Detour via Reality: Social Mise en scène
8. Cinema, Audiovisual Art of the 21st Century
9. The Rise of the Dispositif
Epilogue: Five Minutes and 15 Seconds with Ritwik Ghatak
Notes
Bibliography