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

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

Fernão Pessoa Ramos

CEPECIDOC (Center for Research in Documentary Film), Department of Cinema,

Arts Institute, UNICAMP (Campinas State University), Campinas, Brazil

Fernão Pessoa RamosRua Elis Regina 50 Cidade Universitária "Zeferino Vaz"Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil13083-854Email: [email protected]

Fernão Pessoa Ramos is full Professor at the Department of

Cinema Studies/Arts Institute at the State University of

Campinas (UNICAMP). Founding president of Socine ('Brazilian

Society of Cinema and Audiovisual Studies'), which he presided

between 1996 and 2001, he served as visiting professor in the

Department of Cinema and Audiovisual, University of Paris

III/Sorbonne Nouvelle (2000). Actually, he's the coordinator of

the Research Center for Documentary Film at UNICAMP (CEPECIDOC -

Centro de Pesquisas em Cinema Documentário). His last book,

published in 2012, was A Imagem-câmera ("The Camera-image"). He

also wrote, in 2008, Mas afinal... o que é mesmo documentário? ("After

all... what really is documentary?").

What is documentary mise-en-scène? Coutinho’s

mannerism and Salle’s ‘mauvaise conscience’

In this essay we will discuss two contemporary

documentaries produced by Brazilian directors João

Moreira Salles (Santiago, 2006) and Eduardo Coutinho

(Jogo de cena, 2007). 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.

Keywords: direct acting/constructed acting;

reenactement; mise-en-scène; phenomenology; Eduardo

Coutinho; João Moreira Salles

The concept of mise-en-scène has been widely discussed

in fictional film literature, but occupies a parallel space

in theory of documentary. As a French expression from 19th

century, it was initially used in writings about cinema in

the 1950s, aiming to circumscribe cinematographic

specificity. Definitions of mise-en-scène vary throughout

history. Recently, two books on the subject were published

by leading thinkers in film theory: Jacques Aumont (2006)

and David Bordwell (2005). The concept of mise-en-scène owes

much to André Bazin’s views, but finds its contemporary

meaning with the Nouvelle Vague generation (Jacques Rivette,

Eric Rohmer, Luc Moullet) and the so-called macmahonian

cinephiles (Michel Mourlet, Pierre Rissient, Jacques

Lourcelles). In a key book for this debate, Sur un Art Ignoré,

Michel Mourlet (2008) describes mise-en-scène as a ‘mise en

place’ of ‘actors and objects in their movements inside the

frame’, emphasizing that the core of mise-en-scène lies in

‘the attitudes and bodily reflexes of the actors’ and, ‘in

the tuning between a gesture and its space’.

Following the mise-en-scène aesthetics developed by

the French ‘cinephilique’ criticism of the 60’s, Jean-Louis

Comolli (2004) has put the concept in the center of his

influential book on documentary theory, Voir et pouvoir –

L’innocence perdue: cinéma, télévision, fiction, documentaire. He was

certainly inspired by what Claudine de France (1989)

applies ‘mise-en-scène of the self’, or ‘auto-mise en

scène’, concepts developed in her book about visual

anthropology, Cinéma et Anthropologie. Jean Rouch also goes in

this direction with his idea of ‘cine-trance’, seem as a

movement of merging bodies at the take circumstance,

expressed by the varied and diffuse shapes of inter-action

between ‘camera subject’ and subject ‘in scene’.

What is then mise-en-scène and how we can think this

concept in a profitable way in documentary theory? An

answer can be found in research centered in the idea that,

in the take, we have bodies interacting and perceiving the

world, placed behind and forward of a machine named

‘camera’. Put ‘in scene’, ‘mettre en scène’, would

designate the particular way (the style) that those bodies

in scene are launched, or addressed, to the spectator,

through a camera machine that turns out to be a concrete

subjectivity, incorporating the eye of the spectator as a

corporeal presence. In a phenomenological approach, Susan

Sobchack (2004) has worked in this direction in the diverse

and original essays of Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving

Image Culture and, in a more theoretical mood, in The Address of

the Eye: a Phenomenology of Film Experience (1992). They inspired

analyses well suited for avant-garde documentaries, and

what is called ‘tactile mise-en-scène’, as developed, among

others, by Laura Marks (2000) in The Skin of the Film: Intercultural

Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses or Jennifer Barker (2009) in

The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience. In this article we

will try to rethink mise-en-scène in a broader way,

crossing documentary history in its diverse stylistic

formations.

