Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Acting
analysis, actors find the quality and the energy their
intonations and inflections must have to convey their
characters’ changing experiences. Sharp, sudden, staccato
bursts of words might be used to show that a character is
alarmed, while a smooth, sustained, legato vocal rhythm
will be used to show that the character is at ease.
In mainstream and experimental cinema, dramatic
and comedic narratives, a film’s presentation of performance
will also reflect the director’s stylistic vision. Films
present performances in different ways because directors
make different uses of actors’ expressivity, that is, the
degree to which actors do or do not project characters’
subjective experiences. Presentation of performance also
differs from film to film because directors make different
uses of cinematic expressivity, or the degree to which
other cinematic elements enhance, truncate, or somehow
mediate and modify access to actors’ performances.
Working in different periods, aesthetic movements, and
production regimes, directors have presented performances
in markedly different ways.
At one end of the spectrum, directors use performance
elements as pieces of the film’s audiovisual design.
In these films, actors often suppress expression of emotion,
and the film’s nonperformance elements become
especially important. This approach to presenting performances
is found in many modernist films, which
frequently use framing, editing, and sound design to
obstruct identification with characters. Films by the
French director Robert Bresson (1901–1999) and the
Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni (b. 1912) exemplify
presentation of performance at this end of the
spectrum, for actors’ use of their physical and vocal
expressivity is so delimited by the directors that glimpses
of their characters’ inner experiences often are more
clearly conveyed by the directors’ framing, editing,
sound, and production design choices.
At the other end of the spectrum, actors’ movements
and interactions are the basis for a film’s visual and aural
design. Here, nonperformance elements are orchestrated
to amplify the thoughts and emotions that actors convey
to the audience through the details of their physical and
vocal expressions. Films at this end of the spectrum use
lighting, setting, costuming, camera movement, framing,
editing, music, and sound effects to give audiences privileged
views of the characters’ inner experiences. This
approach to the presentation of performance focuses
audience attention on the connotative qualities of actors’
movements and vocal expressions. The first structural
analysis of acting, a study of Charlie Chaplin’s performance
in City Lights (1931) by Jan Mukarovsky´ of the
Prague Linguistic Circle (1926–1948), examines this
type of film, wherein performance elements have priority
over other cinematic elements.
While there are exceptions, films produced in different
eras and production regimes tend to incorporate
performance elements in dissimilar ways. In the
Hollywood studio era, for example, the collaboration
between director William Wyler (1902–1981) and cinematographer
Gregg Toland (1904–1948) on The Best
Years of Our Lives (1946) features deep-focus cinematography
and a long-take aesthetic. In this approach, camera
movements, frame compositions, editing patterns, and
sound design are organized around actors’ performances.
By comparison, in the postmodern, televisual era, Baz
Luhrmann’s (b. 1962) collaboration with production
designer Catherine Martin (b. 1965) on Romeo + Juliet
(1996) resulted in a film in which actors’ physical signs
of heightened emotion are shown in tight framings as
pieces of a larger collage that is cluttered with striking
costumes, frenetic camera movements, and dizzying editing
patterns.
As is the case with other postmodern films from
around the world, the performances in Romeo + Juliet,
which make extensive use of sampling and intertextual
quotation, are sometimes extremely truncated and minimalist,
and at other times highly exaggerated and excessively
dramatic. In addition, like a number of films
designed for consumption in today’s media marketplace,
Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet seems to model its presentation
of performance on viewing experiences in our
media-saturated environment. As if echoing current televisual
and new media experiences, the film’s framing,
editing, and sound design sometimes obstruct access to
characters’ experiences; at other times the film’s nonperformance
elements enhance identification with characters
by amplifying the intensity of their subjective
experiences.
QUESTIONS ABOUT ACTING, NARRATIVE,
AND AUDIOVISUAL DESIGN
Studies of acting in film have had to face challenges
presented by certain views of cinema that for some time
determined how film performance was understood.
While scholars and critics have offered various perspectives
on cinema, early commentaries by writers such as
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) led many observers to
believe that film was primarily a medium that captured
sounds and images. This view of film prompted many
critics to see film acting as something that was captured
and then joined together by framing and editing, the
ostensibly unique qualities of film.
Studies of film acting also have been stymied by
certain ideas about cinematic character. Hollywood’s
dominant place in the global market seems to have led
many observers to believe that film cannot accommodate
more than character types. The preponderance of genre
12 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM