American Beauty

Mise-en-Scene:
American Beauty

Just to refresh everybody’s memory, 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 last but not least time.
The film that I chose for this particular topic was American Beauty. In my opinion, American Beauty is like mise-en-scene candy. In each frame of this film, there is so much to say about each of the elements of mise-en-scene. I will start with discussing the acting.
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 us believe that they are the actual character. In American Beauty the actors played such convincing roles that you would think they were playing their actual day to day lives. The quality of their performances allow the viewer to identify what their character portr...