As we consider the documentary “scene”, we must

semantically expand the notion into structures that are not

always related to the mise-en-scène concept, developed for

fiction film analysis. The scene, with its setting,

cinematography, costume and studios, can be found in a

portion of the documentary tradition, but is not at the

forefront, so to speak, of its aesthetics. We must

acknowledge that the stylistic exuberance of mise-en-scène in

fiction films is not replicated in the documentary

tradition. Here, other variables take the front line. When

we think of documentary staging, we must consider that its

creative core lies in the movement/expression of bodies in

the take, and not, in a preferential way, in the stylistic

design of settings. It is in the take’s circumstance that

we will find the documentary scene as a living embodied

world, opening its flesh to the camera-subject. It is with

a form of presence in the ‘take’ that the subjects in scene

(and the subjects sustaining the camera) manage to drive a

kind of cutting into the duration flow, creating by this

gap the narrative dimension in itself1.

We can analyse the aesthetics of documentary mise-en-

scène in different historical formats. We will name direct-

acting (or direct-expressing) the kind of mise-en-scène that

explores ambiguity and uncertainty in the take

circumstance, opening itself to the radical indetermination

of the flow of duration. Historically, direct-acting and

its mise-en-scène can be find in the different stylistic

manners of verité cinema. When documentary stage its action;

1 See Ricoeur 1984; Mulvey 2006. I also develop this idea in

Ramos 2012.

when it composes and circumscribe the uncertainty of the

present in the take; when it works in a studio with a pre-

defined script; we will call the acting in the take as

constructed-action and analyse its mise-en-scène as a different

category. Direct-acting and constructed-acting are broad,

structural dominances, and should serve merely to position

us in a much more nuance-rich context. Both forms of

staging interact in the take and are not mutually exclusive

(quite the contrary). They are far from being static or

boxed into a given period of time. What matters to us is

recognizing their structural validity and developing the

stylistic analysis in historical and authorial parameters.

Direct-acting

In its different procedures, direct-acting can involve a

camera-subject who may be more retreated or more active

(intervening openly in the world or only influencing the

context). Directly-acted ‘action/expression’ is a kind of

staging that is not strictly constructed beforehand, by a

découpage or a script. Direct-acting is action in itself, body

presence free and loose in the world, but always under the

camera’s influence (or it would not be a ‘take

circumstance’). It is an intervention (a camera-subject

intervention) that flows with the world as it happens. It

implies movement and, more than movement, it implies

contact, active interaction with other beings and things

involved in the take. In direct staging, action can be only

slightly inflected by the camera’s presence. The secret,

discovered by cinéma verité in late 1950s, is that the slight

inflection of action by the camera presence, small as it

could be, was far from producing the same figures of hidden

camera-images. The ‘eureka’ moment was the discovery that

acting for the camera, through the ordinary way of being,

yielded a new form of art. The resulting pictures were

intense and imbued with poetry. Ordinary people were easily

turned into strong characters, affected by the presence of

the camera-subject, fleshing out common life in a kind of

ordinary ‘mundaneness’. Also, duration could be explored in

the take, sticking closely to the ordinary way the world

happens as itself, highlighting the absolute indeterminism

and ambiguity of present flow.

Ordinary present could also become dense, intense and

flowing, in the form of an intense-imbued action, as

history itself. Robert Drew had the idea of capturing these

moments systematically (through what he called the ‘crisis

structure’), but finally gave up, surprised by its high

intensity load and complexity. He found that shooting

history would imvolve having to deal with an infinitely

intricate web of variables, much more complex than the dual

and alternate parallelism that goes so well with film

narrative format. When we leave behind the classic

‘constructed staging’, the composition of the documentary

scene enters uncharted territory. Between the ontological

indeterminism of intense action as duration flow, and the

basic structural narrative demands he entitled ‘crisis’,

Drew discovered that history was very difficult to act for

the camera, at least in the narrative format the first

verité cinema required.

Staging direct action can also involve less action and

more expression (affection). It can mean the figuration of

feelings and personalities through the image of the body,

particularly in a privileged portion: the face. The body in

the take expresses feelings mostly through its physiognomy

and small gestures. From its beginning, verité cinema was

interested in close-ups. Verité is a style that focuses

strongly on physiognomy and the feelings it expresses, also

highlighting bodily details (the archetypical image of

Jacqueline Onassis’s hand behind her back, in Primary (Drew,

1960). The gap, the interval of action, where expression

can be inflated (Maysles), matches very well with the

figures that direct ‘enactement’ composes, as they are bond

to indeterminacy.

Documentary direct-staging can also show the body in

the take making assertions, talking about herself or the

world. Speech is an integral part of the way we are in the

world (Perrault), and direct-acting only took its real

dimension when, in the 60’s, technology finally enabled the

camera-subject to incorporate voice in her body discourse,

as a flow of the speech in duration. The documentary way of

making assertions can be modulated by a discourse spoken by

a body in an interview or testimony format. The voice, as

an articulated speech, is one of the essential elements of

the corporeal subject in the world transfigured by the

take. The embodied voice at the scene can compose

statements and arguments, or simply express affection, in a

poetic tone.

