“Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry.” Carl Theodore Dreyer.
Maria Falconetti's performance in Carl Theodore Dreyer's The Passion Of Joan Of Arc is the most astonishing and astounding in all cinema. It is a performance of whose intensity of expression has completely overwhelmed me, and utterly captivated me, and I am still, several days after seeing it, struggling to come to terms with it's impact upon me as a film viewer, and as an actor. In short, I can't get it out of my head.
Falconetti's performance here is all the more remarkable because she is shot almost entirely in close-up, and expresses all that she needs to with her face only. And what a face it is: beautiful and symmetrical, instantly compelling, capable of startling animation. But it is her expressions which are consistently compelling and provocative throughout this silent film, where she spends most her time surrounded by inquisitors and jailers (in whom, Dreyer has assembled surely the finest group of vulture-faced potato-headed old gits in the history of cinema) who want Falconetti as Joan Of Arc to do something to discredit her belief that she is on a mission from God. Of course, her performance is essentially made up of her responses to the actions of her captives, and these responses are mostly drawn from the extreme end of human experience: bliss, terror, shock, incomprehension, depression, dismay (to name but a few), and all are delivered with a force and absolute truth, bringing about the revelation of Falconetti's soul.
I wondered how Falconetti came to this performance, it was clear to me that it was not the result of a technical process because it lacks shape and precision of intent, but on the other hand, the consistent clarity of her expressions meant that her work could not have been the result of free form. It is true that her freedom of expression and her generosity in this role show that she must have been at ease on set, and would also indicate a good relationship with her director. However, I was surprised to learn the following from Roger Ebert's review of the film : -
“for Falconnetti, the performance was an ordeal. Legends from the set tell of Dreyer forcing her to kneel painfully on stone and then wipe all expression from her face so that the viewer would read suppressed or inner pain. He filmed the same shots again and again, hoping that in the editing room he could find exactly the right nuance in her facial expression.”
This makes sense, and explains the precision of Falconetti's performance in the absence of consummate technical control. However, I would suggest that Falconetti was more complicit in Dreyer's method than this quote might infer, infact, I would say that Falconetti more than went along with it because she is enjoying her work, and enjoying it too much for it to be the result of mere directorial manipulation. Falconetti's suffering on set, is her suffering to deliver the performance, which, in the eyes of the audience, becomes the illusion of the character, Joan Of Arc, suffering (which the audience pays it's money to see). For the actor, there is no Joan Of Arc, she exists only as lines on a page in a script, and so, for the actor to give a truthful performance, he must go through a struggle congruent to that of the character. So Falconetti had to be complicit in Dreyer's process, it was necessary in service of her work, her “ordeal” on set is congruent to Joan Of Arc's, had it been anything less then we would not have been treated to the calibre of performance that we were. Ultimately, Falconetti's performance is the result of innate acting talent, I don't care what process you employ, it takes a special kind of actor to do what she did, and the range and intensity come from within the woman herself, they have to or else she couldn't have done it, this stuff cannot be copied and it absolutely cannot be faked, and furthermore, acting is a mysterious and a largely intuitive business, and I'd offer Falconetti's performance here as an example of the shamanistic dimension of acting, when the actor is apparently possessed by a spirit, and in the way Joan might have been (and they wont teach you how to do that at drama school).
I don't know much about Falconetti, although I was amazed to learn that this was her only major film role, she preferred to work on stage as a light comedian (choosing the stage over the cinema was not unusual in those days, in the way it might be today). I urge all actors, directors, everybody to see this film, I believe Falconetti's work to be at the very pinnacle, it's certainly a very obvious example of great acting if you were unsure about what great acting might actually look like. No, it cannot be copied or faked, and few are blessed with an instrument such as Falconetti's. Perhaps then, we can hold her work up as an example, a standard we may strive to meet, and something to measure our own work against, and perhaps one day we will be able to produce work that touches people in the way Falconetti's performance of Joan has. That's certainly something worth aiming for.
