Comedy" from What Made Pistachio Nuis? Early Sound Comedy and theVaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 127-152. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. 10 Virginia Wright Wexman, "Masculinity in Crisis: Method Acting in Hollywood" from Creating the Couple. Love, Marriage and Hollywood Performance {Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 160-179. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. I I Andrew Higson, "Film Actingand Independent Cinema" from Screen 27.3 (1986): 110-132. 12 Pamela Robertson Wojcik, "Typecasting," from Criticism 45, no. 2 (Spring 2003). 13 Donald Bogle, "The 1950s: Black Stars" from Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mummies and Bucks. An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum, 2001), 159-183. © 1973, 1989, 1994, 2001 by Donald Bogle. Reprinted by permission of The Continuum International Publishing Group. M Rudolf Arnheim, "In Praise of Character Actors" from Film Essays and Criticism, translated by Brenda Benthein (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 52-54. Reprinted by permission of The University of Wisconsin Press. I') D.wid Thomson, "The Lives of Supporting Players" from Film Comment (Nov/Dec 1989), 32-34. Reprinted by permission of the author. If. Patricia White, "Supporting Character: The Queer Career of Agnes Moorehead" from Out in Culture: Cay, Lesbian and Queer Essays on Popular Culture, edited by Corey Creekmur and Ah'X.iikIi■! Duly (Durham Duke University Press, 1995), ^1-114 SI 1995 by Duke University Press. Reprinted by permission of publisher. Movie Acting, The Film Reader General Introduction There is much popular discourse about stars and film roles—in film reviews, fan magazines, gossip, entertainment news programs, fashion magazines, biographies, autobiographies, and more. But despite the attention to actors, there is little popular discussion of acting in movies. Beyond stating that a particular performance is good or bad, most popular writing, including reviews and criticism, does not describe in any detail the specifics of what an actor does on screen in terms of physical or vocal technique, training, or theory of acting. Until recently, acting has also been largely neglected in scholarly writing on film. While the actor is central to the majority of films made, and certainly to those feature films taught in undergraduate and graduate courses and enjoyed by the general public, academic film studies have tended to disregard discussions of film acting. This neglect can be seen in David Bordwell ,ind Kristin Thompson's Film Art: An Introduction—the bible of most introductory film courses taught in the US—which devotes a chapter each to film editing, cinematography, and sound, but only mentions acting in passing as an aspect of mise-en-scene, and then treats it largely as an issue of blocking, or moving the actor from one camera set-up to the next. Likewise, other introductory texts, such as Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink's The Cinema Book or Robert Kolker's Film, Form, and Culture, only touch on acting briefly, electing in the former to discuss on-screen performance solely in terms of the extratextual star text, or circulation of the star's image, and, in the latter to reductively state that "A performance is created fey the film's structure, its mise-en-scene, and editing . . . film acting is part of the continuity style" (Kolker 2002, 78). This neglect of acting can be attributed to several different causes. In part, acting has probably Im-i-ii m,ii)'nuli/rc( ordova 1990, 34ft.). Even as film narrative developed and the category of the film actor and then the star came into being, theorists felt a strong need to distinguish the categories of st.iye acting and film acting. I or instance, in his 1916 The Film: A Psychological Study, Hugo Munsterberg distinguishes between film and theater by citing film's ability to transcend the limitations of real time and space, and thus create forms that mirror internal mental processes rather than objective trality: "[T]he photoplay tells us the human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world, namely space, time and causality, and by adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world, namely attention, memory, imagination, and emotion" (Munsterberg 1970, 74). For Munsterberg, much of the appeal of cinema rests in its ability to manipulate objective reality through framing and editing techniques such as flashbacks, which function like memory, or crosscutting, which allows for a division of interest, or the close-up, which focuses attention. With respect to film acting, Munsterberg claims both that the photoplay is "further away from physu .1! uulily" tli.1111 he st.iye drama and that the film actor "stands nearer to life" than the stage .k 11 >i (Miinsteiheiy 1 >)/(>. /', ;(>) I his seeming iru on si stene y depend'. ii|i"ii I™ > ' lame, about film .k tiny, < > 11 tin......■ hand, Miinsteibeiy emphasizes tli.it lilm ili'.tani en 11» I......I Hi hod/of the n I'M 11II01 iyh j' 11' ' 11 i|' 1 .1 j >l 1 y .11111 editing, .11 n t 11111 *. 11.111 ľ 11 . 