Constructed-acting

Constructed-acting lies at the heart of the aesthetic

composition of documentary tradition, involving methods

that date back the first half of the 20th century and are

still widely used today. Its narrative form, and also its

main theoretical devices, comes from British documentary

tradition. Both John Grierson and Paul Rotha wrote at

length about documentary praxis, establishing formats and

justifications for a particular kind of documentary mise-

en-scène. They developed a documentary ethic that set forth

very clear rules for documentary staging. The voice-over had

a structural place in this classic constructed-acting of the

first half of the century. In classic contemporary

documentary, constructed-acting does not come alone and is

often interspersed with archive footage, interviews or

statements (in direct-acting mode).

Constructed-acting might reconstitute historical

events through staged dialogues, which are often not very

far from dramatic forms of acting in fictional films.

However, the dramatic form, if present, is not generally

predominant in classic documentary. Constructed-acting is

the way documentary proposes arguments (mostly with a voice

over) in a narrative form through action, using procedures

that some critics wrongly exclude from the documentary

tradition. The construction of space in constructed-acting

can involve the use of sets, studios and cinematography

built especially to stage documentaries. Constructed-acting

may also take place at locations that do not involve studios.

A constructed-acting documentary usually does not work with

professional actors, but uses amateur actors or people who

are close to the circumstances being depicted (the

fishermen in Man of Aran; the Inuit in Nanook; the Royal Mail

postmen in Night Mail, etc).

The equipment used to light constructed-acting

documentaries can be quite sophisticated. It is prepared

well in advance and previews each shot. It predetermines

the scene marking and restricting the movement of the

bodies. The takes themselves are planned in a detailed

script. The découpage is planned in advance for editing and

post-production. In a documentary manual, Filme e Realidade

(Film and Reality), from the 50’s, and clearly in debt to the

Grierson heritage, Alberto Cavalcanti (1957) provides a

belated explanation of the maxims of the classical

documentary, setting out in detail the procedures needed

for a good documentary maker: “do not neglect your

argument, and do not count on luck during shooting: once

your argument is ready, your film is made; when you start

shooting, you are just starting the argument over again”

(Cavalcanti 1957, 81).

In the construct-scene, the body that incarnates the

documentary action or speech does not act/speak for

herself. The expression to the camera is transfigured by

previously defined forms of action and expression that

usually can be evaluated by the word ‘performance’. They

are thought and framed through previously identified

personality traits (the fisherman’s son and the fisherman’s

mother in Man of Aran; the postman actions in Night Mail, etc).

This previous preparation for action in the documentary

scene certainly varies according to the prevailing

historical stylistic dominance. What matters is to note

that in the constructed-acting mode, the window of

receptiveness to ambiguity and indeterminacy is narrow.

Classic staging does not recognise, or does not explore,

radical ambiguity in the flow of duration. The affection

expressed at the body’s face is not highlighted either (and

here Flaherty is a kind of exception). The progressive

configuration of a physiognomy (the movement of facial

features) is inherently indeterminate and, in this sense,

is not at the core of constructed-acting stylistics in

documentary.

In the classic constructed-acting documentary, there

is no intention to investigate the narrative construction

itself, in a reflexive way. However, contemporary modern

directors working with this kind of staging (like Peter

Watkins), develop different narrative procedures in order

to introduce reflexive or polyphonic dimensions to

constructed-acting mode. Also direct-acting easily

outlines the reflexive movement of staging itself, in a

kind of melting down between character and corporeal body

of one’s self. Direct-acting easily incarnates

personalities through physiognomy expressions, transfigured

by the kind of camera mold called ‘photogenie’. Especially

after the 1980s (but also before – see Mekas, Pincus),

direct-acting has opened itself to bodily expression in

first person performative staging, dramatizing action as

one’s own life in the take circumstance. This self-body,

first person voice, receives, through a self-camera

subject, the spectatorial address. Autobiographical

expression gained unprecedented space in documentaries well

before it took the actual dimension in contemporary

electronic midia.

The concept of staging, as the nucleus of documentary

mise-en-scène, cannot therefore be seen uniformly throughout

history. Staging in a studio and the slight inflection of

the voice caused by the presence of a camera cannot be

analysed in the same perspective. The re-enactment, for

instance, of the three inhabitants of Aran who, despite

having no kinship, play a nuclear family in Man of Aran, is

not equivalent to the self-centered conscious attitudes of

Edith and Edie Beale in Grey Gardens, (Maysles, 1976) or Luiz

Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula), in Entreatos (João Salles, 2004)

or even Robert Kennedy in Primary (Robert Drew, 1960). We

cannot say that Lula, Kennedy or Edie Beale are acting for

the camera in the same way that the young boy (who plays

the son he is not), does in Man from Aran. Lula, Kennedy and

Edie act what they are for themselves. Without doubt, their

attitudes are altered by the presence of the camera, which

gives them the room needed to represent and express their

personality through facial features and gestures. But their

intimate personalities shine through the expressions

composed in close-ups, matching in nature with the radical

indeterminate way their bodies move loose in scene.

The work with direct-acting is not restricted to

documentary narrative. There are a range of television

formats that use it, both in journalism and entertainment,

as the fascination with reality shows demonstrates. Figures

like Edie Beale, Paul Brennan (Salesman, Maysles, 1968),

Elizabeth Teixeira (Cabra Marcado para Morrer, Eduardo Coutinho,

1984), Estamira (Estamira, Marcos Prado, 2005), Santiago

(Santiago, João Salles, 2006), Kenneth Bailey (The Things I

Cannot Change, Tanya Ballantyne, 1966), Stéphane Albert

Boulais (La Bête Lumineuse, Pierre Perrault, 1982), Marceline-

Loridan Ivens (Chronicle of a Summer, Jean Rouch, 1961) and

many others, are personalities who remain in the history of

cinema as multi-layered characters, standing comparison

with famous fictional characters created by professional

actors. It is significant that the documentary narrative

format was crystallised precisely at the point when it

discovered the beauty and the dramatic possibilities of the

intense performance of anonymous personalities, configured

as characters. In this sense, we can see Allakariallak’s

expression in Nanook of the North as a breaking through that

defines and extrapolates the constructed-mode of staging of

classic documentary. When looking and acting for a camera-

subject (machine which incorporates Flaherty’s presence at

the take, in a Hudson Bay winter), Allakariallak composes a

presence that shows the two sides of the same corporeal

coin: ‘Allakariallak’ body’s and physiognomy shining

through the transfigurated ‘Nanook’.

Salles and the constructed-action as ‘mauvaise’

conscience

In their recent films, João Moreira Salles and Eduardo

Coutinho have worked together in Videofilmes, a production

company owned by Salles. Salles has produced Coutinho’s

recent documentaries, with some influence in the planning

and final cut. Of an older generation, Coutinho is

considered one of the leading documentary makers in Latin

America today. Salles pursues an independent career in

documentary, making important films as News from a Private War

(1998), Entreatos and Nelson Freire (2002).

Santiago (2006) is a documentary where João Salles

returns to old footage shot when he filmed the old butler

that served his family. Named Santiago Badariotti Merlo, he

is the main character of the film. Santiago was made on two

separate occasions. A first version was shot in May 1992,

but remained unedited. In August 2005, Salles returns to

the original footage and edits it, without shooting new

material. A short passage was edited in the 1992 version,

and this passage opens the final version of the

documentary. In the Santiago/2006, Salles throws a critical

look over the 1992 takes. He narrates his childhood

memories and critically comments on the kind of staging he

imposed on Santiago in 1992, while making his portrayal.

Santiago died in 1994, which heightens Salles’ self-

criticism. He had lost the chance to extract from Santiago

a statement that might reveal what was hidden in his

multiple personalities.

The incomplete takes from 1992 used classic

constructed staging in its mise-en-scène. We see the director

giving explicit orders of how Santiago must develop his

character and which words to use when facing the camera.

Salles sometimes talks in a commanding tone, composing

Santiago’s character with far more interference than is

permitted in direct-acting style. In the 2006/Santiago, we

hear Salles voice (from the 1992 takes) commanding

instructions offscreen: ‘now, Santiago, get up, stand like

this for a bit, think about your grandmother, about my

mother,’ (...); ‘now tell the story of the embalmer (...),’

‘tell it again without giving my name (...),’ ‘look down

again’ (...); ‘let’s do it again (...),’ etc. Also, some of

the 1992 passages (shown at the beginning of the 2006

version), alternates images of Santiago with extra-diegetic

‘inserts’ and ‘cut-ins’ of studio made scenes. This is a

kind of cross-cutting editing style that, in the 2000’s,

receives much criticism from Coutinho and other filmmakers

connected to Videofilmes. The 1992 shots of Santiago utilise

a stylised black-and-white photography (by Walter Carvalho)

with strong contrasts and artificial hues. In these takes,

Carvalho works with elaborate lighting techniques, feeling

free to superimpose layers of light and effects in studio-

made objects. Scenes of a toy train, a boxer hitting a

punching bag and a flower vase, are used to illustrate

Santiago’s words, in a metaphoric crossover style far from

verité rhetoric.

