What is documentary mise-en-scène? Coutinho's mannerism and Salles's ‘mauvaise conscience’

Abstract

In this essay we will discuss two contemporary documentaries (Santiago and Jogo de Cena) produced by Brazilian directors João Moreira Salles and Eduardo Coutinho. We will work with the concept of mise-en-scène, developing an analysis inspired by phenomenological methodology. The emphasis will be placed on the subjective figure that holds the camera in the take, called ‘camera-subject’. In this sense, the world, in the take circumstance, offers itself to the spectator in a kind of commutation, mediated by a corporeal camera-subject flesh. Mise-en-scène designates then the way staging is arranged as an inter-action in the take. When we look at documentary history, we can observe two structural variants in the way bodies act and express themselves to a ‘camera-subject’, staging through mise-en-scène. We will call them ‘constructed-acting’ and ‘directed-acting’. In Coutinho's Jogo de Cena those two different modes of staging are arranged in order to blend themselves, articulated in a deconstructive approach. In Salles's Santiago the two historical modes of staging are set against each other, in a movement driven by a kind of guilty, ‘mauvaise’ conscience.