1 < 11' I.....I H"' Sji.n e values of the real theater" (Munsterberg 1970, 77). On the other hand, he suggests that, due to techniques like close-ups, film acting can be less external than stage acting—the actor employs smaller gestures—and thus more naturalistic and transparent. Though writing after the advent of sound, in his Theory of the Film, Béla Balázs evinces a preference for silent cinema over sound film because he views silent cinema as being at a further remove from mere recorded reality than sound film. Similar to Munsterberg, he celebrates early film's difference from theater and views film's ability to show details in close-up as allowing a greater range of expression. As a result, he privileges small facial expressions and "mute expression" as the essence of film acting: The film first made possible what, for lack of better description, I call the "polyphonic" play of features. By it I mean the appearance on the same face of contradictory expressions . . . In the silent film, facial expression, isolated from its surroundings, seemed to penetrate to a strange new dimension of the soul. It revealed to us a new world—the world of microphysiognomy which could not otherwise be seen with the naked eye or in everyday life . . . The silent film has here brought an attempt to present a drama of the spirit closer to realization than any stage play has ever been able to do. (Balázs 1952, 64-65, 73) Balázs attributes much of the power of film acting to the close-up, and seems at times to suggest that the close-up enables access to some unmediated truth: "However disciplined and practically hypocritical a face may be, in the enlarging close-up we see even that it is concealing something, that it is looking a lie" (Balázs 1952, 62). While the "lie" of a close-up requires an extremely subtle performance—an actor conveying two or more emotions simultaneously—Balázs' description of the "polyphonic play of features" relegates much of the power of this performance to framing and editing techniques that show the "secret language of dumb things" (Balázs 1952, 47). In a different vein, Walter Benjamin also highlights the difference between film acting and stage acting in his famous essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Benjamin emphasizes the fragmentary nature of film acting as opposed to stage acting insofar as the performance is "composed of many separate performances," filmed out of sequence, filmed from varying angles, and selectively edited, so that the film "need not respect the performance as an integral whole." In addition, Benjamin furthers Miinsterberg's claim about the film actor's lack of presence as a defining characteristic. He argues that because the film actor's performance is mechanically reproduced—and not presented live and in person—both the actor and the audience relate differently to the performance. The film actor cannot adjust his performance to the audience; it exists without him as an inorganic mechanically reproduced record of multiple fragmentary performances, and is neither changeable nor interactive. Thus, li"' .iiiiIiiik ľ ( .111 siib|ei t the dim ,i< tor's performance to "tests" from a critical distance rather 1I1.m I"- ahsoibed by the ".1111.1" of the a< toi or the character he portrays. And, most importantly ľ .i l.itei M.11 .r.1 and psyi hoanalytii theories of identification, Benjamin states, "the audience's . I.'ni 11 n ill. .o with the ai toi is n '.illy I in identifii .it ion with t lie < ,imei;i" (Reri|amin 1969, 230, 228). In other words, without the live presence of an actor, film viewers identify with the eye of the . .111111.1 th.it n-, oids the peiloimain e i.illiei ill.111 the perfoimance itself. I .n li "I these e.uly tin.....sis pen eive lilm .n liny .is diffeient 111 kind from st.iye .11 tiny, and iiyyesl lli.it lilm .11 liny is 111sep.11 able In.ill lilm ediliny .mil liaminy Miinsteiheiy and li.il.'i/s view the rllei l\ ol 1 lose ups .mil othe.....emalii lei linii|iies as pinviiliiiy yiealei .11 1 ess to (ji.nirai introduction 5 i ll.il.lt lei iiiteiiniily, .mil allowing mole subtle gestliies ill,in stage .11 1111 j• My , ■.......11 lliry suggest that performances on film allow for greater possibilities for identification Uy < urilrast, Benjamin suggests that the destruction of the aura in mechanical reproduction allows the viewer a more distracted and potentially critical view. In each case, it is the film's technique of showing the actor that influences the style of acting, and cinematic technique—whether framing, editing or, more broadly, mechanical reproduction—that seems to determine the effects of the performance. In these accounts, the role of the film actor is not easily distinguished from that of other props, or "dumb things" Balazs describes. Indeed, summing up this view in 1933, Rudolf Arnheim bluntly described the actor as a "stage prop chosen for its characteristics and . . . inserted at the proper place" (Arnheim 1933,176). Of course, the strongest proponents of this view of film actors as "props" can be found in Soviet film theory. Going beyond theorists who view cinematic effect as producing a different kind of effect from stage acting, Soviet directors actively promote a re-conceptualization of acting for film. Sergei Eisenstein, for instance, states: The Moscow Art Theatre is my deadly enemy. It is the exact antithesis of all I am trying to do. They string their emotions together to give a continuous illusion of reality. I take photographs of reality and then cut them up so as to produce emotions. (Wollen 1969, 65) Against naturalistic, Stanislavskian stage techniques, Soviet directors view proper cinematic acting as reliant on the Kuleshov effect and typage. The Kuleshov effect proffers the principle that, in the absence of an establishing shot, a viewer will infer a spatial relation between discrete shots. In other words, when presented with a series of shots, viewers assume or construct a relationship of space, time and/or narrative among them. The principle is based on the so-called 11I1".Ih >v experiment in which the Soviet theorist Lev Kuleshov took a single shot of an actor's hi' -pressive" off-screen glance and intercut it with various objects—a plate of soup, a child playing, .1 . "II111 According to Kuleshov, depending upon which shot was linked to the actor's 1.11 r, vi.