By not finishing his 1992 project and keeping the

footage untouched for over a decade, Salles creates a space

to portray not just his own development as a filmmaker, but

also the stylistic transformation of mise-en-scène in

documentary. When he returns to the original takes, he

brings with him the new ethical demands of modern

documentary in its reflexive nature. Although this context

was not completely absent from the ideological horizon of

Brazil in the early 1990s, it is now, in 2006, that it

occupies the central position necessary to have a direct

influence over the aesthetic of Santiago.

But the 1992 takes of ‘Santiago’ had already been shot

and could not be repeated. Santiago is dead and the mood

towards the filmmaker’s performance in those takes is

critical. The 2006/Santiago expresses this guilt in a first

person voice. It characterizes an insensitive director who

was incapable of seizing the full potential of his

character, because he is still tied to old conceptions of

constructed-acting. Instead of simply letting Santiago

speak and develop his own fascinating personality before

the camera, the João Salles of 1992 had reproduced a

personal scene interaction typical of a strongly divided

class society, which matched well with the classical

construct-acted format. The guilt stems from the the fact

that the interaction, the commutation, of Santiago with

Salles (the ‘camera-subject’ of the 1992’s takes), had not

allowed the authentic core of Santiago personality to be

figured. What emerged was the preconceived and limited

character Salles had previously outlined in his mind,

represented in a constructed-acting way that fitted well

with the explicit instructions shouted offscreen.

In the new 2006 Santiago’s the director seeks then the

authentic Santiago lost in the debris of old footage. In a

melancholy vein this search is expressed by a sad first

person voice-over overflowing with memories from the family

mansion. Through ‘voice-over’, the first person deals with

bad conscience and guilt, as he tries to recover a forever

lost figure and identity. Santiago is actually two films in

one, the second commenting on the first with a reflexive

approach that melds lyricism and ‘mauvaise’ conscience.

Salles surely blames himself and this is what virtually

prevents him from ‘speaking’. Although the voice-over is

spoken in the first person, it is not his voice we hear,

but that of his brother, Fernando Salles.

What in fact does João Salles ask of himself? He

demands that, in the original 1992’s takes of Santiago, he

would already be aware of the ideological and ethical

parameters of direct-acting. In a guilt-ridden tone, he

asks for a kind of mise-en-scène in accord with the ruling

ethical horizons of modern documentary for staging the

other (the social\popular other, the ethnically other, the

other in genre, etc). Salles melancholic voice-over wishes

that, in the early 1990s, he had been already in tune with

a documentary that mostly came into Brazilian scene after

the end of the decade, particularly through the work of

Eduardo Coutinho: a documentary in which the camera-subject

stands in a retreated (but active) position, exploring the

characters own expressions by pulling their speech like a

self-unrolled rope. In the time elapsed between the first

and second Santiago, Salles composes the portrait of the

artist as a young man (as a young documentarist) in search

of a style. In the final Santiago, Salles’s voice-over

criticize constructed-acting and stylized documentary

cinematography, attempting to give new lights to a

discourse (Santiago’s testimony) primarily staged on

different foundations.

Coutinho: direct-action as a mannerist procedure

In Jogo de Cena, Eduardo Coutinho directly faces the diverse

and complex issues of staging. The film shows the centrality

of the subject to Brazilian documentary in the 2000s.

Coutinho’s original idea was to shoot anonymous women

talking about intense experiences in their lives,

alternating them with the same stories played by actresses.

The proposition was that everyday people would tell their

stories and actresses would play the same personal stories.

Both would act in the stylistic procedures that marked

Coutinho’s latest documentaries: faces seen in medium

close-up and continuous speech highlighting characters

personality. The initial idea of contrasting and melding

two forms of staging (common people acting in documentaries

and professionals acting as they do in fictional films)

evolved into more complex variables. Finally, Jogo de Cena

involves thirteen women acting to the camera in different

forms of staging and one life testimony from a woman whose

body we don’t see.

Using the parameters of acting and performance we have

now developed, we can identify in Jogo de Cena: a) seven

common people (I will call them ‘characters’) expressing

their own feelings and stories, speaking straight-to-

camera, in direct-acting staging (two of them only give the

‘direct-acted’ life testimony to Coutinho and do not have

their speech interpreted by actors); b) three very well-

known actresses, stars (Marília Pêra, Fernanda Torres and

Andréa Beltrão), famous faces in Brazilian scene,

interpreting three stories told by three characters, using

the standard constructed-acting method of professional actors;

c) three little-known actresses (the Brazilian public does

not recognise their faces as actresses) playing, in the

constructed-acting mode, two of the seven characters life

stories; d) one character (and therefore an eighth

‘character’), whose speech is played by one of the three

unknown actresses, but whose body we do not see (she is the

only character that does not tell us her story, showing her

body/face in the direct-acting mode).

