INTEGRATING PERFORMANCE AND OTHER CINEMATIC ELEMENTS – Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

INTEGRATING PERFORMANCE AND OTHER CINEMATIC ELEMENTS

The central place of narrative means that in most films,
actors adjust the quality and energy of their gestures,
voices, and actions to communicate their characters’
shifting desires and dynamic relationships with other
characters. At each moment of the film, actors’ performances are keyed to the narrative, which provides the
(musical) score for the film’s rising and falling action.
The scale and quality of actors’ physical and vocal expressions are also keyed to the film’s style or genre. For
example, there is a discernable difference in the energy
underlying the performances in a 1930s screwball comedy and a 1990s action-adventure film. The material
details of actors’ performances are also keyed to the
function of their characters. Performances by the extras
are typically less expressive than performances by the
actors portraying the central characters.
The quality and energy of actors’ movements and
vocal expressions are equally important in experimental
cinema, for actors’ performances contribute to the mood
or feeling conveyed by the piece as a whole. The actors’
impassive performances in the surrealist classic Un chien
andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929) by Luis Bun˜uel
(1900–1983) are integral to the film’s dreamlike quality.
Similarly, in Dead Man (1995), directed by American
independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (b. 1953), the
energy of the actors’ disquieting performances, which
jumps from stillness to sudden movement and shifts
unexpectedly from animated to collapsed, plays a crucial
role in creating the disturbing tone of the film’s absurd
world.
In mainstream and experimental cinema, performance details will serve to create and sustain a director’s
overall vision. Based on discussions with the director, an
actor might use bound or tightly controlled movements
to portray a character that is continually on guard, while
another works in counterpoint, using light and freefloating movements to portray a character that is open
to experience. Through rehearsal and individual script
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.

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