“I've been drinking...and now I'm going to drink some more”. Oliver Reed, Paranoic.
I recently watched Oliver Reed in an old Hammer Horror picture called Paranoic, except that it's not a horror film but a psychological thriller in the Hitchcockian mould, about an upper-middle class family of brother, sister, auntie, who get a spanner thrown in their works when Oliver Reed's brother (played by Alexander Davion) , who had apparently died 8 years previously, suddenly turns up on the doorstep of their mansion, apparently alive and well. Reed, playing Simon Ashby, a drunken, womanising, boorish, playboy, and a psychotic to boot, is none too pleased at the reappearance of his long lost brother, as it complicates his efforts to get his hands on the family money.
The first thing I noticed about Reed in this film was his youth, Paranoic was made when Reed was 25, and he's slim, physically agile, and high-cheek boned. My image of Reed (and presumably that of many people of my generation) was of the bloated and beared figure he became in the latter decades of his life, and he didn't seem committed to his performances – there is little more alienating for a viewer, than watching an actor who doesn't care about his work – and as such I have always found Reed difficult to love, and never took him too seriously as an actor. Furthermore, I confess I was never quite sure how or why he became a star, and thought that perhaps his name had been made more by his hell-raising reputation than his acting chops.
However, I have had to completely re-think all this after seeing Reed in Paranoic. Here he seems to be enjoying his work, he is alive, his performance is vivid, it's detailed and precise and he delivers some wonderful lines like; “you're more stupid than I gave you credit for”, with a bone dry effortlessness, not caring about the effect the words may have on the person they are directed towards, a remark so casual it cant be bothered to summon any proper intent, it's almost as though he is simply thinking out loud, not quite an insult nor a private joke. Infact, Reed's entire performance is laced with a laid back irony, as when he refers to the family nurse as; “little miss Florence Nightingale”. And these ironic actions are repeated throughout the film by Reed on behalf of his character in the script, Simon Ashby, and what we witness is a truthful expression of Reed's lack of concern for the people around him in the film, which is very different to an actor's lack of concern for the work at hand. Reed also displays of genuine power in the film, as when he learns that his attempt to murder his brother by fixing the brakes on his car has failed, he releases an expression which reveals such terror that it is one of the most provocative moments of screen acting I have seen. There is another scene where Reed is getting drunk in some bar, surrounded by tarts and cronies, he suddenly snaps into a rage, grabbing the darts from the dartboard and threatening to kill one of his cohorts with them. Reed is genuinely terrifying here, I cannot imagine what it must have been like for the other actors in the scene, and his face wears an expression of such ugly intensity that he can only have dredged it up from the pit of his soul. This is the Real Mcoy from Reed. Then there is more subtle work from him, as when he slouches on the sofa with a glass of brandy, and decides to stir it up a bit with his auntie, his relaxed physical state and the moment-to-moment detail of his performance reveal that Reed is enjoying his acting choices, choices which are not the result of some directorial conceit (they cannot be), but of Reed's intuition in response to his understanding of the script.
All too often we see work where the actor is not fully committed, and his performance is broad and bland, it lacks drive, he is merely going through the motions. How often have we heard critics say something like - “oh, he faxed that performance in” - and I've heard this comment made about Hollywood stars being paid millions. This “faxing in” of performances, by actors working in whatever milieu, arises largely because the actor does not enjoy the choice he has made, whether that is a choice of how to play the scene, or his choice to accept the job in the first place which he may have done simply for the money (or even his choice to become an actor at all). Either way, the results are usually inferior to those of actors who make choices they enjoy, these actors thrill the audience, and thus their job is done. Therefore, actors have a responsibility to the audience to make choices they enjoy*.
* When I say enjoy, I mean that the choice excites the actor, makes him want to act, gets his blood up, I don't mean enjoy as in going on a picnic.
“no matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have, if he [the writer] puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism.” Ernest Hemingway, Death In The Afternoon.