■wrr. read wildly different emotions into his "inexpressive" glance (Kuleshov 1974, 200).' I In- Kuleshov cffec t clearly emphasizes the Soviet reliance on montage and implicitly denies the II i"i'■. powei ovei his performance. I he theory of typage advocated by Kuleshov, Eisenstein, and Pudovkin eliminates the need lui ilir li.uncd actoi altogether. Atguing that "real things in real surroundings constitute • men 1.iii igiaphic material," Kuleshov states that "imitating, pretending, playing are unprofitable, since this comes out poorly on screen" (Kuleshov 1974, 56, 63). For example, he relates, "If you need .1 tall, stout man, but youi actor is thin, and you pad your thin actor with cushions, .mil the like the results on screen will be obviously false, theatrical, a prop, a game." Therefore, he claims: Because film needs real material and not a pretense of reality—owing to this, it is not theater actors but "types" who should act in film—that is people who, in themselves, as they were Iiiiiii,.....stitule some kind ol interest foi cinematic treatment that is. ,1 per.011 with an i'Kle..... ol 1 li.tr.11 lei. with ,1 definite, [nightly expressive appeal.1111 1.....1I1I I"- sin li ,1 1 iiiein.ilii "type " (Kulimhiiv n,/i 11 .■)•>■ .Lin,nr. Iii l.ii 1. iniilei the rules of typage the filmed non-actor may not even know what roles he plays, for instance, according to a famous Eisenstein anecdote, when he cast non-actors in Ten Days, "Everyone wanted to play the Bolsheviks and no one wanted to play the Mensheviks . . . [so] we gave the actors the text of an inflammatory speech and they spoke it with great fervor. After this we added titles that said the exact opposite" (Eisenstein 1988,198). I he theory of typage, then, reduces acting to a specialized form of typecasting combined with editing and intertitles.3 The disappearance of the actor in formalist and Screen theory While early film theory aims to describe or proscribe the essence of film acting, and distinguish it from stage acting, later film theories largely disregard the role of the actor altogether. In 1970s auteur theory, for instance, emphasis is placed on the director's world-view and acting is for the most part dismissed. In one of the most striking statements of the actor's irrelevance for the auteur theory, Peter Wollen refers to the actor's contribution, along with that of the producer and cameraman, as so much "noise": This concept of "noise" needs further elaboration. It is often said that a film is the result of a multiplicity of factors, the sum total of a number of different contributions. The contribution of the director—the "directorial factor," as it were—is only one of these, though perhaps the one which carries the most weight. I do not need to emphasize that this view is quite the contrary of the auteur theory and has nothing in common with it at all. What the auteur theory does is to take a group of films—the work of one director—and analyze their structure. Everything irrelevant to this, everything non-pertinent, is considered logically secondary, contingent, to be discarded. (Wollen 1969,104) Certainly, some auteurists might acknowledge the contribution of certain actors to a director's overall style or world-view—such as the role played by the ensemble of actors in Preston Sturges films or the distinction between Sturges's use of Joel McCrea and Eddie Bracken.4 But Wollen's characterization of acting as "irrelevant," "secondary," "contingent," and "to be discarded" in auteur theory seems true to the tendency of most auteurists to ignore the collaborative role of actors in favor of asserting the director's shaping vision. Genre theory, similarly, neglects acting. Rather than a focus on individual authors, such as directors or actors, or even individual films, genre theory examines broad trends among groups 1 'I films As Rk k Altman points out, on a textual level, these trends might be semantic, involving iconography, mise-en-scene, or, character types; or syntactic, involving the organization of semantic elements in plot structures, ideology, or other deeper structures (Altman 1999). Certainly, modes of performance differ sufficiently among melodrama, the Western, comedy, film nun, ,md the musical to enable genre theorists to characterize acting style as a defining fe.ltuie "I genie, yet, fin llie most p.ut, genie I hem 1 sis h.ive .itteinleil mine to visual style. 11.111.1I1 vr si 111. 11 in-. Iliimi.ill. o|,|i, .-.ill. .11. .111.I IiisIoiii .il , ..iite.l III.111 on 1 ii-iIon 11.1111 e As .1 lesult, A GENERAL INTRODUCTION . 111f■ -ii r...... hi performance style have been conflated with differences among character types (. outlasting the Western hero and the film noir hero, for instance) or structural elements (allowing that musicals require musical performance, whereas melodrama would by definition not include a musical number).5 The work that has been done on acting and genre has tended to focus on a few stars in certain genres, such as slapstick comedy, creating what Henry Jenkins and Kristine Brunovska Karnick refer to as a "cult of personality" around stars like Chaplin or Kcaton, rather than provide an analysis of the acting conventions of a particular genre .......■ p. •! in,illy (Jenkins and Karnick 1995,149).'There are exceptions, of course, but much work remains to be done on acting and genre. As film theory shifted increasingly toward semiotic and then psychoanalytic models in what has come to be called Screen theory (named after the crucial journal site where much of the I discussion took place), discussion of acting was subsumed into discussions of identification mil the .11 tor's role was again largely conceived as an effect of framing and editing. Work by 1 111 r.11,111 Met/, Jean Louis Baudry, and others built on Benjamin's claim that the viewer identifies with the camera as a mode of primary identification and only cited the actor as a feature of :n . mil.iiy identification, in his role as a character with whom the audience could identify. But psychoanalytic theory views identification as less an effect of performance, or even the particulars 1 •! .1 role, 1I1,in of point-of-view shots, which create a relay for the viewer's gaze within the film. Metz, for instance, claims that the spectator might identify with the character or even the actor, as an other, but, due to the imaginary status of the cinema, ultimately "the spectator iilrntifieswith himself with himself as a pure act of perception (as wakefulness, alertness): as the > in 11I11 ion of possibility of the perceived and hence as a kind of transcendental subject."7 With Itl emphasis on suture, and the viewer's identification with the camera, Screen theory treats the lil......I human form as a textual place marker, a figure through whose eyes the viewer might 1i11.1i. 111111 ■. 1 ■ 11 01 whose offscreen gaze conjures a lack, an empty space or absent person, to lir liillilleil through editing. I .tui.i Mulvey's famous intervention in the psychoanalytic debate around identification in 1 u ,1 1 I, line and Narrative Cinema" served to remind us to take into account the gender of lil.....II" lilies as sites of spectacle, narrative agency, and point-of-view shots (Mulvey 1974). But Mulvey's interest in film performance was still focused on a character's role in the narrative 1 1. iim passive) or moments of heightened performance, and especially musical numbers 1l1.1i would emphasize the female character's to-be-looked-at-ness. Still, despite the fact that ■he did not discuss acting explicitly, Mulvey's contribution is not to be overlooked: her analysis . .11 he eendci politics of performance and spcctatorship underpin much contemporary work on n line, and staidom. The actor rediscovered Since the 1970s, a few trends in film theory and criticism have challenged the precepts of Screen tli--. .1 v .mil opened the dooi to < 1 insider,ilions of film acting. One of these has heen lire ilevrlo|.....-ill ol st.11 studies within the broadci rubrir of 1 ultural studies Ass." i.ileil null.illy with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, which was formed In 1964 as 111 11 it r Mr. hill . nili-i .11111 .1 -.ill- 1 .1 I >. .'.i|'l.l.lil.lli' ii-.i'.ili 11, 1 1111111 .11 '. 1111111''. 11.' . I • 1111 "I into . i wiili' 1 jiiuiiih ■« 1 liool ol tli.niyhl tlul w.e. esprv i.illy influential 111 llnt.nn anil Amoili * iii Km |i)Ho\ in.I n|i|i,\ 1 11li111.1l '.hnlir-,, as pmrtkfid at the Centre, w«» vny influenteW lit/ ttHIHh Marxist GENERAL INTRODUCTION 7 and socialist theory, especially the work of Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, and E.P. Thompson, all ofwhom viewed popular culture as an important and worthy object of study, particularly as a site of working-class struggle. Cultural studies views culture and popular culture not as something distinct but as part of everyday life, and including areas not previously considered culture like shopping, going to bars, and dating. In this, cultural studies is influenced by the semiotic strain of Screen theory, which views all aspects of life as sign systems, but rather than an emphasis on the text, cultural studies directs its interest in decoding signs and languages more strongly at the ways in which people use culture, how ideology functions, and how people resist ideology. Cultural studies tends, therefore, to address issues of reception and pleasure, and especially pleasure understood as resistant practice. Where Screen theory tended to ignore history or context, cultural studies embeds its analysis of cinema in cultural and historical contexts, to better understand cinema's ideological function, negotiations, and contradictions. Richard Dyer's influential book Stars emerged out of the cultural studies framework and established the theoretical principles that have guided most studies of film stars to date. Dyer considers both the "sociological" and semiotic components of film stars, their status as social phenomenon, considered both at the levels of production and consumption, and their status as image and sign. Dyer defines the star's image as a "structured polysemy, that is, the finite multiplicity of meanings and affects they embody and the attempt to structure them so that some meanings and affects are foregrounded and others are masked or displaced" (Dyer 1979, 3). His consideration of this "structured polysemy" attends not only to studio publicity and other deliberate attempts to produce the star image, but also to the extratextual circulation of the star image in fan magazines, photographs, scandal, gossip, and other modes of consumption and reception. While largely interested in the actor as icon or sign, Dyer includes performance as an aspect of how we read stars as signs, and offers some