The mise-en-scène of the documentary: Eduardo Coutinho and João Salles

Abstract

In this essay we will examine two recent documentaries by Brazilian directors João Moreira Salles (Santiago) and Eduardo Coutinho (Jogo de Cena). The analysis of the films will draw upon phenomenological methodology, emphasizing the relationship between the subject holding the camera in the take and the world that reveals itself to him, which opens itself through his body (subject-of-the-camera) to the spectator. We use the term staging (reenactment) to describe this relationship between the world (which includes objects and people in motion) and the subject which embodies the camera machine. Mise-en-scène denotes the way staging is set in the take, including the material aspects that comprise the scene and its future narrative arrangement (in shots). Looking at the history of documentary film, we can see two structural variants of action in the take to the subject-of-the-camera. We will call constructed stagingany action or expression that has been prepared by the cameraman beforehand. The free action occurring in front of a camera, without direct involvement or direction from the subject-of-the-camera, will be called direct staging. In the case of a close- up through direct staging the uncertainty of the action is the physiognomy in itself, which figures affect or affection. In Jogo de Cena, Coutinho uses a variety of staging techniques which are combined in a deconstructivist way. In Santiago, Salles contrasts two historical types of staging in a movement driven by remorse.