This week, I broke one of my cardinal rules of work, by bursting into laughter during a scene when laughter was not necessarily required. Now, that's not really the problem, I dealt with it and kept moving the scene along, and afterall, my laughing was organic and therefore the truth of the moment, even if it wasn't the intention of the script. However, the real problem was that not only was I the author of the script, and not only was I directing the film, but I also tasked myself with editing the film. Those of you who have been reading this blog recently, will know that I did some editing alone for the first time the other day (I had previously worked alongside editors) , and now have a taste for it, and am finding any excuse to do some more. Anyway, we had done about eight takes of the scene we shot that day, and the last take was perfect, fulfilling precisely the intentions of the script, it was exactly what we were going for. However, the previous take was the one where I laughed, and I wanted to choose that take for the film, not the eighth take which was perfect. Now, usually, I am extremely good at self-direction*, I pride myself on truthful, rational self-criticism of my work in the service of improving it, and therefore improving the play or film at hand, and further, I have excellent insight into my own processes, even to the extent that it is very difficult for a director to improve my work outside of the basic technical demands of the scene (changes to blocking, adjustments in storytelling etc), I am a low maintenance actor. So, if this is true, then why include in the film moments of my performance which give it the lie, and therefore weaken the film? Because the decision was borne of sentimentality and not referring to the through-action of the film, the first principle of the film. I chose to include the laughing take because it was cute and likeable, superficial and easily digestible, as oppose to the way the scene was intended: mysterious and unusual, provocative, which may not mean a cosy experience for the viewer, but a richer one. Thankfully, my good friend and colleague, Ryan Matthews, convinced me I had made the wrong decision, and that yes, the eighth take, the one without the laughing, was the one that best served the needs of the film. Of course he was right, and my self-respect was restored once I had changed my decision, my time as a begging-to-be-liked-poodle mercifully came to an end. Next time, I will prepare more thoroughly and be more vigilant to ensure I don't lapse into feeble-mindedness. You know, if this had been in the theatre and I burst into laughing on stage one night, it wouldn't enter my mind to do it again the next.
*1) in this sense, an actor editing a film he is in, is also directing it, because he is choosing what should be included and excluded. 2) I believe confident self-direction by an actor is unusual, many actors I know are terrified of performing without first having worked on the piece with a director.
"Irish Arts Council has awarded (Film Project Award) Rouzbeh Rashidi for making his experimental feature film project HE which will be shot in the city of Cork. The specific inspiration behind this location decision is the Guesthouse space.
Although the lead actor, James Devereaux (star of one of Rashidi’s previous features, Closure Of Catharsis) would be brought in to Cork to work on the film, all other cast and crew would be drawn from the Cork film and arts community in the hope that this collaboration with local talent will be mutually inspiring. In addition Rouzbeh Rashidi plans to present a number of screenings at the Guesthouse to give those interested in the process a fuller understanding of the challenging and unusual ideas and techniques he employs in his work, and to create a dialogue around them."
Many thanks to the Irish Arts Council for their support.
I've written about my previous collaboration with Rouzbeh Rashidi, the Remodernist feature film, Closure Of Catharsis.
Blast Of Silence is an almost perfect film noir, and a great example of how low budgets can lead to a disciplined, precise and idiosyncratic aesthetic which takes us into a completely new and compelling world. Allen Baron, who, remarkably, wrote, directed and played the lead role (which Peter Falk was going to play, but was called away by some better paying work) with little experience, and even less dough it seems. This film is completely uncomprising, and I love it, I would even go as far as to suggest that Blast Of Silence is the scrappy American cousin to Le Samourai.
Here's the Criterion Collection essay on the film....
