Le Retour De Martin Guerre Essay

Le Retour de Martin Guerre narrates a suspenseful story about a man named Arnaud pretending to be the real Martin Guerre who left his own village years ago, then returns to Martin’s village. The use of mise-en-scene in this film is pretty interesting, this article will discuss the mies-en-scene of Le Retour de Martin Guerre specifically in terms of setting, costumes & makeup, lighting, and figure movement & behaviour & acting.

Setting, simply refers to the location of the scene. As the essence and background of the film, setting provides the audience an overview of the given scenario. In Le Retour de Martin Guerre, the setting takes place in a french medieval style village, it matches the time period of the story, which boosts reliability of the film to some degree.

Costume and makeup
Throughout the entire film, candles were used to create the vintage feeling of the medieval time, but more importantly, lighting controls the atmosphere for every scene in the film. For instance, the scene when Alnaud went to Martin’s village as “the real Martin Guerre”, the house was lighted by candles with a warm and sweet feel. Another example would be when Alnaud and Bertrande walked on a empty field, two guy covered with straws showed up and stopped them since they recognise that Alnaud is not the real Martin Guerre. In this scene, the lighting is really dark, we can barely see the characters face. With the help of the fog, it creates a sinister feel, and also could be a foreshadowing for Alnaud and Bertrande’s ending. Yet another case happens near the end of the film just before the Alnaud’s death. Alnaud confessed to the whole village with a candle on his hand, different from the first example where candles create pleasant environment, this time candle provides a hopeless and heartbreaking atmosphere. It is very interesting that same kind of light source can also creates multiple mood depending on the progress of the