How does mise-en-scene in Double Indemnity and Do The Right Thing create aesthetics, meaning, and responses?

How is mise-en-scene used in one film from 1930-1960 and one film from 1961-1990 to create aesthetic effects, meaning, and response?

- Double Indemnity and Do The Right Thing

Spike Lee's 1989 film 'Do The Right Thing' (DTRT) and Billy Wilder's 1944 film noir 'Double Indemnity' significantly utilise all elements of mise-en-scene to create the film's tonal aesthetics relative to each film's context and desired readings from spectators through codes and representation as applicable to theorists such as Roland Barthes, Stuart Hall, and Laura Mulvey. 

Double Indemnity curates the tonal approach of noir in its cynical, concealing, dark, and criminal aesthetic. The opening sequence establishes this with an emphasis of setting, props, lighting, and costume creating semantic and hermeneutic codes (Barthes). The credits show a silhouetted man walking towards the frame, his costume typically noirish and 1940s, the fedora hat and angular shapes of the overcoat constructing a symbolic anonymity and suspense in combination with the prop crutches, this anchoring the motif of a 'broken' man. This foreshadowing anchors the following sequence, the staging of the car racing through urban night-time streets suggesting a desperate criminality as it drives through a stop sign provoking active spectatorship. Driving away from the symbolic pathway of light in the parallel rows of streetlights, protagonist Neff exits the car into the building of the insurance company he works for, a double shadow cast characteristic of noir to connote how he is followed by and enters darkness as he walks towards co-worker Keye's office to record his confession of murder. Such examples of mise-en-scene elements encode criminality (Hall), creating a preferred reading of Neff's character as a fatally doomed man. DTRT similarly uses mise-en-scene to convey its tonal approach of a political, turbulent, and hyperbolic aesthetic, the setting of 1980s Bed-Stuy, New York, significant in showing the diverse community fractured by racial tension. The film opens with the passionate Tina diegetically dancing in the foreground to Brooklyn townhouses and empty warehouses, her provocative and emotionally charged movements reflecting the racially charged song and energy of the mise-en-scene: the flashes of red and blue connoting police sirens, the urban graffiti encoding urban youth, and the interchanging costume of a tightfitting red dress, sportswear, and boxing gloves constructing an expressionistic view on racial violence. Such an opening provokes active spectatorship and establishes the turbulent and vivid aesthetic of the film. Lee's choice to span the film's events over a sweltering hot day - the placement of heat lamps under the camera, a consistently warm colour palette, and prop references to heat such as a panning over newspapers with images of broken thermometers - parallels the simmering tension within the community, though significantly even after the disruption of police brutality in Radio Raheem's murder, the next day is 'even hotter' presenting Lee's ideology in relation to the film's real life contexts of systemic racial violence, showing how Raheem's death exists beyond the film. This is intentional because Lee wanted to spark dialogue within spectators which was achieved at the film's release, which still occurs from the multiplicity of readings depending on spectator's situated culture. 