Allen Baron’s stark, moody Blast of Silence (1961) is a movie of many strange distinctions. It’s among the last of the true film noirs, those fatalistic black-and-white urban crime dramas that darkened the American screen so gloriously in the years after World War II. It was, along with John Cassavetes’s Shadows (1959) and Shirley Clarke’s The Connection (1960), one of the first of the low-budget independent movies that suggested the existence of a uniquely New York style of filmmaking, documentary-like and expressively unpolished (though Blast of Silence has more plot, and a much more tightly constructed screenplay, than Cassavetes and Clarke would likely have felt comfortable with). It’s among the very few works in the history of cinema to boast a voice-over narration in the second person. And it is, hands down, the best movie ever made about a common, important, and unjustly neglected American experience: the really bad business trip.
The film’s protagonist, Frankie Bono (played by Baron, who also wrote and directed), is a Cleveland hit man with a contract to terminate—for reasons he neither knows nor cares to know—a middle-management New York mobster named Troiano (Peter H. Clune). The killer comes to town by rail, arriving, appropriately, at Penn Station, which was, like him, doomed: less than five years after Blast of Silence was shot, the old station we see in the opening scenes was demolished. Frankie doesn’t last nearly as long.I don’t think I’m spoiling any surprises here. Noir heroes often don’t make it all the way to “The End,” and in this picture, even more than most, there’s death in the air right from the start. The opening shot—an image of birth, represented as the light at the end of the train tunnel bringing Frankie, on his grim mission, to New York—is more ominous than joyful. The words “blessed event” do not spring to mind as we watch this character being born to his brief life on-screen. Indeed, even before we’ve laid eyes on Frankie, we have heard, in the blackness of the tunnel, a deep, gravelly, disembodied voice intoning a dire monologue on the meaning of this new arrival: “You were born in pain,” says the voice—which is, uncredited, that of the blacklisted actor Lionel Stander. “You were born with hate and anger built in.” In his detachment and eerie omniscience, the speaker seems godlike, and this thought generates, let’s say, a certain unease in the viewer. If God sounds like Lionel Stander, we’re probably all in big trouble.The gloomy narration, which winds through the picture like one of New York’s twistier subway lines, was written (under the pseudonym Mel Davenport) by Waldo Salt, another blacklistee. Despite the contributions of Stander and Salt, Blast of Silence has virtually no measurable political content. The out-of-work lefties somehow fit in, though, because the film’s dominant mood is that of profound, chronic, terminal alienation. It’s a movie about an outsider, and it seems to have been made by people who knew exactly how he feels.At the time Blast of Silence was shot (in 1959 and 1960), Baron was an occasional actor and a former comic-book illustrator who thought he could make a movie and had managed to raise the twenty grand or so he needed to turn out something that would look reasonably professional. Although Baron was a native New Yorker, Brooklyn bred, he chose to film a story about a man who is not: a tense, wary out-of-towner who, like so many who come to Manhattan from smaller, less daunting places, responds to the perceived hostility of the city with some pretty serious hostility of his own. In those days, of course, making a movie in New York—three thousand miles from Hollywood and on a budget even a studio B movie would be ashamed of—was an uncommon and risky venture, and at least a trace of chip-on-the-shoulder attitude is discernible in every Gotham indie of that era: a sense of alienation was, as this movie’s narrator might say, built in.And Baron has the wit (or the instinct) to turn that uncomfortable feeling to the movie’s advantage. Maybe the most impressive thing about this debut feature is how rigorously its inexperienced director sustains a mood of endemic existential anxiety, of a pervasive wrongness in the world. In a way, it’s fortunate that Peter Falk, whom Baron had cast as Frankie Bono, was unable to play the part. (Falk opted to take the role of a different hit man, in Burt Balaban’s 1960 Murder, Inc.) Baron’s a lesser actor, obviously, but his relative lack of ease before the camera lends a little extra edge of tension to this already tightly wound character. There’s a weird poignancy in his stiffness. As Baron plays the character, Frankie looks like a man who’d be an out-of-towner anywhere on earth. He’s a stranger in his own skin.The whole movie, in fact, has the melancholy aura of something displaced, of a traveling salesman’s loneliness. Frankie’s big-city business trip leaves him, as such excursions often do, with a lot of empty hours: too much time to kill, you might say. After performing the routine preliminaries of stalking his prey and developing a plan of action, he’s forced to hang around for a couple of days, awaiting delivery of the gun and silencer he’s ordered from an odious, shifty-eyed, morbidly obese local dealer named Big Ralph (Larry Tucker). Rather than sit and brood in the stunningly depressing East Village hotel he has checked himself into, Frankie wanders the city streets by day and by night, but can’t find much to distract him there either, because he has come at the wrong time. It’s Christmastime, a season that (as Stander growlingly informs us) evokes nothing but bad memories in this angry, solitary man: all the seasonal cheer around him just turns him back on himself, and that’s the last place he wants to be.Although this holiday motif might sound like a too facile irony, Baron (with the help of his inventive cinematographer, Merrill Brody) makes it work by emphasizing, in a longish nocturnal montage, the almost comic visual incongruity of Frankie’s self-absorption as he walks past the bright window displays on Fifth Avenue. He looks straight ahead, as if he weren’t there at all, as if the life of the great city simply had no reality for him: it might as well be a rear projection.Blast of Silence, despite its graphic vigor and its documentary-like immediacy, shares some of its hero’s radical isolation from his surroundings: a stubborn neither-here-nor-thereness and—especially now, nearly half a century later—a haunting sense of being somehow suspended in time. When the picture was released, film noir was effectively over, and the era of hit-man chic ushered in by Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction was still more than three decades in the future. It’s commercially dangerous for any work of popular art to be either behind the times or too far ahead of them. Blast of Silence—yet another strange distinction—is both.The movie had a bit of success, though, even in 1961. It was picked up for distribution by Universal (which opened it on the bottom of double bills), was generally well reviewed, and won a critics’ prize at the Locarno film festival. And over the years, Blast of Silence has, like a particularly scary local hoodlum, acquired a small reputation. Martin Scorsese, who was studying film at NYU when the picture came out, regularly cites it as a key New York movie, and periodically it gets “rediscovered” and dragged out of the shadows into the glare of the international film festival circuit: it impressed the cineastes in attendance at the Munich film festival in 1990 and was screened at Cannes in 2006.Among the film’s cast and crew, fates varied. Neither the cinematographer, Merrill Brody, nor the leading lady, Molly McCarthy, was much heard from in the years that followed. Larry Tucker, who plays the creepy Ralphie, had a memorable role as the madman Pagliacci in Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor (1963), but by the late sixties was better known as the writing partner of Paul Mazursky, with whom he collaborated on three screenplays, including Mazursky’s breakthrough, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). Lionel Stander, working largely in Europe (most indelibly, perhaps, in Roman Polanski’s 1966 absurdist thriller Cul de Sac), remained a very busy character actor for the rest of his life, which ended in 1994. Waldo Salt won two Oscars, for the screenplays of Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Coming Home (1978).And Allen Baron, the prime mover of Blast of Silence, wound up directing hundreds of episodes of series television, none of which, it’s probably safe to say, even remotely resembled his striking debut film. (The shows he worked on ranged from The Dukes of Hazzard and Charlie’s Angels to—on the high end—Kolchak: The Night Stalker.) He’s credited as the director of just three more feature films—Terror in the City (1964), Outside In (a.k.a. Red, White, and Busted, 1972), and Foxfire Light (1982)—which remain stubbornly unrediscovered. This may not have been the career he had in mind when he turned his camera on the streets of New York City in 1959 or when he emerged, two years later, with this radiantly bleak, end-of-the-line noir. In an interview with German television in the early 1990s—seen in the making-of documentary Requiem for a Killer—he suggested wistfully that instead of going to Hollywood after his first feature he should perhaps have stayed in his home city and made more of “the kinds of films I know how to make.” Films, that is, like Blast of Silence, with its bone-deep noir fatalism, its pervasive conviction that things never work out the way we’ve planned.But Allen Baron, unlike his luckless hero, has survived. He hasn’t directed a TV show in better than twenty years. He has begun painting again, and is preparing a series of abstract canvases for a gallery show, his first, in Los Angeles. He still sounds like a New Yorker. New Yorkers feel noirish a lot of the time, but not always. Sometimes they even manage to remember the truth uttered by one of the city’s great sages, a contemporary of Baron’s named Lawrence Peter Berra. It ain’t over till it’s over, he said, and New Yorkers never argue with Yogi.
