American Beauty: Mise-en-Scene
- Date: July 14, 2004
- Level: University, Bachelor's
- Grade: A+
- Length: 6 pages (1412 words)
- Essay rating:
- Keywords:
mise en scene, american beauty, acting, ricky fitts, friend angela, lastly, ...per se, repression, denial, promptly, realistic, composition, literally, performances, candy, actors, lighting, audience, elements
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Subject > Art Essays > Film & TV Studies
Mise-en-scene literally means "setting up a scene." There are six elements that make up mise-en-scene: acting, costume and make-up, setting, lighting, composition or space and lastly, but not least, time. The film that I chose for this particular topic was American Beauty. American Beauty is like mise-en-scene candy. Each theme from repression to denial and fantasy to reality is clearly portrayed through the art of mise-en-scene. We often say that a good performance is "realistic." To me a good performance by an actor is making it seem as if they are not really "acting" per se; making the viewer believe that they are the actual character in the film. In ...
... Lastly, but not least is time. Time can represent anything from the time of day it is, what time of year it is or what time period the film is set in. American Beauty is set in the present day (at the time the film was shot). You can tell this by the costumes and the props that are used within the film. For example, the cars that are used, the way the kids dress at school, and the technology that is used, such as Ricky Fitts' camera equipment. You can tell by the trees and the lighting, what time of year it is as well, which would be fall.
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