I keep running across the term découpage in learnèd discussions of movies and not knowing what it means, so I decided to find out — doubtless not for the first time, but I’m hoping that posting about it will make it stick. The OED is unhelpful; its two senses of the word are:
1. The decoration of a surface with an applied paper cut-out; an object produced by this technique.
[…]
2. Cinematography. = cutting n. 2h.
Even I know it’s not the same thing as “cutting,” and once again I deplore the OED’s cavalier attitude to areas of knowledge it doesn’t consider worth detailed differentiation. Wikipedia is even worse; its Decoupage page only deals with the “paper cutouts” sense. Fortunately, there’s a new book On the History of a Film Aesthetic Concept: Découpage, by Guido Kirsten (Routledge, 2026), whose publisher’s summary does a much better job of explaining it:
Unlike editing, découpage does not take place after the film has been shot, but before. The French term refers to the breakdown of a scene into a sequence of shots. In order to translate the written screenplay into film language, cinematographers and directors employ a genuinely cinematic way of thinking―a thinking in sequences of moving images and sounds, including the camera setups, movements, and shot sizes. Découpage is thus crucial in shaping a film’s specific form. Using the tools of conceptual history, Guido Kirsten traces the term’s evolution from its emergence in the 1910s through the eventful film history of the twentieth century until its recent rediscovery. By differentiating layers of meaning and discussing important shifts in the concept’s evolution, this book improves the understanding of key film theoretical texts, whose meaning has been distorted by mistranslation, and shows how a deeper reflection of découpage promises to enrich the analysis of contemporary moving image media.
I may have to investigate further; I’m intrigued by the mention of mistranslation. But I’ve got the general idea. (Compare Faux raccord; as I wrote there, “In general, film terminology is extraordinarily hard to grasp if you’re not part of the industry, and the fact that it differs so greatly between languages doesn’t help.”)
The first link suggested by you-know-what. In short, découpage is opposite of montage (huge simplification, obv).
Thanks, those diagrams are helpful.
opposite of montage
Is such an over-simplification, I’m not sure it’s explaining anything for me. Perhaps: a preliminary to montage?
So … découpage anticipates in advance/relies on montage to splice together a given set of takes. Découpage is planning in advance what those takes will be, by analysing the dramatical impetus.
Presumably this applies particularly when cameras/operators were expensive and in short supply. (You couldn’t merely run through the scene once with a bazillion cameras pointing in every direction; then decide the splicing in post.)
There’s that Russian movie shot all in one take (with one camera). Découpage doesn’t apply (?)
I think découpage is meant to happen within the director’s mind, as in “I can shoot it this way, and this way, and this way.” Once you have a can of exposed film no more découpage is taking place. But montage, and other editing techniques, happen after that.
Le Petit Robert, Édition 2017: