Mise En Scene of Edward Scissorhands

        Edward Scissorhands is concidered to be one of the most classic romantic films. As an uncompleted creation, Edward only had several scissors as his hands. After living alone for years, he was invited by a local Avon lady, Peg, to her family and lived with them ever since. The day Peg went up the hill and found Edward was a big turning point in Edward’s life. And I am going to talk about how director Tim Burton creates the turning point image and do a mise en scene analysis of a shot from the movie.

       This scene is when Peg first saw Edward and realized those scissors were actually his “hands,” she couldn’t help going close to him and sympathysing him. At the first sight of this scene, audiences will focus on Peg’s hat, because that is the brightest thing in focus. She is one of the two largest objects in the scene, and she wears a bright color suit, making her even more outstanding in contrast to Edward’s black “armor.” To make her the dominant gives Peg more energy in the movie.

      

        Edward lives alone in the mysterious, which gives the reason why the director uses a low key lighting. Edward stays in the shadow, both before he meets Peg and after. The shadow creates a mysterious and depressed atmosphere, even Peg is in the shadow now. The strong loneliness is embodies in the shadow and Peg walks in it and decides to take Edward out of it. The low key lighting also indicates this film is a formalistic film.

   

        This is a scene from the process of Peg walking towards Edward. I chose the scene from the middle of the process. The camera in fact is following Peg, so the shots change from full shot to medium and then close-ups. This scene is from the medium shots part. Again these shots show how passionate Peg is, and how sympathetic she is towards Edward. She was afraid of him when she first saw him, but felt immediately sad after realizing how pathetic and lonely Edward was. So she walked to him. From this scene we can see that Edward shows a really innocent and ignorant. He doesn’t want Peg leave, but he is also afraid of coming near her. Peg walks near him, as if she walks into his life. Eye-level angle shot helps audience to feel close to the characters in the movie. It streees that Edward is the same with us all, even he has scissors rather than hands, and has so many scars on his face. He is equal with every one, so he should have what anyone else has. The scars is a symbol of bitterness in Edward’s life. Therefore the director uses long shots and slow stock to emphasize on the high quality of the image, in other words, Edward’s face, giving audiences intense impression.

  

        Color using in this shot is symbolic. On the whole the scene is in a basic tone of black, like Edward himself. Black suggests the loneliness Edward used to have and his monotonous life. Even though Peg is now in the shadow, too, but she is dressed in a light pink suit, a very clear contrast to Edward’s dominant color. This gives us the idea that Peg will bring some “color” to Edward’s life. And pink is such a warm color that it seems that it can melt all the sadness and loneliness of Edward’s.

   

        Edward, as the other character in focus in this scene, is the main and only subsidiary contrast. He stands in the darker shadow and wears black, so he is not so obvious as Peg. Yet he faces the camera, or audience, and his face stands out in the black background. Besides, in this shot he is the object that the dominant figure, Peg, is watching. Now he is the subsidiary contrast, but soon he will be the dominant. We can figure out this through the different positions of the two: Edward shows a full-front, but Peg is back to camera.

       In this shot, there is little objects in the background, so the image is not so dense. This draws audiences’ attention more on Edward because his “armor” is the most complicated obejects in the picture. However when we really focus on his “armor,” we find him weird and out of normal fashion. The less-packed image says more about how Edward is like.

   

        The sense of equality, the sympathy Peg has for Edward and Peg’s determination to help Edward is the basic meaning of this single shot. All elements prove that. For example, binary structures of the scene well shows parallelism and equality. Their standing also shows some vertical sense in this shot. And the sort of deep-focus shot allows both Peg and Edward in the focus at the same time, but also creates two planes simutaneouly. Peg stands near the camera as the first plane, and Edward stands in the second one. On top of that, both Peg and Edward are in the center of the frame. There is space between them, but the margins they to the edge are almost the same, so that the frame of this shot is moderately loose. All these show the equality between the two. They share the same importance in this shot. And the personal distance reveals the sympathy Peg has for Edward. She doesn’t treat him as a “strange creation”, but she regards him as an lonely orphan. The image of Peg’s is a little bigger than Edward’s, meantime she is facing him directly. This somehow implies Peg’s decision to help Edward. Because of Peg, Edward’s life will change to a happier direction, which might be the reason why director uses open form here. Restricts make people nervous, and open form opens people’s minds.

   

        On the whole, this scene foreshadows a lot about the later on story of the movie. Maybe there are thousands of scenes like this in a movie, but if we analyze any one of them in detail, we will realize every detail in a film has been paid much attention.

Here attached the scene I analyzed above: