Having already set out the main protagonists, Sirk also needs to reinforce the notion of the contrast between Ron (nature) and Cary (traditional and conservative) and he does this well by laying out the interior grandeur of Cary’s bedroom, in fitting with her elevated social status. She also wears the clothes of someone in her social position, favouring a traditional dress.
It is not until later in the film that Ron is shown in his natural ‘environment’ – rustic log cabins and mountains and country clothes. In the meantime, Sirk starts with Cary’s world and the way this is displayed through the mise-en-scene shows that there is very evidently going to be a wide disparity in the two worlds that Ron and Cary inhabit. In keeping with a classical narrative, this quickly establishes a contrast in lifestyles (and age) that may have serious repercussions later on with a period of disequilibrium, ultimately followed by resolution. If the main causal agent (Cary) is to obtain her desired goal, she will incur the wrath and backlash of her own conservative community as well as having to make a huge personal transformation to move over to Ron’s world.
Sirk uses the tools of his background, German expressionism, to show that despite the affluent and prosperous veneer, all is not happy in Cary’s world. Beside Ron’s branch in the vase on the elegant dressing table, Cary is shown looking thoughtfully but in an unhappy way at a reflection of herself in the dressing table mirror. Most people use a mirror on a daily basis, but Cary is shown to be something of an observer of life, refraining from fully engaging in the social events of the town. Sirk presents Cary as person incarcerated in her natural domain – the dark lighting and clinical features of the bedroom suggest that anyone stuck inside such a room would want to move to a more natural environment (such as Ron’s). Cary is also frequently shown contained within frames – in the twig scene she is framed not only by the mirror but also the larger window. In terms of the narrative structure, Cary is stuck in a situation from which she must escape; a liaison with any of the conventional suitors (such as Harvey) would be equally unattractive, based in the same milieu.
The stylized lighting favoured by Sirk is also put to good effect. After Cary has finished reviewing her appearance, and presumably her position in life, from the same mirror her adult children are shown entering the room. They enter from a bright, shining hallway (in accordance with their happy, fulfilled situations) into Cary’s dark blue, depressing bedroom; it is interesting that the same long take of Cary is maintained, with the new characters introduced in the mirror in deep focus as though through a television set, a theme that Sirk exploits later on in the film. Again, this develops the theme of Cary as a tentative observer of other people’s actions. It also portrays Cary as stuck in her bedroom, engulfed by primitive methods of mourning, a subject on which her daughter (Kay) has some professional knowledge, later remarking on such customs in the society of ancient Egypt.
Mise-en-scene is used in a similar manner, though for very different purposes, in the Hal Ashby film Being There (1979). With some uncanny similarities with All That Heaven Allows, but working in a very different genre, this film tells the story of a middle-aged gardener, Chauncey Gardiner (Peter Sellers). Gardiner, although middle-aged, has spent his entire life in the service (gardener) of a very wealthy, elderly businessman. He has led a ‘sheltered’ life in the fullest, literal sense, having never left the confines and security of the old man’s house. His only outlook on the world has been through the television set, in this film a benign influence, of which the house has many. This is in complete contrast to the scenario that Sirk presents in All That Heaven Allows, where television is regarded as repressive and debilitating, a symptom of a dull and thwarted life.
In the opening sequence of the film, Gardiner is shown around the house, with a television set almost at every camera angle. Evidently, this is a person who watches a lot of television. This serves the narrative well as, later on, Gardiner uses skills learnt from television to (unintentionally) gain enormous social advantage. Within the mise-en-scene, Ashby wanted to show that the television set was Gardiner’s only ‘window’ on the world.
The opening sequence also has a series of shots with a large number of plants in each frame, in keeping with Gardiner’s role as a gardener. Like Ron, Gardiner’s life is highly influenced by plants and it is natural that they should be evident in the mise-en-scene. This is essential to the narrative, as Gardiner knows only one form of language, frequently speaking of the normal world in horticultural terms. Ashby had to show that Gardiner had spent his life surrounded by plants and knew a lot about gardening. By coincidence, his gardening talk (‘Spring is a time for planting’, ‘green shoots’, etc.) is mistaken for Thoreau-like metaphors and wisdom on the economy.
In a brilliant example of mise-en-scene, at the end of the opening sequence of the film Gardiner (for legal reasons) is forced to leave the house for the very first time and enter the real, outside world. Inside the dark house, as Gardiner walks down the corridor towards the front door, in a distant shot he is framed in white fuzzy daylight coming through the square, frosted window pane in the front door. Ashby wanted to show that Gardiner was, in effect, walking into a television set and hence into the outside world.
Although Being There is an example of classical narrative, based on a simplistic Kosinski tale/fable, paradoxically, because of the philosophical undertones, Ashby has chosen to give the mise-en-scene a surrealist edge. In one scene, Gardiner is dressed like a figure in a bowler hat from a Magritte painting as he walks, in the middle of the road surrounded by traffic, up a central avenue in Washington, with the distant Capitol Hill/Congress building apparantly on his head at the top of the avenue. However, despite its exotic nature, this imagery is entirely in keeping with the classical narrative as, later on, Gardiner moves towards the head of the political structure.
In summary, All That Heaven Allows relies on mise-en-scene to provide the viewer with additional character and plot information. Sirk’s use of mise-en-scene gives additional clues as to Cary’s initial mental state (dark colours symbolising a depressed mood, etc) and the developing plot (the branch signifying her affection and intentions towards Ron). If none of these visual clues were present, the viewer would be much less informed about Cary’s emotional state and there would be less certainty about the course of the developing narrative.
With regard to the wider use of mise-en-scene, this is certainly typical of classical narrative cinema. In Being There, the character and motives of Gardiner are made much clearer to the viewer through the imaginative use of mise-en-scene, as illustrated above.
NOTES
- Carroll. Essay The Moral Ecology of Melodrama: The Family Plot and Magnificent Obsession. p. 170.
- Cook. p. 76-79.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
An Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996
Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998
Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996
Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998
Interpreting the Moving Image Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press 1998
The Cinema Book Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985
FILMOGRAPHY
All That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955
Being There Dir. Hal Ashby 1979