Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Acting
are not defined by their personality traits, but instead
represent social types shaped entirely by external forces.
As shorthand, it might make sense to discuss
Stanislavskian performances in films such as Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington and Brechtian performances in films
such as Weekend, but doing that obscures important
information about the multifaceted system Stanislavsky
developed. Today, scholars and practitioners alike recognize
that Stanislavsky’s System can be used to create a
range of performances styles. They see the value of analyzing
scripts to understand (1) the problems characters
need to solve to reach their goals, (2) the specific actions
characters will use to reach their goals, and (3) the
structure of scenes that arises from the actions characters
take in pursuit of their goals. Many scholars now recognize
that Brecht actually used Stanislavsky’s System to
develop performances and that Brecht’s approach to staging
required actors to use direct address, truncated performances,
and animated acting styles imbued with the
dynamic energy of circus and music hall performances.
Describing performances in mainstream Hollywood
films as Stanislavskian and performances in modernist
European films as Brechtian dissuades observers from
seeing that even in largely representational performances,
actors step outside their characters to comment on their
characters and on their performances. What makes performances
so compelling in Cassavetes’s films, for example,
is the fact that they not only create memorable
characters, but also contain moments when actors seem
to comment on the narrative and on their participation
in the film. The Brechtian potential of Stanislavskian
performances is also disclosed by many of Orson
Welles’s performances. His portrayals in Jane Eyre
(1944), The Third Man (1949), The Long Hot Summer
(1958), Touch of Evil (1958), and Campanadas a medianoche
(Chimes at Midnight, 1965) do not simply present
audiences with a character, or even the star performance
of a character. Instead, Welles’s portrayals enlist sympathy
for the characters, critique the social and economic
conditions the characters exemplify, and comment on
Welles as an artist working in a capital-intensive industry.
CHANGING VIEWS OF MEDIATED
PERFORMANCE
Film scholars are coming to the view that presentational
and representational acting styles are options that exist
along a continuum, rather than opposite and mutually
exclusive approaches, and they recognize that actors draw
on a range of methods to prepare for and execute film
performances. Acknowledging that film and theater portrayals
require the same depth of preparation, and that
each context requires unique adjustments, film scholars
have set aside definitions of film acting that involve a
strict opposition between stage and screen acting.
Instead, gaining insights from video and performance
art, television and performance studies, they now see
connections between performance in film and other
forms of mediated performance. Anthologies such as
More Than a Method (Baron, Carson, and Tomasulo,
2004) feature scholarship that considers ways that performance
elements contribute to films’ meaning and
emotional effects—even though audiences encounter performances
in relationship to other aspects of the film’s
visual, aural, and narrative design.
Scholars have also developed more nuanced ways
of considering authorship and film performance. They
acknowledge that film performances are made up of
physical and vocal expressions produced by actors—even
in cases when directors such as Stanley Kubrick (1928–
1999) maintain a high degree of control by tricking
actors, misinforming actors, or giving actors predetermined
line readings and body positions. They recognize
that screen performances depend on actors’ voices and
actors’ bodies as the source of characters’ movements—
even in animated and computer-generated films. Like
performances in disparate forms of theater, video, television,
and new media, acting in film depends, at least in
part, on actors who use their bodies and voices to create
impressions, moods, and characterizations.
SEE ALSO Casting; Character Actors; Child Actors;
Direction; Star System; Stars; Supporting Actors;
Theater
FURTHER READING
Baron, Cynthia, Diane Carson, and Frank P. Tomasulo, eds.
More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary
Film Performance. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press,
2004.
Barton, Robert. Acting Onstage and Off. 4th ed. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, 2005.
Benedetti, Robert. Action! Acting for Film and Television. Boston:
Allyn and Bacon, 2001.
Brewster, Ben, and Lea Jacobs. Theatre to Cinema: Stage
Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997.
Cardullo, Bert, Harry Geduld, Ronald Gottesman, and Leigh
Woods, eds. Playing to the Camera: Film Actors Discuss Their
Craft. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
Carnicke, Sharon Marie. Stanislavsky in Focus. London: Harwood
Academic, 1998.
Lovell, Alan, and Peter Krämer, eds. Screen Acting. London:
Routledge, 1999.
Naremore, James. Acting in the Cinema. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988.
24 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM