Andrew Klevan. Film Performance: from Achievement to Appreciation. London and New York: Wallflower, 2005.
There is a field of commentary that examines performers as 'stars' and addresses their significance from a range of contexts and cultures -fandom, economics, technology, studio strategy and publicity. Another field, not quite as mined, places the emphasis on 'acting', exploring, for example, the influence of Melodramatic, Vaudeville
(or Music Hall), Continental Cabaret, Stanilavsky or Method techniques. Both these fields draw on external evidence to assess a performer's effect, but they tend not to pursue the complexity of a performers internal relationship with a film. This book places the emphasis differently, treating performance as an internal element of style in synthesis with other aspects of film style and explores the achievement of expressive rapport.
1. Position and perspective (the relationship of the performer to the camera, and their position within the shot).
2. Place (the relationship of the performer to location, decor, furniture and objects)
3. The plot (the relationship of the performer to narrative developments)
It demonstrates how films instruct us in ways of interpretation and ways of viewing. Because the films wish us to take responsibility for coming to moments and meanings in particular ways, they may hide their best view of themselves: the apparent simplicity or 'ordinariness' of Hollywood films that obscures their significance; films develop visual or aural patterns that open up alternative lines of viewing, but these alternatives are deliberately less salient than, for example, the straightforward dynamics of the plot; mundane elements of films (aspects of everyday) may remain undramatic and yet, because of their arrangement within a film, unexpectedly reveal a wealth of significance. Fresh aspects of even familiar films emerge when we attend to gestures, postures, expressions and voice - and how they are situated.
Interpreting performance - Astaire preferred wide-shots, rarely allowing the camera to separate the various parts of his body from each other.
Integration of performance and space - photographs are of the world, in which human beings are not ontologically favoured over the rest of the nature, in which objects are not props but allies(or enemies) of the human character. Camera sequence in Chaplin's City Lights explores 'construction of visibility' and his ontological equality with flowers, street corners and window. panes.
This book concentrates on individual scenes or sequences from films so that it may be responsive to their unfolding. Attending the moment-by-moment movement of the performers also enhances our understanding of film characterisation. It encourages us to attend to a character's physical and aural detail and reminds us, because we are prone to forget in our literary moods, of their ontological particularity in the medium of film. A living human being embodies a film character.
Attending to sequences is preferred to ranging across a performer's career, or simply extracting instances of performance from across a whole film. such extractions miss the presentness of the performance. Naremore points the way in this kind of study but according to Klevan he fails to exemplify the complexity of relationship between performer and object in the cinema.
"The shot is held somewhat longer than it is expected", Klevan suggests that "a viewer's engagement with a performer depends on him or her communicating aspects of their character's conciousness"(p.9), "appreciating the performer's capacities for revealing and withholding aspects of the character's sensibility", "the eloquence of the moment is achieved by the performer's bearing in conjunction with the position of the camera" (p.10).
Placement and relationship with the room and furniture around the performer. Performance may enhance the density of our interpretations because we are responsive to physicality and texture, "our intensity is no longer satisfied by thin interpretations based on general themes or summaries of narrative strands." (p.11). The moment exemplifies the performer's ability to keep alive the various options which have emerged from the world that the film has established.
Close-up: cut away from the surrounding environment it signifies the personal dimension. It tells us how a performer feels by defining the private thought against the public display. The cut into close-up carries a sense of special truth isolated by the camera's knowing eye. It clarifies by a sudden reduction of our space for though and wonder. The film's scenes are often constructed so that the viewer has a more privileged view than the other characters.
When the film asks too much of the apparatus and almost nothing of the performer we have a good example of aspects out of balance. The effort to maintain the various elements in productive tension and neither to push them into symmetrical alignment. Description is seen as something far from self-evident, or simple, but central to critical practice... description is a matter of how to bring into existence, how, in the course of analysis, to evoke for a reader that lost object.
Editing: the film then switches between closer shots and views over the shoulder. This technique of editing cuts them apart while they stand together and emphasises the separateness of their views of each other. A conventional technique of editing, over-the-shoulder shots, becomes very distinct, precisely conjoined to a particular moment (rather than being an inevitable continuation, or a requirement, say, of clear syntax.)
He plays his character with casual panache. We would not expect their movements to have specialist expertise, or virtuosity, but they achieve and enviable quality of simple improvisation, genial and convivial.
Voice without a body: dislocated from the performer in space and by tone, the voice seems celestial.
Many Hollywood films - especially heavily generic ones, such as westerns, thrillers or horror movies- base their drama on heavily-plotted scenarios and some may appear over-determined and contrived (Secret Beyond the Door, Fritz Lang, 1948). Beyond a standard needed for generic plot conventions, it looks to have an attachment to cliché that is without irony (and an earnestness that brings it close to comedy).
This study presents a method for sustaining attention to a performance, and has appreciated the achievement concentrating on a sequence or a succession of sequences from a film directing our attention to the moment-by-moment development of the performances. It enables an exploration of the tight-knit relationship of the performances to the surroundings aspects of film style. Continuous attention to sequences also brings out the realtionship between appreciating a performance and understanding a film's meaning as it develops - the unfolding of an interpretation- undermining our inclination to condense and compress meaning of films, often to the point of banality.
Attending to sequences is preferred to ranging across a performer's career, or simply extracting instances of performance from across a whole film. such extractions miss the presentness of the performance. Naremore points the way in this kind of study but according to Klevan he fails to exemplify the complexity of relationship between performer and object in the cinema.
"The shot is held somewhat longer than it is expected", Klevan suggests that "a viewer's engagement with a performer depends on him or her communicating aspects of their character's conciousness"(p.9), "appreciating the performer's capacities for revealing and withholding aspects of the character's sensibility", "the eloquence of the moment is achieved by the performer's bearing in conjunction with the position of the camera" (p.10).
Placement and relationship with the room and furniture around the performer. Performance may enhance the density of our interpretations because we are responsive to physicality and texture, "our intensity is no longer satisfied by thin interpretations based on general themes or summaries of narrative strands." (p.11). The moment exemplifies the performer's ability to keep alive the various options which have emerged from the world that the film has established.
Close-up: cut away from the surrounding environment it signifies the personal dimension. It tells us how a performer feels by defining the private thought against the public display. The cut into close-up carries a sense of special truth isolated by the camera's knowing eye. It clarifies by a sudden reduction of our space for though and wonder. The film's scenes are often constructed so that the viewer has a more privileged view than the other characters.
When the film asks too much of the apparatus and almost nothing of the performer we have a good example of aspects out of balance. The effort to maintain the various elements in productive tension and neither to push them into symmetrical alignment. Description is seen as something far from self-evident, or simple, but central to critical practice... description is a matter of how to bring into existence, how, in the course of analysis, to evoke for a reader that lost object.
Editing: the film then switches between closer shots and views over the shoulder. This technique of editing cuts them apart while they stand together and emphasises the separateness of their views of each other. A conventional technique of editing, over-the-shoulder shots, becomes very distinct, precisely conjoined to a particular moment (rather than being an inevitable continuation, or a requirement, say, of clear syntax.)
He plays his character with casual panache. We would not expect their movements to have specialist expertise, or virtuosity, but they achieve and enviable quality of simple improvisation, genial and convivial.
Voice without a body: dislocated from the performer in space and by tone, the voice seems celestial.
Many Hollywood films - especially heavily generic ones, such as westerns, thrillers or horror movies- base their drama on heavily-plotted scenarios and some may appear over-determined and contrived (Secret Beyond the Door, Fritz Lang, 1948). Beyond a standard needed for generic plot conventions, it looks to have an attachment to cliché that is without irony (and an earnestness that brings it close to comedy).
This study presents a method for sustaining attention to a performance, and has appreciated the achievement concentrating on a sequence or a succession of sequences from a film directing our attention to the moment-by-moment development of the performances. It enables an exploration of the tight-knit relationship of the performances to the surroundings aspects of film style. Continuous attention to sequences also brings out the realtionship between appreciating a performance and understanding a film's meaning as it develops - the unfolding of an interpretation- undermining our inclination to condense and compress meaning of films, often to the point of banality.
