Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition
Page 24
concluding close-up of City Lights . Chaplin conveys a great deal of emotional CITIZEN KANE (RKO, 1941)
Mrs. Kane (Agnes Moorhead)
gazes at the young son she
is sending away and whom
she will never see again. As
directed by Orson Welles,
Moorhead’s expression is un-
readable. Is the character sad?
Relieved? What is she feeling?
By making the expression un-
readable, Welles plays against
the viewer’s desire to under-
stand the character. Doing
so, he treats the relationship
of Mrs. Kane and her son as a
mystery. Frame enlargement.
138
Acting
A MAN ESCAPED (GAUMONT, 1956)
Bresson said that he liked keeping actors in
the dark about the nature of the film they
were making. The less actors knew, he felt,
the better. He was a radical filmmaker. His
working methods and goals were quite
unusual. By stripping the ornamentations
of theatre from an actor’s performance,
by directing them not to project emotion,
Bresson aimed to illuminate the poetry of
a person’s interior life. The film portrays
the efforts of Fontaine (Francois Leterrier),
a French Resistance fighter in World
War II, to escape from his Nazi captors.
Characteristic of Bresson’s lack of inter-
est in melodrama, the film’s title—in past
tense— removes the elements of surprise
and suspense from the narrative. Frame
enlargement.
information about his character, and consequently, his expression is richer. In each case, though, the playing style results from specific decisions made by the filmmakers.
These differences are tied to the respective mise-en-scènes of the films and the creative approach of their directors. In each case, the actor’s level of expression becomes a crucial element in the design of the film.
Many films feature more extroverted playing styles. Much comic acting depends on exaggerating a character’s responses and emotions. Jim Carrey ( The Mask , 1994) or Mike Myers ( Austin Powers , 1997) are funny because their reactions are disproportional to the situation in which the character finds himself. But outside of comedy there are important examples of this playing style. Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) is set in twelfth-century Japan and deals with a rape and murder, the circumstances of which are told differently by all the witnesses who recall it. As they recall the crime, they assume extremely exaggerated and flamboyant acting styles. Actors in the film gesture wildly, laugh hysterically, and contort their faces into extreme emotional expressions.
Many viewers are struck by what seems to be a flamboyantly melodramatic and
excessive acting style. In part, this was precisely Kurosawa’s intention. In Rashomon he wanted to recover some of the visual aesthetics and performance styles of the silent cinema. Acting in early silent films was coded in uniquely different terms than those that would become established during the sound period.
One scholar has termed early silent performance style histrionic because it was based on a series of precise and exaggerated gestures. The histrionic gesture for fear was to extend the arm palm out and clutch the throat with the other hand, whereas shame was indicated by covering the face with one’s hands or arms. The histrionic style of silent film melodrama was replaced in sound films by a more naturalistic style, incorporating a more subtle and wider range of gestures based on concepts of realism and naturalism. But Kurosawa had his performers overplay their roles as if they were in a silent film.
Filmmakers regulate expression to integrate the actor into the design structure of a shot. Acceptable modulations range from the extremely minimal, as in the films of 139
Acting
RASHOMON (1950)
Exaggerated performance
styles may deliberately
break with traditions of nat-
uralism and realism. Toshiro
Mifune’s mannered acting
enables director Kurosawa
to recover the visual
aesthetics of silent cinema.
Frame enlargement.
Bresson or the acting of Clint Eastwood, to the histrionically exaggerated, as in the films of Kurosawa, early silent cinema, or popular comic performers.
Typage
A third way in which performance style becomes an element of mise-en-scène is through the employment of typage . Here, actors and their performances are visually stylized, often in extreme terms, to suggest that the character embodies a particular social or psychological type or category. This visual encoding of social or psychological information often predominates in a film’s mise-en-scène.
SOCIAL TYPAGE Social typage was a major feature of classic Soviet filmmaking in the 1920s. Directors such as Sergei Eisenstein cast performers whose physical appearance could be made to suggest the more abstract characteristics of social class. In Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925), the sailors on board the battleship who mutiny against their oppressive officers are embodiments of working-class virtue. The actors portraying these sailors are beefy, muscular, and handsome. The actors portraying the ship’s officers have unappealing physiques, alternately thin and wizened or obese. A master of visual caricature, Eisenstein correlated the appearance of actors, their faces and bodies, with more general ideas about social identity.
A recent instance of this kind of visual caricature is evident in Starship Troopers (1997), in which the military officers wear Nazi-like uniforms and insignias and are filmed in stark, geometric patterns to express the film’s underlying theme that war makes fascists of everyone. Like many of the combat veterans in the film, Rasczak (Michael Ironside) is an amputee with a mechanical appendage, making the character an emblem of the state’s war machine.
