The life of mise-en-scène

<p>The life of mise-en-scène offers a critical history of key debates about visual style in British film journals in the post-war period. It reclaims an often-ignored or misrepresented history including: the concept of film poetry in the journal Sequence changing attitudes in Sight and Sound during the 1950s and the battle over the significance of film style which raged between a number of small journals and the national press in the early 1960s. <br><br>It examines the British school first associated with Movie in the 1960s which in Adrian Martin's words is enjoying a 'widespread international revival' - but also other critical movements more hazily remembered. It explores the role of mise-en-scène in melodrama criticism and considers what happened to detailed criticism as major theoretical movements emerged in the 1970s. In doing so it provides a vital context for the contemporary practice of style-based criticism and challenges received notions of critical history developing our understanding of a range of other key debates and concerns in the study of film.</p>