concrete descriptive parameters for analyzing acting on film. In addition, he considers the potential role of the actor as auteur, in cases where the star can be seen as the primary shaping vision behind a work; and suggests that star image and performance style need to be taken into account in any theory of authorship, insofar as texts tend to be constructed around the star's image and fashioned by the star's performance. Since the publication of Dyer's book, film studies and cultural studies have developed a deep and impressive body of work on the film star. However, star studies have not been inclined to deal extensively with acting per se. Star studies—including my own work in Guilty Pleasures: feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna—are apt to focus on a star's extratextual circulation, f.indom, type, and ideological meaning without necessarily attending in any exact and descriptive way to what the actor does on screen to produce him or herself as a type, and without situating the actor in larger acting traditions. Most star studies will make some attempt at analyzing performance traits of an individual stars; but rather than analyze individual performances in terms of acting style, these analyses tend to extract particular mannerisms or gestures that are repeated across a body of films as a feature of the star's persona. Rather than conventional theories of acting, most star studies have been influenced by performance studies as an interdisciplinary area of study. Performance studies developed in '•pi'i il......ilrast I" llieatei studies and more traditional disi ussimis "I ■< tlrtgi and tends. 11 m --I. .o-, 1.1 ile.1 1 iv. 1 mil .1111.111. i -1111. .111'11 .11 ill 11. ipi >li i)>n al and othei theoretical models linktd In everyday pel f 01 man. e .111.1 11I11.1I 1 .ill in 111,111 . ,lln 1 on. lele ilea uwioie, , ,1 film .1. 11111; 01 Ms thrall 11 a I 111 n lei rv.i 11 \ " I lie 111 ilion of pel loi liuni e alii iw. us to widen nul i 0111 eplion of film iti liny, lo 1111 hule mil only Had.....nil •., liool-, of .11 linn, mi, I, , . '.I.,,,, .1., v.|.,,,,, . „ Mrthoil lia-.ril M i .1 NI UAI INIHi min in HI t.l NI KAL INIHOOUCTION 9 styles, but also modes of performance from other media, such as radio, vaudeville, < in us, or drag shows. Performance includes cultural codes of body language as well as unique gestures and mannerisms attributed to the individual actor's idiolect, or personal employment of body language and other sign systems. Thus, for instance, my analysis of Mae West does not include any discussion of conventional theories of acting, but does include discussion of West's borrowings from vaudeville, burlesque, female impersonation, and African-American musical styles, as well as descriptions of the subtle and utterly idiosyncratic gestures and intonations that make up the camp and ironic West idiolect.9 In addition to cultural studies and performance studies, another key turn in film theory that has generated new work on film acting has been a new historicism in film studies. At the height of Screen theory, there had been a sharp ideological divide between those practicing film theory and history, but a new generation of scholars emerged, concurrent with the rise of cultural studies, who brought history to bear on theory, and, likewise, brought theoretical perspectives to historical investigation. This new generation of scholars, including Tom Cunning, Miriam Hansen, Andre Gaudreault, Thomas Elsaesser, and Charles Musser, were well versed in Screen theory, but, like contemporary scholars associated with cultural studies, they questioned the elision of history in semiotic and psychoanalytic theory and the concomitant construction of a theoretical spectator, who was seen to be passively dominated by a hypnotic and all-powerful cinematic apparatus. Like cultural studies, the new theoretically informed historicism seeks to place film in its cultural and historical context, but where cultural studies tends to investigate contemporary practices and pleasures as sites of resistance, these historians look to earlier moments, including not only silent cinema but also earlier theorists like those associated with the Frankfurt School, to provide possible models of resistance and alternative practices. This new historicism in film studies challenges developmental models of film history that reduce cinematic history to a series of "firsts" in an evolutionary march toward classical style. Scholars examine early cinema's aesthetics, modes of production, exhibition, and reception as offering alternatives, or roads not taken, rather than be viewed as "primitive" failures or bumps along the road. In terms of acting, these newer histories aim to get past taken-for-granted ideas about silent cinema being dominated by "stilted" or theatrical acting that had to be overcome to achieve classical invisibility; and try instead to understand the technological and institutional reasons for the different style, and its aesthetic appeal. Offering particularly deep analysis of acting in the silent era, historicist approaches to acting—represented in this volume by the work of Charles Musser, Roberta Pearson, Lea Jacobs, and Ben Brewster—provide models for further scrutiny of different historical periods and national styles. Issues and topics in acting The combined influences of cultural studies, performance studies, and historicism in film theory have led to renewed interest in film acting, and there has in recent years been an increasing number of publications on film acting, including