In Sergio Leone’s epic Western Once upon a Time in the West (1969), the spread of corrupt business practices into the undeveloped American West is symbolized in the bone cancer that has twisted and crippled the body of the wealthy railroad baron, J. P. Morton (Gabriel Ferzetti). Morton’s twisted body is given significant visual attention in the scenes 140
Acting
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925); ALEXANDER NEVSKY (1936)
Social typage in the films of Eisenstein. In Battleship Potemkin, a snarling naval officer personifies the evil of the old regime. He commands a firing squad about to execute the film’s noble heroes. In Alexander Nevsky, helmets give the evil Teutonic Knights a sinister and dehumanized appearance. Frame enlargements.
where he appears. In Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky IV (1985), a political belief that Soviet communist society dehumanizes its citizens is expressed through the social typage of Rocky’s Soviet opponent, Drago (Dolph Lundgren), who has a robot-like appearance and behaves as a merciless fighting machine.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPAGE Psychological typage can be seen in the expressionist style of filmmaking that has its origin in 1920s German cinema. Expressionist films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and Nosferatu (1922) present grotesque characters, pathological emotional states, and fantastic settings in which the visual distortions were indicators of twisted minds or spirits. The expressionist style entered U.S.
cinema in the 1930s in the cycle of horror films made at Universal Pictures. The physical deformities in characters such as Frankenstein’s monster externalize their warped inner humanity.
The Night of the Hunter (1955), a psychological thriller about good and evil focusing on a maniacal preacher’s pursuit of two young children who know the where-abouts of a fortune, used expressionist pictorial and performance styles. Actor Robert Mitchum’s contorted face intentionally recalls the expressionism of early German cinema. Conceived in homage to this t
radition is the villain Max Schreck (Christopher Walken) in Batman Returns (1992). The character is named for the German actor who played the vampire in Nosferatu , and he sports a hairpiece that makes him look like Rotwang, the mad inventor in Metropolis (1926).
Performance style, then, can be manipulated to evoke ideas of social category or psychological condition. Soviet political typage evoked the idea of the virtue of the pro-letariat, whereas the visual typage operative in expressionist styles elicits the anxieties associated with the supernatural, madness, or psychological disturbance. Warren Beatty’s production Dick Tracy (1990) illustrates a combination of psychological and social typage. The visual style of the film is borrowed from comic strips, and the grotesquely 141
Acting
NOSFERATU (1922); FRANKENSTEIN (UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, 1931)
Contorted bodies, twisted psyches in the German expressionist style. In Germany, the vampire killer in F. W. Murnau’s version of Dracula. In Hollywood, the expressionist style used in the horror classic Frankenstein. Frame enlargements.
exaggerated features of the gangsters, in comparison with Dick Tracy’s clean-cut good looks and the virtuous appearance of his lover, Tess Trueheart, are a powerful shorthand way of visually expressing the social Darwinian view that criminals are mentally deformed and sick and that the law-abiding are virtuous and emotionally sound.
Visual Design of Performance
Filmmakers use elements of visual design in ways that affect how a viewer understands a character at given moments in the story. In such ways, the performer is integrated as one component in the visual design of shots and scenes. It is for this reason that an actor in cinema is not the author of their performance as in theatre. In cinema, too many THE DARK KNIGHT (WARNER BROS., 2008)
The Joker’s disfigured face points to his disfigured mind. Heath Ledger’s performance in-ternalizes the visual typage suggested by the makeup in ways that enable him to portray the Joker as a grotesque psychological monster. Frame enlargement.
142
Acting
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (ORION PICTURES, 1991)
The lighting of Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) reverses the normative distribution of shadows on the human face to give him an eerie and unnatural appearance. Hopkins’s performance accentuates Lecter’s disturbing qualities, but the lighting and composition (he looks directly into the camera) enhance and intensify the performance, integrating the actor into the shot’s visual design. Frame enlargement.
other variables come into play to structure, rework, or revise the performance. In the expressionist style of early German films, low-key lighting enclosed grotesque characters in a surrounding sea of darkness. The lighting adds to the performance styles used in those films, accentuating the creepiness of the characters and situations. In a somewhat different fashion, the lighting in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) makes serial killer Hannibal Lecter look especially creepy. Placing a light below his face reverses the normative distribution of shadows. Actors are virtually always lit from an elevated angle, and reversing this practice gives the character an unnatural appearance.
A love scene in L.A. Confidential (1997) between Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger) and Bud White (Russell Crowe) was filmed with warm amber light. A subsequent argument between the characters was shot in harder, bluish light. The color design visualizes a tone that extends the emotions of the characters as conveyed by the actors. The two are not separable. The viewer’s emotional impression of the scenes is a product of both the performances and the color design. By being compatible with the psychological mood of the scenes, the color design externalizes the emotional quality of the performances and the shift from passion to psychological distance in the characters.
Consider another example. In Citizen Kane (1941), the title character, newspaper owner Charles Foster Kane, announces to his employees that his newspaper will be guided by a series of principles. Among these are truthfulness in reporting and a commitment to look out for the interests of the poor. Kane announces these by leaning over his desk. As he does so, his face goes into the shadows. (The scene occurs at night and is lit using low-key setups.)
Because of the lighting, the viewer has an ambivalent response to Kane’s declaration of principles. The viewer suspects that he doesn’t really mean them. On the one hand, this conviction is based on the understanding of Kane that has been developing 143
Acting
CITIZEN KANE (RKO, 1941)
Lighting and composition add
information to an actor’s performance
to make it part of a film’s visual design.