In Jogo de Cena actresses and real characters tell their

stories in a stage, sitting in a chair, looking at a fixed

camera position, with the stalls of the theatre as

scenario. With the exception of the faces of the three

well-known actresses, the identities of the speakers are

not immediately distinguishable. The narrative explicitly

does not want to point out who is who (there are no

subtitles and no voice-over to identify them), although

some clues are given: two similar stories are told by

different people (so we can see that one woman is

constructing a character and the other is telling her own

story); or else a discourse will repeat a fact already

mentioned by a different character-body. Sometimes, words

or phrases that characterise the speakers as actresses are

used. For instance, one of the unknown amateur actresses,

Débora Almeida, finishes her interpretation of Maria Nilsa

Gonçalves dos Santos character, with the sentence ‘this is

what she said’, revealing, at this moment, that the acting

has been constructed (as constructed-acting) and that she

was not telling her life story (in a direct-acting mode).

It is not the black migrant from Minas Gerais (Maria Nilsa

dos Santos) who is narrating in first person her own

misfortunes when arriving in the big city of São Paulo, but

is this amateur actress (Débora Almeida), involved in the

black movement of Rio de Janeiro, who is playing her.

There are other kinds of superimposition of acting and

re-enacting in Jogo de Cena, some which are not explained at

the moment, but only later on. Lana Guelero (an unknown

stint in TV’s soap operas) is an amateur actress who plays

Claudiléa Cerqueira de Lemos, a character who tells us a

very delicate story of how she dealt with the loss of her

son. When we hear the first narrative we tend to believe

that Lana Guelero is talking about her own life, and

nothing in the narrative makes things clear. At the end of

the film (it’s the last story told) we again hear the same

life story, but edited in a slightly different way. We

then, gradually, become aware of the ruse: the

‘constructed’, re-enacted status of the first statement and

the ‘direct’ status of the real speech of Claudiléa, whom

we now hear. In retrospect, the spectator’s relation toward

Lana Guelero’s expression is totally transformed. Coutinho

does not make clear to the viewer who is the ‘true’ mother

that lost her son and who is the actress. The narrative

structure plays around with this tone of fake documentary,

even if it’s not the ‘fake’ effect that drives it. ‘Jogo de

Cena’, in Portuguese, besides the literal mean of playing

(jogo) with the scene, has mostly a strong metaphorical

sense of faking, forging a situation. In fact, we are

dealing with an auteur (Eduardo Coutinho) developing his own

mise-en-scène style beyond a limit line, in which it seems

natural to take a mannerist drive and lean over its own

procedures.

In the stories told by the seven real characters -who

effectively gave, with their own flesh, their life

testimonies to the camera-, we come near the style Coutinho

developed late in his career, especially after Santo Forte

(1999). A style, well analysed in Brazilian film criticism

which can be characterised by the portrayal of anonymous,

strong characters, found amongst ordinary common people,

and subsequently polished by editing (Mattos 2003; Lins

2004; Ohata 2013). However, after several successfully

films using this approach (Boca do Lixo,1992; Babilônia 2000,

2000; Edifício Master, 2002; Peões, 2004, O Fim e o Princípio, 2005),

Coutinho seems to have himself arrived at a position where

the well know format blossoms in his hands. The procedures

start to somehow repeat themselves, even if always

surrounded by the same excellent outcomes. Jogo de Cena is

made at this moment. It’s a work where Coutinho turns

himself over to his own successful style and, with the same

directing fluency, points toward its wearing. It is a

documentary that goes deep into women’s universe and soul,

collecting eight intense life stories, with the

particularity of having six actresses developing those life

experiences in different modes of acting, not limiting

itself to the horizon of characters depiction. Jogo de Cena

consciously plays with ‘mise-en-scène’ frontiers, leaning,

in a reflexive way, over the corporeal act of expressing

emotion (and speech) to the camera machine in the take

circumstance.

Coutinho’s documentaries rely on two factors to obtain

their particular intensity to depict characters: First, the

polishing of raw material through editing and post-

production and second, the ‘apparatus’ put into place to

make the mise-en-scène work. Jogo de Cena repeats the mise-en-

scène procedures of Coutinho’s recent documentaries, where

the director almost does not have any prior contact with

characters before shooting. The previous personal meetings

to prepare the shooting of the life stories testimonies are

done by assistant directors and members of the crew. They

film the future characters in screen tests, which are shown

to Coutinho who selects the ones he is interested in. The

characters generally only make visual contact with Coutinho

at the moment of the final shooting.