many books and essays represented here. While there has been increasing attention to acting and other aspects of performance, there is not yet a clearly defined field of study. First, although there is a great deal of work on acting, much of it occurs under various sub-fields of film studies, such as star studios, queri theory, race and ethnicity studies, histories of silent film, performance studies, and Inttrdlli Ipllfl In) studies of the relationship between theater and film, as well as more conventions \\\r< N ICMf*W"i: i host- various sub fields mr mil always pitched to the same audiences and are not always read in i onjuni lion wild r.tc li nilin I bus, taking examples from this anthology, a reader interested in D.W. Griffith 01 thr history of silent cinema may read Roberta Pearson's book Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of I'rijoimance Style in the Griffith Biograph Films, but may not be aware of Patricia White's insightful comments on character acting in her book Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability; and a reader interested in theories of acting may look at James Naremore's Acting in the Cinema but may not consider Donald Bogle's work on African-American stereotypes in Tows, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films to be relevant for a discussion of acting. In addition, and related to the dispersal of ideas described above, studies of film acting have not themselves been theorized in the way that, for example, genre studies have. While discussions of acting inevitably invoke various theories of acting, such as the principles of Stanislavski or Delsarte, scholars of acting do not typically reflect upon their own practice to ask "What (onstitutes the field of study of acting?" or "What do we talk about when we talk about acting?" Just as genre theory has benefited from reflecting upon its own practice, to clarify what constitutes genre and genre theory, studies of acting would benefit from a consideration of the field of study, not least to help underscore how wide-ranging our conception of acting might be. In sorting a field of study, one could approach the topic from many angles. We could, for instance, consider which topics and issues in acting stem from other more clearly defined fields of study, such as genre, authorship, stardom, and history. Alternately, we could attempt to categorize the work already done on acting to determine what issues and topics have arisen. Ilnl il seems to me that in order to capture the variety and distinctness of acting as a field of study, it is necessary to consider the questions that have not yet been asked as well as those that have, and not to limit those questions to areas of study with which we are already familiar. In what follows, I have attempted to tentatively raise questions that seem to me to be key to understanding acting. I have grouped these into five large issues: ontological questions, stylistic questions, questions of authorship, historical questions, and ideological questions. Some of these questions overlap with other areas of study, some have been covered in previous film writing, and some may suggest areas of study for future scholarship. There is some repetition among categories and there are likely to be gaps and omissions. i Ontological questions. This cluster of questions relates to many of the questions raised by early film theory and includes additional questions about the status and meaning of film ii hug today lim.idly, mulct this rubric, we could ask, "What constitutes film acting3" How is film acting different from stage acting? To what degree is film acting a function of what an actor does with his voice, face and body and to what degree is it technologically determined? What are the specifically cinematic components of acting? How do editing, framing, and sound effect or produce film performance? What exceeds the cinematic? To what degree does an actor's technique or idiolect shape the film experience? When and how can aspects of persona and performance outweigh the function of close-ups and other cinematic techniques? To what degree do extratextual factors affect film performance? Is film acting inseparable from conceptions of stardom and type? Sty/Mic questions. This category aims to consider specific modes of acting in films rather than ontological questions about the meaning of acting. Questions here all fall under the larger quest ii in nl " Wh.il .ni' I he (lillei rru es , urn >ng ,i< ting styles?" What, for 11 r.l.inc e,.....slilules m-.ilr.m-' Hi >w 11.1 vi • i ' nu epis ol i c .ih sm hern .ilteietl by hi slot it .illy i hanging I.isles' I low does I pantomime differ from melodramatic gesture? How do we appreciate the diffcrrnt p I Stanislavskian realism and Method-based realism when looking externally at performances? What non-realist modes have been employed in film? What are the differences in performance style for various genres? Is there a particular mode of acting employed for film noirvs. the Western? Should we considerthe requirements of special effects in action sequences as part of an acting style? Can musical performance or martial arts be considered acting? What differences are there in performance style among different national traditions? Is there a different style of acting in Bollywood vs. Hollywood or France vs. Japan? How do we categorize an actor's individual idiolect? What differences are there in the style of acting employed by character actors vs. stars? Do actors in ensemble pieces act differently than actors in more