Charles Foster Kane reads his declaration
of principles but steps into the shadows
as he does so, enhancing the viewer’s
suspicion that he is insincere. Frame
enlargement.
through the narrative and from the performance of Orson Welles, who masterfully suggests Kane’s mercurial, opportunistic, and ever-changing personality. On the other hand, however, the viewer’s ambivalence arises from the lighting design. The shadow-ing of Kane’s face as he reads the principles extends and comments on his opportunism and lack of sincerity. Performance style and visual design become part of a unifying whole called mise-en-scène .
PERFORMANCE, EMOTION, AND THE VIEWER’S
RESPONSE
As with other areas of film structure, the performance component includes stylistic transformations of human behavior and feeling but also establishes clear references and correspondences with that behavior. Viewers evaluate performances and characters by drawing comparisons with their knowledge of human behavior and what seems to be a plausible, likely, or consistent response by a character in a scene’s dramatic or comedic situation. These judgments are based on standards derived from real-life experience, as well as expectations based on genre or other storytelling conventions.
Experimental evidence indicates that people are extremely skilled at evaluating and identifying the emotions that can be conveyed through gesture and facial expression.
Many of these emotions are context-dependent. Certain expressions have particular meanings in given cultures. Other kinds of expressions, though, seem to cross cultures and function as universal signs of human emotion (in particular, expressions associated with the emotions of fear, anger, happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust). A viewer can watch a movie from another country or culture and easily identify from the actors’
expressions many of the emotions being conveyed in the scene. This universal aspect of facial expression, and the camera’s ability to emphasize it, are major reasons for the cinema’s appeal throughout the world and across cultures.
144
Acting
Interpretive and Emotional Responses by Viewers
Because the facial and gestural components of performance invite comparisons with real-life emotions, situations, and circumstances, they elicit both interpretive and emotional responses from viewers. Interpreting the performance, a viewer asks whether the character’s response is plausible, likely, convincing, and/or proportional to the situation. These are cognitive judgments that influence emotional responses. In many older movies, characters behave quite differently than in contemporary cinema. In Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), for example, a young woman and a police detective, who have just met only a few days ago, declare their love for one another and talk of marriage. Despite the evident sincerity of the actors’ performances, many contemporary viewers find this turn of events implausible. It doesn’t square with their understanding of how people under those circumstances would behave. This judgment, in turn, underlies such viewers’ decision not to invest their emotions in the scene.
On the other hand, if viewers decide that a character’s behavior and an actor’s performance are appropriate and convincing, given the narrative circumstances, they may go on to share in the character’s emotions by way of empathy. Empathy is a willingness to understand a character’s feelings and eve
n, under the right circumstances, THE SILENCE OF
THE LAMBS (ORION
PICTURES, 1991)
Watching The Silence of
the Lambs , viewers react
to Clarice Starling (Jodie
Foster) and serial killer
Hannibal Lecter (Anthony
Hopkins) by forming com-
plex cognitive, emotional,
and moral judgments about
the characters. The ele-
ments of structural design
guide viewers in forming
these judgments. Frame
enlargements.
145
Acting
to feel similar emotions. It is based on complex allegiances with characters, as viewers evaluate the moral and emotional acceptability of a character’s screen behavior. This, in turn, influences their readiness to empathize with the characters and situations.
In The Silence of the Lambs (1991), most viewers are probably scared of the insane serial killer Hannibal Lecter, although they may find him a compelling and fascinating figure. By contrast, the film’s heroine, Clarice Starling, behaves in a way that most viewers probably deem exceptionally heroic, displaying extreme honesty and courage in her dealings with both Lecter and her male superiors at the FBI. As a result of the cognitive, emotional, and moral judgments they make about these characters, viewers have differing emotional responses toward them. They are frightened of Hannibal Lecter but are frightened for Clarice Starling when she is in a situation of danger. Of the two serial killers in the film—Lecter and Buffalo Bill—viewers respond with loathing and disgust toward Bill because he has no redeeming qualities. Lecter, by contrast, is funny, witty, and cultivated and shows real tenderness toward Clarice, qualities that Anthony Hopkins emphasizes in his performance. Thus, while viewers morally condemn both killers, their response to Lecter is far more ambivalent.
A viewer’s reaction to a character and the actor’s performance is a complex process. It involves an intricate series of inferences and evaluations, judgments, and ap-praisals at cognitive and emotional levels. In films displaying high levels of craft and artistry, performance style becomes part of a unified mise-en-scène in evoking these reactions. Camera placement, color, composition, and other aspects of mise-en-scène work to emphasize the emotional displays by performers. A director can cut to a closer camera position—the better to highlight a character’s response and the actor’s facial display at a crucial moment in the narrative—or a cinematographer and production designer can employ a palette of colors expressly designed to heighten the psychological mood or atmosphere of the scene. The design of a coherent mise-en-scène gives the filmmaker a uniquely powerful way of guiding the viewer toward a desired set of intellectual and emotional responses.