"To film a face is to consider all the problems of the film, all its aesthetical problems, and, therefore, all its ethical problems."

Jacques Aumont . Du visage au cinema.

 

During its first decades of existence, cinema made its way, to a large extent, forcing its actors and actresses to take steps backwards. As the camera moved in closer and moved more and more around space, performance had to step back accordingly, turning inwards on the own actor, reduced almost to a minimum. The close up and editing were undoubtedly great allies of Stanislavski in his attack, from the field of theatre, to an already outdated and stereotyped gesture, that was even more excessive and counterproductive once it was projected on the big screen.

Finally, the popularity of the Kuleshov effect must have been devastating for the critical appraisal of performance art in film. What could be valid (and interesting) for a type of cinema was apparently assumed as a general truth for the cinematic art as a whole: the actor's work should not be simply done more subtle, but could be entirely replaced by the composition and the editing, that would be responsible for expressing everything from perfectly expressionless faces and bodies. Cinema would not only cut up, spatially and temporally, the performance of actors, but it could completely ignore everything that had constituted the essence of its technique and of its art.

Many years have gone by since then, almost a century, and too many events that have decisively affected the evolution of the art of performance have taken place: the advent of sound, the free inventiveness of Renoir, humanist Neorealism, Bressonian minimalism, the implementation of scope, the Actors’ Studio, the intense veracity of Cassavetes, the ruptures of Godard or Straub... just to name a few significant milestones. A few examples that are enough, however, to demonstrate that the analysis of the foundations and methods of a particular direction of actors can be just as revealing of the meaning of a film (and its aesthetical, ideological, philosophical, sociological or psychological postulates) as a detailed analysis of its découpage or its narrative structure.

Yet even today, a film is often analysed almost completely ignoring all that surrounds the acting work, starting with the casting. It is mentioned, at the most, the adequacy of the actors to their role, their vegetable-like naturalness, their eloquence and expressiveness or their elegant restraint. Its relevance is highlighted, of course, but while waiving its critical study. This monograph, therefore, does not intend to discover the secrets of the acting profession, or merely deepen the knowledge of a particular school, but to invite to consider acting as an essential element of film analysis. Papers are expected, therefore, in two directions:

On the one hand, texts that highlight the inextricable link between the direction of actors and the other elements of staging: how to evaluate a makeup or costume effect without understanding what do they add, subtract or supplement to given faces or bodies? How to judge an editing style without putting it in connection with a willingness to respect the continuity of the performance or, conversely, to fragment and reformulate after shooting the work of the actors?

On the other hand, texts that help us understand how a particular way of conceiving and practicing the art of acting —which may belong exclusively to a specific filmmaker, actor, actress, or small group... but that may even correspond to a time, to a film tradition or to an entire culture— reveals a whole implicit view of human beings, a certain way of understanding what is the person and its psychology, the individual and social categories, verisimilitude (and its link with stereotypes and conventions), identity (its alleged unity, its performative nature, etc.). A conception of acting work that also manifests, necessarily, the attitude of the filmmakers themselves to what they depict and to the audience they are targeting, confessing, by the way, their faith or distrust in a certain utility of film, in its effective potential in getting to know or make us discover human reality, to achieve, at least in part, some of its truth or, on the contrary, content themselves by merely recording its appearance.

Acceptance of articles for the section Notebook: 15 January-15 March 2014 (deadline extended)

Note: issue 19 will be the first to be published exclusively in digital edition.

For more information, please contact publicaciones@cineforumatalante.com