Both films use mise-en-scene attributes such as props and costume to construct representation, differentiate character and symbolise conflict. Wilder, for example, in the two leads, protagonist Neff and femme fatale Phyllis, stereotypes gender roles as related to its 1940s context through costume choices, though this is also encoded for each archetype: the typical masculine and uninspired suit of corporate everyman Neff versus the sexually enticing femme fatale Phyllis, her villainy juxtaposed against the 1940s ideal of womanhood represented in Lola, her maternal, modest, and pretty appearance the sexual antithesis - and Levi-Strauss binary opposition - of Phyllis. Thus, Wilder creates a subtext of sexuality through a preferred Mulvey male gaze response. In Phyllis' first introduction, she is obscured behind a stair railing under a towel, exposing her sexuality through Neff's male gaze. Top lit and blonde, she represents an angelic picture for Neff's pleasure, his eyes doubled on her as she looks in the mirror - perhaps also a symbolic code (Barthes) of her narcissism and self-interest as she is revealed to be a corrupted, sexually empowered woman. Her costume reflects this gradual revelation, Her arc introduced in an innocently encoded (Hall) white dress, modest as the 1940s housewife, though her anklet an encoded instance of promiscuity, pushed towards Neff's view and thus the spectator (from the narrative occurring from his perspective as a flashback) as it glints in the light. A response is encouraged from this Barthes semantic code to view Phyllis as a woman exploiting her sexuality to entice Neff to fulfil her murderous schemes. In the next meeting, she wears a tight fitting two-toned black and white dress, connoting a blend of her symbolic internal darkness creeping to the surface once Neff is caught in her grasp and she is closer to receiving her insurance money, her shadow symbolically transferred to Neff as he exits her door even though he has rejected her in supposition of her real intentions. In their third meeting, she wears a typically noirish trench coat creating visually angular features to suit her archetypal construction of a jagged and evil woman, the setting night-time and noirishly raining, a symbolic representation of light thematically created as Neff walks into the darkness. These aesthetic examples curate the response from spectators that the femme fatale shapes the corrupt and cynical world of noir, an intended preferred reading especially in consideration of the ending; though Neff is punished for his crimes as an accepted production code resolution, he is granted a final cigarette - a prop in this context culturally coded as a desirable attribute of power and sophistication - in a tragically heroic scene while Phyllis is left dead and discarded. Perhaps in a postmodern analysis, such representations likely provoke negotiated readings under the discourse of misogyny in film noir related to its contextual creation: the restrictive discrimination of the Hays Code combined with a post-war cynicism against the 'American Dream' and culturally shifted gender roles, creates the insecurity of noir directed towards powerful women like Phyllis as the evil force, shifting responsibility away from subsequently corrupted men like Neff. 

DTRT creates visual cultural codes in costume and props to emphasise the individuality, and contrast, of each community; Buggin Out's Air Jordan shoes - synonymous with urban black culture as a sign of racial pride and rebellion - getting scuffed by a white man, Radio Raheem's boombox encoding 1980s urban black culture as it blasts the hip-hop song 'Fight The Power' layered with racial tension, the portraits of Italian-Americans on Sal's 'wall of fame', the paintings of Rome within the pizzeria, and 'black power'/ Africa medallions. All these ethnic examples of props, costume, and setting are given significant attention in scenes through cinematographic focus such as through intense zooms and angles, and thus contribute to the socio-political aesthetic, these cultural signs interpreted by spectators as integral aspects of socio-political representations in the film's discourse around race and culture, culminating at the film's climax. Chaotic visuals, such as the spinning fan behind Buggin and Raheem as they conflict with Italian-American Sal for African-American portraits on Sal's 'Wall of Fame', extreme angles, the boombox dominating the frame in Raheem's refusal to turn of his music, and the canonically hot colour palette create a visual turbulent aesthetic, and spectators interpret this scene relative to their situated culture (Hall): whether Buggin/Raheem's reactions and advocation of black figures on the wall of fame, and Sal's reaction and threat of violence, are justified, ultimately linking to the film's title: what is the 'right' thing to do? The film's infamous montage of characters from each opposing community directing racial slurs in a breaking of the fourth wall - directly including the spectator to provoke a reflection on racial biases - shows this conflict in a differentiated mise-en-scene. For example, the Italian American Pino directs his abuse towards black culture, referencing 'gold-chain wearing' despite wearing two gold chains himself, suggesting how he views such expressions of identity as vulgar when it is worn by black people. Despite the canonically warm palette, Lee differentiates colour in costume between white and non-white characters receiving a multiplicity of spectator interpretations: Clifton's green jersey, the Police's blue uniform, and Sal/Pino/Vito black and white costumes against the typically red and yellow costumes of the non-white characters, further encoding (Hall) representation through colour psychology, perhaps a literal association of white characters to be uninspired and colourless, though also perhaps an intentional reversal of the traits associated with cool colours like security, safety, and harmony considering these white characters directly cause or catalyse disruption and conflict towards the rest of the community. This distinction in colour via costume further separates each group in a similar way that Phyllis and Lola are separated to encode representation.