Découpage: Planning the House

Craig’s Wife (Arzner 1936) ends on a moment of revelation. Alone in her house at last, Harriet Craig wakes up to reality. Her eyes open wide to fully absorb her surroundings for the first time. The audience is invited to watch this climactic scene with equally wide-eyed attention. As Harriet stands gazing at her now unfamiliar home, we too see its strangeness. Arzner directs these closing moments with deceptive simplicity. Her creative positioning of the camera and organisation of filmic space is a process that can be described as découpage. This chapter aims to clarify découpage as a practice and concept. Why is it useful to filmmakers, and how can studying it help us better understand how films work? This chapter looks closely at two contrasting films, Craig’s Wife and A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes 1974) and explores how each filmmaker uses découpage to cinematically inscribe the subjectivity of their heroines in spatial terms. Both films concern a woman, her house, and the relationship between them, yet they are filmed in markedly different ways. Delving into why they are filmed in the way they are leads to a greater understanding of the films themselves.