Freddie (Joaquin Phoenix) is falling asleep while he observes the master (Philip Seymour Hoffman) singing and dancing, surrounded by his family and friends. They are allocated in a way that they create an scenario, open to Phoenix, who is the spectator and Hoffman, the actor. This is created by the mise-en-scène of all the elements. As Phoenix falls asleep he "sees" (or more accurately he imagines) all the women in the scene naked. The spectator knows this is in the imagination of Joaquin Phoenix thanks to the lighting, and the sequence, as we've seen everybody dressed, we've seen Freddie accommodated in the shadows, falling asleep, and then the imagined scene with nude people, which looks clearly unreal.
The lighting in the scene of Freddie in the shadows also depicts him in a different, obscurer world, closer to insanity.
All the elements of the mise-en-scène - i.e. settings, costumes and make up, lighting and staging - help creating this scene.
The Third Man makes a extensive use of shadows (and dutch angles, but that would be part of the framing side studied in the previous part of the course) to evoque suspense and anguish.
Scene 1 above shows a little child who is the greatest menace to the main character at this point of the film, as the boy accuses him of killing his father and a bunch of people is following him, after the kid, through the streets of Vienna. To show this perilous situation we can see the kid, but also the light has been positioned so he has a big, dark and defined shadow, which is definitely more threatening that the actual boy.
Scene 2 not only uses the shadow on the building, but also the neat reflection on the wet floor, therefore the menacing shadow seems twice as big in this scene. We can also see in the foreground two statues, depicting two men probably fighting, that adds tension to the scene and have intentionally been incorporated in the mise-en-scène.
Scene 3 makes use of a dark corner (all we can see in the first instance) to hide the police men, who we only see when they step forward.
Scene 4 shows a dutch angle of a room, which is initially in darkness. When the protagonist, who is being chased, turns the light, the image depicted above is what he can see. It is at the some time awkward and disturbing, and this has been created not only by the unbalanced camera angle, but also by the elements shown - a parrot, which is shrieking, the curtains, a kind or gown on a hanger...
Finally, the last shot in the film, when all has been solved and cleared, depicts a wide path, well lighted, in a very symmetrical image (scene 5 above).
It has been more easy to identify the lighting of the scenes in the two films above, the use of shadows and clear areas or darker and clearer scenes, than the position of elements to generate moods or feelings. Some of the images above from The Third Man convey a feeling just with the mise-en-scène, and it would not be needed to follow the plot to know that what is going on is rather unquieting.
The exercise asks now to go back to Project 2 and analyse if the mise-en-scène had an (involuntary) impact on creating a mood. Definitely the third part of the exercise includes elements that create a kind of tension that would be needed for understanding the scene, mainly the black cat and the broken vase. I did not draw using shadows and lights, but I should definitely try to do that for the next sketch.
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