hierarchical films? How does film acting change when film styles change? For instance, is 1970s acting different from acting in the 1950s or 1990s? 3 Questions of authorship. This category builds on auteurist approaches as well as star studies to ask, "Who is responsible for a film performance?" To what degree does a star function as author? If films are star vehicles, who is driving the car? To what degree do ensembles, such as those associated with Preston Sturges, John Cassavetes, or Paul Thomas Anderson, function as authors? To what degree do directors shape performances? To what degree should cameramen, editors, sound designers, or lighting technicians be said to create a performance? How important is casting and the role of the casting director? How did the shift from the studio system to producer package deals affect film performance? What effect do extratextual materials, such as gossip or scandal, have on our understanding of a film performance? To what degree is a film text modified by extra-cinematic practices of fandom such as imitation, copying, and consumption (Stacey 1994)? 4 Historical questions. This very broad category would include questions about various historical contexts through which acting is produced and received. Looking at various histories, such as histories oftechnology, institutional histories, labor history, art history, world history, and more, we would ask, "How have historical changes altered film acting?" In thinking about technology, for example, we might ask how changing technologies, such as digital imaging, have affected film acting (even eliminating the need for it in The Hu/fcorthe role oftheGollum in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers). How did acting alter in its transition from live theater to silent cinema, and from silent cinema to sound film? How does ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) affect performance? Alternately, we could consider how institutional shifts in the industry have altered performance. How, for example, have actor contracts changed since llic demise of the classical studio system' What are the effects of globalization on film peilurmance? What are the influences of different national traditions on each other in multinational productions? Has there been a loss of national cultural specificity in performance with the globalization of film stars from Hong Kong or Australia? Or, in terms of art history, we might ask how film acting has been influenced by postmodern aesthetics. Was there such a thing as Pop acting? Is there a modernist performance style? 5 Ideological questions. Though ideological questions lurk in all these categories, here the •mphasis is primarily on the ideological effects of film acting. Under this category, we would ask, "What does film acting mean?" What is the value of film acting? What values do we attach to acting and actors? How does film acting reflect or alter our ideas about human identity1 I low do ,ic lors and ac tiri|» refle( I 01 modify our pen eplion ol love am I . >1 Im-i human relationships? Should the demographics of film casts reflect the demographic! of society? I low have Mum representations ol lai e, sexuality and i/endei shaped ..in uinli'i landing of t .1 Nl IMI INIHOnuCIION I I persons an,I p..I,In ■. in Ihr ieal world-' I low do stars refle< t.contradii t or negotiate dominant ideologies? Do alternative reception practices, such as camp or cult fandom, constitute resistance to the dominant ideology? Are different acting styles, or different conceptions of realism, produi ed by ideological shifts in the culture? As these questions—which are by no means exhaustive—suggest, the possible field of study for film acting is enormous. Some of these questions may seem to exceed the boundaries of what is conventionally considered film acting. My point in raising such wide-ranging questions is til at. as long as we are talking about films made with human bodies and/or voices, film acting is central to most questions we would ask about film. At a minimum, we should recognize that film acting touches upon numerous areas of inquiry and provides a means of exploring areas such as technological change, genre, and institutional history, from a new perspective. Contents ot the book I he essays collected here respond in various ways to many, though not all, of these questions. ',.ime essays arc influenced by cultural studies, performance studies, and histoncisrm. Others lepiesenl relatively raie discussions of acting in formalist, ontological, or popular discussions of film. The first section of the book, "Ontology of the Film Actor," includes essays that take up the question, "What constitutes film acting?" In different ways, these essays address the ways and degree to which film acting differs from stage acting; how film acting is shaped by cinematic techniques such as framing, editing, and sound; the meaning and function of type; anil the role of the star as constitutive of certain kinds of filmmaking and of our understanding ol film texts. The next section, "The Creation of the Film Actor," takes an historical approach to the question of what constitutes an actor. The essays here offer detailed analysis of the construction of film acting as a profession and mode of performance from the silent era into the classical studio era; and include institutional and aesthetic history. The section on "Style and Technique" examines four distinct styles of performance—the work of silent star Lillian Ciish in the film melodramas of D. W. Griffith; generic modes of performance