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Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard presents Norma Desmond as a tragic figure whose isolation and refusal to accept her reality led to madness. Her descent is not sudden but built throughout the film, culminating in two pivotal moments: her attempted suicide when Joe threatens to leave, and her final “performance” as she descends the staircase into custody. These scenes, connected by the author’s aesthetic choices and Norma’s dialogue, highlight the destructive power of loneliness and denial.

When Joe confronts Norma about their toxic relationship and insists on leaving her, she threatens to harm herself in order to keep him close. She grabbed a razor and cried “You can’t leave me. You can’t. I need you. Look at me, I’m a star.” The desperate delivery of her saying “I’m a star” highlights how Norma defines her entire worth through her past fame rather than who she is in the present day. The camera lingers on her face in ghostly lighting, which contrasts with Joe’s grounded realism. Deep-focus shots capture the suffocation and claustrophobia of her world. The lighting and dialogue emphasize how suspended Norma is between her delusion and reality. Using the threat of self-harm or self-destruction allowed Norma to preserve and secure her illusion of control. Her isolation warped her sense of love into dependency on Joe, and the mise-en-scène mirrors this entrapment using heavy drapes, dusty rooms, and the shadows of her own photographs closing in around her.

Norma’s final scene displayed this even more! After killing Joe, Norma greets the police as though they are a film crew. Walking slowly down the staircase, she states, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up”.  With the camera positioned as if it were part of a movie set, it looked as if her fantasy had become momentarily real. The soft-focus lens and orchestral score exaggerate her delusion.  By staring directly into the camera, Norma, draws the audience uncomfortably into her madness and hallucinations.

These two moments highlight how isolation erodes Norma’s grasp on reality. Both scenes employ lighting, set design, and performance to blur the line between reality and performance. I feel Billy Wilder does this to show that madness within Hollywood is not just personal but can be caused by the product of Hollywood itself, which once had exalted Norma and then abandoned her. Norma’s downfall emphasizes her inability to survive outside of the spotlight, and her delusions become her final performance, while also being her prison.

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A big theme or moment from Singin' in the Rain is figuring out who deserves credit for Kathy's performance and artistry. In the movie, Gene Kelly highlights the tension between Lina Lamont and Kathy Selden because while Lina is considered the "star", without Kathy's talents, Lina's career would collapse.

In the premiere of The Dancing Cavalier, the audience believes that Lina is a talented talkie actress, but in reality, Kathy is behind the curtain providing the voice. The contrast makes the audience question whether stardom is about actual skill or just about who’s seen. Earlier, during Lina’s terrible talkie lines, she states “ If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, it makes us feel as though our hard work ain’t been in vain for nothin’”. This line was seen as comedic because of her high-pitched voice. The fact that her glamorous image as a star had nothing to do with the talent she lacked is also seen as comedic.

The studio planned to keep selling Lina as the face of the film, while Kathy's true talent remained hidden. Don exposes Kathy as “the real star of the picture” during the curtain-pull ending. The reveal forced both audiences inside the film and those watching to see and recognize that Hollywood often hides and erases the work behind their stars. Lina represents the image of stardom, while Kathy represents the invisible artist or people behind the scenes that actually make the system work. While at the end of the film, Kathy gained recognition, it also highlights how Hollywood hides the real source of talen

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Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) turns memory into a visual puzzle. In the sequence where Leonard Shelby sits in his car after killing Jimmy, the film’s aesthetic choices such as, lighting, camera framing, editing, and sound to translate his mental disorientation into cinematic form. The lighting in this scene is intentionally Bright and natural light shines through the windshield, in which overexposes Leonard’s face and washes away detail. The shift in lighting makes his body appear as if it were flickering as if memory itself were fading in and out of focus. The contrast between the illuminated and shadowed areas mirrors Leonard’s own fragmented recall in memories. The camera work highlights Leonard's isolation and instability. The tight close-ups of his Polaroid camera, while shaking hands, and the ink on his notepad piece his body into parts rather than whole. By rarely showing Leonard in a centered, steady frame, we deny him a unified identity. The shallow depth of field blurs the background, keeps his world indistinct. The editing of the film highlights and reinforces a psychological fragmentation. The quick cuts between color and black-and-white sequences disorient the viewer and mimic Leonard’s loss of memory. When the film shifts from monochrome to color, the moment Leonard decides to deceive himself, the change highlight how memory is creation rather than recollection for him. Even the sound, the echoing voice-over blurs of internal and external space, signal the instability of his self-perception. Through its visual techniques, Memento highlights Leonard’s memory disorder into a cinematic experience. The lighting, camera movement, and editing make the audience inhabit and be within his fractured mind to show that identity of repetition and selective belief.

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Jordan Peele’s Us dramatizes American class division through a split population: those who live above ground in comfort, and the Tethered who live below in a mirrored deprivation. Peele shows a world where class is not just an economic position, but families arranged in vertical opposition. Peele shows class division during the home invasion scene. The Wilson family first sees the Tethered family standing in silhouette at the end of their driveway, the staging highlights them as distorted reflections. While they might look the same: two parents, two children, Peele establishes a warped mirror image. Using lighting, the Wilson were lit by interior light, while the Tethered were in the shadow. The contrast in illumination emphasizes one family visible under the glow of comfort, and the other obscured by the darkness of their living conditions. The costumes the Tethered wears also highlight this division. The Tethered wear red jumpsuits, in which erase individuality and highlight those of incarceration. The jumpsuit and even the scissors represent the Tethered' need to cut the tether between classes. The Tethered's Movement also communicates deprivation as they move in abrupt gestures due to a lifetime without proper development, while Red’s ballet-like movements show the privileged life she was denied. Peele highlights the connection between the two classes during the ballet scene. Ballet can be seen as a metaphor for cultural access, while the other is seen as imitation. The Tethered "linking hands across America" repurposes the 1980s charity event and signifies how national unity can become a visual indictment of the neglected underclass.

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In Parasite, Bong Joon-ho uses mise-en-scène as a tool to expose how class difference is embedded in everyday environments. Rather than relying on overt exposition, the film uses set design, lighting, props, and blocking to communicate social hierarchy. The Kim family’s semi-basement apartment is defined by cramped composition and visual clutter. The low ceilings, exposed pipes, and scattered belongings fill the frame, creating a sense of confinement. Natural light barely enters through a small street-level window, often tinted green or gray, reinforcing the family’s marginal position. During the scenes, you notice pests, folded pizza boxes, and laundry hanging indoors. These props signal instability and survival rather than comfort. Even the blocking places the family members close together, emphasizing lack of personal space and limited mobility. By contrast, the Park family’s home is a study in minimalist mise-en-scène. Clean lines, open floor plans, and curated furniture communicate wealth through restraint. The house was in soft, natural lighting, which creates an atmosphere of calm control. Large windows show manicured greenery, which separates the Parks from the city and its chaos. Costuming reinforces this difference. The Parks wear neutral, tailored clothing that blends with their environment, while the Kims’ clothing is more function and worn out, marking their bodies as out of place even when they attempt to assimilate. Bong uses blocking to position characters on different levels to show shifts in power. When the Kims are alone in the house, they sprawl across the furniture, temporarily inhabiting the space as if it belongs to them. However, when the Parks return unexpectedly, the Kims are forced into hiding ultimately below ground. This reasserts the spatial hierarchy through physical positioning. The flood sequence brings these mise-en-scène elements to a breaking point. The Kim apartment fills with sewage water, transforming familiar props into symbols of loss. The toilet overflowing becomes a grotesque reminder of how infrastructure itself fails the poor. Lighting becomes harsh and uneven, and the blocking turns frantic, contrasting sharply with the Parks’ dry and well-lit home. Through mise-en-scène, Parasite reveals class not as an abstract idea but as something built into walls, furniture, lighting, and movement. Bong Joon-ho shows that social inequality is not just lived but is staged.