To select the characters for Jogo de Cena an

advertisement was placed in a newspaper saying: ‘If you are

a woman aged over 18, live in Rio de Janeiro, have stories

to tell and want to take part in a screen test for a

documentary film, contact us. You can call us as 17th April

(10am to 6pm) at ...’. The first shot of Jogo de Cena shows a

close-up of this ad, making it clear to the spectator how

the apparatus works and most of the characters were chosen.

The three amateur actresses rehearsed their speech with the

assistant directors. The three well-known actresses, the

stars, received only videos of the true characters they

would interpret. In those videos, the character tells her

life story to the camera, as previously recorded by

Coutinho’s team. The life stories were presented to the

three stars in footage videos, entirely as they were filmed

or briefly edited, so they could practice at home alone.

Coutinho did not personally direct the stars in any way,

leaving them free to create their characters.

Another key point to understand how the scene apparatus

was constructed resides in the fact that the film was shot

on two separate occasions. The characters (ordinary women

telling their life stories) were filmed in June 2006 at

Teatro Glauce Rocha, Rio de Janeiro, and the actresses

playing the women in the constructed mode were shot three

months later, in September, at the same theatre. The plan

of shooting the characters first and the actresses (stars

and amateurs) later, gave a particular shape to the kind of

‘constructed-acting’ developed by the actresses. It opened

a differentiated access to the body (voice and expression)

of the real characters. The actresses knew their characters

only as images, figures in action. The process of creating

acting composition departing from images of real talking

bodies (and not from written script characters) is one of

the singularities that shape’s the film proposal and mise-

en-scène.

The different representational modes used in Jogo de

Cena, seems to have left the professional actresses without

a point of reference. The response to the dispositif built to

interact with the ‘fictional-constructed-acting mode’ of

shaping characters varied. Marilia Pêra, a leading actress

of the Brazilian stage, developed her personage in a calm,

concentrated way. She chose a minimalist way to get through

the challenge. Her character (Sarita Brumer) exhudes

intensity from every pore of her body, which makes the

composition harder. Pêra acts with reserve and repressed

expressions, maintaining the essence of the character type

she plays, by composing repeated key features and

expressions. The calculated distance demonstrates cool

professionalism and reveals what kind of actress figure she

is. Andréa Beltrão, the other star of Jogo de Cena, chooses

to stick to her character’s expression, mimicking all small

facial changes Gisele Alves Moura (her character) goes

through. Trying to follow her closely, Beltrão seems like

someone making an effort to dance over a snake. Gisele

Alves Moura is a lot more of a reserved character than

Sarita Brumer, but has a penetrating look that edges close

to schizophrenia. Andréa Beltrão’s acting is far from

reproducing the repressed intensity of her character, which

borders a kind of cold delirium. Beltrão demonstrates a

conscientious and diligent work, but does not penetrate the

surface of the strong character she was given to interpret.

Fernanda Torres, the third ‘star’ of Jogo de Cena, is an

actress naturally drawn to intensity, and decides to take

up the challenge directly. She embraces a strong

interaction with her character’s expression, tries to

confront her face-to-face but, at the end, seems to blink

first and literally cracks up. Her character (Aleta Gomes

Vieira) is a reserved woman, who tells a story of teenage

pregnancy that stopped her from living as she desired in

her early youth. Aleta Gomes Vieira has a way of looking at

the camera that seems to pierce it, but the expressions

themselves vary little during her story. Fernanda Torres

takes the challenge, which is to create a character from a

real body and voice, and jumps in. Half way through,

already recording her acting face-to-face with Coutinho,

she realises she is going nowhere. In fact, how can she

repeat, in her own flesh, the body and expressions of

someone else, even when modulated by the presence of the

camera, in a mixed form of constructed-acting? Torres feels

she is on unfamiliar ground and that her effort (which is

clearly evident) is in vain. At one point she gives up,

turns suddenly to Coutinho, and starts to talk about how

hard she is finding it to act within the parameters given.

She insists on going on, tries to resume the acting out of

Aleta’s life story, but the results continue to be

invariably fall flat, far from the strong work of

interpretation she is capable of as one of the best

contemporary Brazilian actresses. At one point she really

gives up and, following a director’s suggestion, starts

narrating an episode from her own life, apparently mixing

something she has heard with something she has experienced

(in a short passage, Andréa Beltrão also plays herself in a

real life story). The tone changes right way and we finally

find the Fernanda Torres we know. One can feel that she has

shifted a weight from her shoulders and is again on known

ground, regaining the security to compose expressions

proper to a great actress.

