Dissolving & Reconstituting Narrative Cinema

6	Querelle	1982 – Rainer Fassbinder (Germany)
	Theatre	Plasticity; art direction / production design / set decoration; mise-en-scene; scenes

A: Plasticity

In painting, 'Plastic Style' or 'Plasticity' refers to the depicting of form by means of light and shade to give the impression of solidity and roundness rid in a fully three dimensional way. For similar reasons and effects, the motion picture (as an object/product of the film industry) is generally regarded as part of what is referred to as 'the plastic arts'. This qualification is both cultural (ie. not 'fine art') and technical (ie. manipulation of materials).

The craft of cinematography is virtually plasticity in essence, considering that it is primarily involved in registering light on surfaces in order to suggest that surface as being an object with form. The photographic: image can only communicate its effect of realism once this particular plastic aim has been achieved. As an artistic medium in its own right, cinematography can then the manipulate the semantic and emotional effects of those foras it shapes in its technical process. In this sense, cinematography need not only be used to 'record reality' but it can also create and shape a reality which through photography will have a realistic image. QUERELLE in an example of creating such a reality.
 
B: Art direction/production design/set decoration

These three areas are where in terms of plasticity film and theatre construct a fundamental dialogue with each other. During the hey day of the Hollywood studio system, art departments were important and powerful contributions to movies. Even when location work was preferred during the 60s and into the 70s, art direction was still required for setting up interiors. This area of production is integrally involved in constructing those objects whose surfaces will be lit to be registered as the original objects. As is evident in such a process, cinematography is essentially involved in compensating for how the photographic act/medium in a sense destroys the reality of objects (through rendering them flat). The compensation is done by lighting the objects so that they will create the illusion of being what they already are three dimensional objects!

This paradox is important to consider, because it constitutes a break, or tension between two nodes of representation (sculptural and photographic) which allows for experiments in their fusion. 'Realist dramas' attempt to seal the two modes together so that we interpret or perceive 'reality'. A film like QUERELLE explores the space between the two modes.
 
C: Mise en scene

Hollywood melodramas from around 1945 to 1955 mark a key period in the contribution that production design, etc. made to the motion picture In their appraisal of these movies, the French popularised the term "mise en scene" which refers to the way in which the background, incidental and ambient detail could imbue a scene with added meaning and make its dramatic content resonate more richly. In short, "mise en scene" 'colours' the drama of a scene, further defining its 'tonality' or feeling with added nuances that the acting and script require in order to flesh out the drama.
One of the masters of mise en scene is Douglas Sirk. His career virtually outlines the key period of production in the Hollywood movie. There are his 40's B&W period melodramas SUMMER STORM (44); A SCANDAL IN PARIS(46); and LURED (47); and his spectacular Technicolor contemporary melodramas THE MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (54); ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (55); WRITTEN ON IHE WIND (56); and IMITATION OF LIFE (59). Interestingly, Sirk has been a major influencen on Fassbinder in terms of melodrama, and QUERELLE is virtually a direct hommage to the baroque style, coding of colour and shape, and themes of impotency and homoeroticism in WRITTEN ON THE WIND.
 
D: Scenes

The concept of a 'scene' in mise en scene is extremely important, because it accents once again the relationship between theatre and film, between the stage and the set. In a theatrical script or dramatic screenplay, a scene is a defined sequence of action which forms a small, dramatic block. (It can be descriptive of action or it can reflect an absence of action ; it can pin point an interaction between characters or it can be totally absent of characters.) Just as paragraphs form chapters which formthe book, and passages form movements which form the symphony, scenes form acts which form the stage/photo play. "Scenes' though also refer to the setting, situation, location and environment in which the drama of the occurs. Thus a score has to to physically created, to exist as a space theatrical or cinematic which can encase and embrace the dramatic scene. Once again, we have a fundamental relationship between theatre and film.
 
E: QUERELLE

Fassbinder's film obviously develops the possibilities of using detail, colour, lighting, shape, form, location, environment, shadow, scale, dimension, objects and ambience to flesh out (no pun intended) what is otherwise a very difficult film. 'Difficult' for three reasons :
(a) the density of the spoken and written texts and their interelationship
(b) the performance and delivery in a monotonal style that doesn't attribute any full emotional or interpretive quality to the word
(c) the post dubbed soundtrack and its effect of further separating the voices from the words.
Whilst all this 'difficult' action is happening, though, the visuals of the film convey a proportionate density in terms of the meanings that they contribute to the scenes, the action and the characters.

Quite simply, Fassbinder has surfaced the repressed themes that intensely fuel Sirk's Technicolour melodramas but (and this is what is most interesting) refrained from surfacing them in a graphic mode (such as an actual gay porn film would do) and instead chosen to make the mise en scene 'graphic'. In other words Sirk's phallic symbolism of oil towers is replaced by a huge concrete cock and balls that pretends to be a fortress butt at the port's edge. Now, the symbolization of the object of desire through the object of reality is reversed : that huge cock and balls symbolizes the physical architecture of the port.
Consider then how the film works in this reversal mode in terms of all its plastic elements.