in early sound t omcdy; Method acting in 1950s cinema, especially Marlon Brando's role in On the Waterfront; and non-realist performance modes in independent cinema. The final section, "Character and Type," emphasizes the ways in which acting both reflects and is constitutive of ideas about identity, and offers historical and textual investigations of type and typecasting not only in the work of stars, including African-American stars, but also in the work of character actors. I his hook does not include essays by key theorists of acting such as Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Hiei hi Stanislavski, 01 Strasberg. This deficiency, in part, reflects a deliberate choice on my part i" mi liid......says that offer theoretically and historically informed descriptions of actual film pec foi main es and practices, rather than proscriptive ideals. In addition. I decided not to include them because I felt that these essays are already relatively well known and have been published in numerous other places. And, furthermore, many of these theories and ideas are discussed in •.nine detail throughout the hook in individual essays Header, may he disappointed to dr.i ovei that the essays here do not, for the most part, deal with acting styles in countries other than America. This bias is an unintended product of editorial 1 I.....es that, lo a decree, iflln I I he- partiality of published .< holarly work on acting Ideally, this 11.mow loi us allows one lo i on-.ulei i Iuiii/,imi/ ( urn rptioir. ol ,n line, in the Amen, an i onlext , , .., iii urn ill nn M Mil III IN Of course, in neglecting other national traditions, such as Japanese or Indian cinema, the book misses out on investigating different approaches to film and cross-cultural comparisons of acting styles and theories. Similarly, the essays here predominately apply to film acting from the silent era through the classical period and do not address the ways in which film acting has changed in post-classical and postmodern cinema. And, other than one essay on African-American stars, the essays here do not address issues of race, ethnicity, multiculturalism, or colonialism. It is my hope that this collection inspires future work on acting in these and other areas. These gaps aside, this collection offers wide-ranging, perceptive, and informative essays on film acting. Offering varied approaches and a broad mixture of subjects, they provide a fascinating glimpse of how far-reaching and varied discussions of film acting can be. Taken together, they offer students and others interested in film acting an overview of key issues and topics in the history of film acting, as well as nicely detailed analyses of specific actors, roles, styles, and practices. As all of these essays demonstrate, film acting is no longer a topic to be neglected. GENFHAl INTRODUCTION 13 Hi.iudy .mil ' olien ii)!)!) n« i'..| I).unci D.iy.in, "The Tutor ( ode of ( laitical ( mcma," William Rothman "Against' The System of the Suture,'" Kaja Silverman "On Suture," and Nick Browne, "The Spectator-in-the-Text: The Rhetoric of Stagecoach." The concept of suture emphasizes that the viewer is situated in a film and made to forget the cuts and negations lhat are inherent to film through continuity editing, and especially through shot-reverse shots and point-of-view shots. Key originary texts for performance studies include Coffman 1959 and Turner 1988. Other studies of West that address these issues include Curry 1996, Hamilton 1995, and I cmIn .'(ion Pamela Robertson Wojcik June, 2003 Notes 1 There is some dispute as to whether the Kuleshov experiment actually took place. At a minimum, Pudovkin, who worked together with Kuleshov on it, disagrees about the content of the shots. The original footage does not exist and there is no evidence that it was shown to a naive audience. See Holland 1989 and Kepley 1986. While Soviet theorists argued for a particular style of acting suited to one conception of realism, much Hollywood lore about acting unwittingly adopts a similar view of the actor's role In the perhaps apocryphal tale of Spencer Tracy's advice to a young actor—"Just say your lines and don't bump into the furniture"—or in accounts of actors being told to make a gesture or walk in a certain direction without being told why, one can hear traces of Soviet iheory and the idea that what constitutes acting on screen in as much an effect of cinematic lei 11111. p 1. and post-production as it is what the actor himself does } For more on typage and typecasting, see my essay "Typecasting" in this volume. 4 For an auteurist analysis of romantic comedy that takes into account the unique contributions of individual actors and performances as well as the guiding vision of the director, see Harvey >987 \ 1 in the exi lusion of performance from the field of genre study, see DeCordova 1995. (1 K.irnick and Jenkins's anthology does include a sub-section on performance, and includes chapters not only on stars such as Mae West and Buster Keaton, but also on early slapstick. Jenkins's book, What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic also provides an important ( ontnbution to the study of genre and performance, and poitions aie reprinted in this volume. ' '.it Met / hi//, .pi. Je.in 11 inc. Itaudry, "Ideologic al Effei ts of the Basil ( 1ner11.it 1. Apparatus" .111.1 " I he Apparatus Metapsyi I ml. ►>■.!« al Approai hes to the lmpiev.1011 ol locality 1111 men 1,1" ill ll.iu.liy and ( ohen I<>•><). <.p, t',\ and /(>(> /// See also llie lnll(iwlri(| *»»«y» 1111 Vllure in