In a completely different mood, the amateur actresses

of Jogo de Cena seem to be very at easy with the challenges

presented by constructed-acting based in real characters. The

amateur actresses do not have, to us spectators, the

familiar facial expressions of the well-known stars, which

trigger a special kind of reception, more closely related

to the constructed-acting of fictional films. With amateur

actresses, at first, the narrative makes us believe that we

are seeing the real characters themselves. Although they do

not have the experience of the well-known actresses, the

kind of acting the documentary proposes strangely fits them

considerably well. In the film, they seem to move quickly,

and without difficulty, to the expressive core of the

characters, taking a strait route that the experienced

starts find hard to discover.

Beside stars and amateurs actress, we also find in

Jogo de Cena the strong ‘mise-en-scène’, directly-acted, of the

seven ‘characters’ testimonies, given face-to-face to

Coutinho’s camera subject. They are common people, unknown

personalities of Brazilian working and middle class women.

They all have strong personalities presenting us dense

characters. Gisele Alves Moura and Aleta Gomes Vieira

(characters played by Andréa Beltrão and Fernanda Torres)

are more reserved with an inward-looking expression.

Coutinho may have perceived some parallel between their

personality and the way the two actresses work. Sarita

Houli Brumer and Maria de Fátima Barbosa have more outgoing

personalities, and make more expansive testimonies. In Jogo

de Cena, Sarita asks to come back another time, for a

complement to her statement, and finishes her story with a

song. The documentary ends with this Sarista’s children’s

song, sung by Marília Pêra offscreen. Sarita and Maria de

Fátima know how to mobilise their life stories through

gestures and facial expressions. Claudiléa Cerqueira de

Lemos is introverted, repressed and has a more depressive

expression, with a calm, receptive look. At a critical

moment in her story, when she speaks about the loss of her

son and what God owes her for that, she is capable of being

assertive and sure. Maria Nilza Gonçalves dos Santos is not

showed in her real body and voice. We only hear her story

through the corporeal interpretation of the amateur actress

Débora Almeida. She appears as herself in the DVD bonus,

but is not a body character in the film narrative. Marina

d’Elia and Maria de Fátima Barbosa are the characters who

do not have their life history interpreted by actors.

Jogo de Cena points out a feeling (an authorial feeling)

that it is no longer enough for documentary to discover

characters, strong types, in normal citizens and

immortalise them through narratives and editing procedures.

Coutinho takes the next step, questioning old strategies

and devices. The personalities/characters that

documentaries show to the viewer, as if discovered in the

world by chance, are, in fact, a kind of particular acting

construction (we are calling it direct-acting). The

‘maelstrom’ of the personality-character is, in Jogo de Cena,

enacted through the modulations of the apparatus that

precedes and follows the experience of the take

circumstance in itself. It reveals the procedures demanded

by the take apparatus to produce the blossoming spontaneity

in which characters-personalities pop up, as incredible

figures, in Coutinho’s documentaries.

In its mannerist moment, Coutinho’s stylistic

deconstructs direct-acting and spreads it through a mixture

of different types of constructed-acting. Direct-acting, in

the way it has dominated his work since Santo Forte (1999), is

now integrated with extreme forms of constructed-acting

that usually exceed the boundaries of documentary

tradition. In Jogo de Cena we find the acting typical of

stars (a rarity in the history of documentary), overlapping

the modern documentary direct-acting testimony. Even if

documentary directors do not know, or are not interested,

in working with stars interpreting not themselves,

documentaries have often involved amateur actors or

everyday people playing characters. Here we see the fixed

and crystalized facial expression of stars opening

themselves, in a strange way, through the specificities of

documentary narrative.

In this essay we have tried to put forward a method

for analysing documentary narratives centred on the idea

that the camera is a subjective instance in the take

circumstance. We tried to analyse the camera as a corporeal

flesh in the world, a world that is addressed by the

spectator through a kind of commutation with the body ‘in

scene’, acting through a ‘machinic’ corporeal subject we

named ‘camera-subject’. Mise-en-scène designates then the way

acting is organized as a staging in the take. It also

involves the takes future place in film narration, as

shots. Looking back at the history of documentary, we found

two structural variants composing acting in the take. We

called those variants constructed-acting, when action to the

camera is planned or guided beforehand; and direct-acting,

when this action is loose in the world, glued to duration,

taking place without a strong control from the camera-

subject. In this last variant we can also distinguish

between action, when it involves movement, and affection, when

the characters expression is accented as figure, prevailing

over action. We also made an attempt to distinguish the

different modes by which the camera presence may guide or

influence action and expression in the take, especially in

the work of João Moreira Salles and Eduardo Coutinho.

References:

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