What is the importance of mine-en-scene and/or sound in creating meaning and generating response in the films you have studied?

La Haine

Sound and mise-en-scene is important in creating meaning and generating a response from the audience. Two scenes that do this are the mixing of the two track with the helicopter shot and Hubert's bedroom.

The sene of the mixing of the two songs is very important with the theme and the people in La Haine. This is also the only time where we see the reference to french culture in the film. The two tracks mixing are an old french song called "non, je no regrete rien" and "fuck the police". This is showing the mixing of the two cultures in projects in paris. This is because there are many types of people in the projects all from different backgrounds, but are all french and they have all been mixed up and are in the projects and this song shows this as they are mixed up and are french.

The music also shows the mix of the french and western culture in the film. This is the only time that we hear or see the reference to french culture in the film, whilst this is one of the multiple times that we see/hear the reference to the western culture. The mixing shows the mix of the french people and the western culture in paris. The scene is also referencing the mix of the western and french media due to the mixing of the American song and the classic French song. You could also say that mixing of the music could also be the mixing of the projects and the main parts of Paris as in the centre of Paris there is a lot of french culture, which we find out later in the film, and the projects are completely engulfed with American culture.

The other scene that I am analysing is Hubert's room. In the scene there are many different parts of the mise-en-scene which tell the audience about Hubert and his personality. The scene starts off with hubert him sitting there watching tv and bring a knife. On his wall we see many posters of American films and sports posters.

One of the posters is a picture of the olympics when two black people were on the podium and did the black power salute. This shows that Hubert is all for equality as he has the poster of the two black people in the olympics doing the salute. There are also many posters of black sports men which also shows this point. The poster of the american films show that Hubert is slightly americanised with his culture but not as much as Vinz.

The music in the scene is soulful which shows that Hubert has a soul unlike the rest of them, for example in Vinz's room where he has no music and is consistently watching the tv and covered plus surrounded by western culture.