Delighted to share "Man Crossing Street" with you, a no wave short film about the individual amid the turbulence of the city.
So often the actor must make compromises in his work because he is dealing with directors, other actors, writers etc, and these compromises can leave the actor, especially the young actor*, bewildered, and this is especially true when the young actor comes up against a forceful director who speaks nonsense, muddying the muddiest of waters. However, by writing and producing his own work, the actor needn't make these compromises, he will get a crystal clear view his work, and therefore a greater understanding of it which means the actor can define his own aesthetic (ie – what it is he actually does, or wants to do, his theory and technique of art as it were ), and then apply that aesthetic to each situation (castings, rehearsals, etc) he is confronted by in order to deal with it, as oppose to trying to re-invent himself for each situation. Of course, the individual actor must fit himself into the mode of the production at hand and not vice versa (and anyone who has worked with an actor who thinks the whole production should fit into his individual mode knows that this leads to misery for all concerned). The director is the actor's boss, and the actor must do the job he is brought in to do, which often means that the application of the actor's personal aesthetic is done in private, rarely will the actor work with people whose aesthetic matches his perfectly, he may even encounter colleagues whose aesthetic is contradictory to that of his own, however, the point is that the actor should not freak out, politic, cause trouble or collapse into a slough of despair, rather he should rise to the challenge for the challenge is a test of his aesthetic, and if his aesthetic does not hold up under pressure, then perhaps he need go back to the drawing board instead of brandishing everyone around him an idiot (whether in public or in private). And so then, by defining a practicable aesthetic, the actor becomes a happier and more productive, and in the end, more creative worker – suddenly he possesses the capability to liberate all that he has to offer, potential is translated into accomplishment, and becoming that person he always wanted to be begins to seem possible. Ultimately, after producing is own work, the actor can come away with a greater sense of his own value, a rational self-esteem, and he can proceed with confidence – he is an individual creative artist who takes responsibility for his work.
There are those who say that actors should not be entrepreneurial but should hang around hoping to be picked, some even say that if the actor has created his own work rather than been given it, then that work is not “legitemate”, and/or the actor should feel “shame” for casting himself. I might point out that it was only in the latter part of the 20th century that actors became toy soldiers, until then they offered leadership in British theatre, for example, Olivier** is the obvious example, of whom Marlon Brando said had done more than anyone to keep the fire of British culture alive after the World War Two. I also refer to the astonishing number of actors who have gone on to create great masterpieces of cinema, Orson Welles and John Cassavetes are two immediate examples. Would film culture be richer of poorer if they had declined to force their visions upon the screen, at great personal cost, and had decided, instead, to spend their lives “going on auditions”? I, for one, will always hold their example aloft without shame, but with pride, for their accomplishments are worth aspiring to.
*Infact, the young actor does not view these compromises as compromises, but as evidence of his own incompetence, which diminishes his confidence still further, leaving his well being in the hands of the arrogant and manipulative.
** Laurence Olivier was the founding artistic director of the National Theatre here in London, it's europe's largest theatre complex. Very difficult to see an actor appointed as artistic director today, much less given the responsibility for starting up such an organization.
So often the actor must make compromises in his work because he is dealing with directors, other actors, writers etc, and these compromises can leave the actor, especially the young actor*, bewildered, and this is especially true when the young actor comes up against a forceful director who speaks nonsense, muddying the muddiest of waters. However, by writing and producing his own work, the actor needn't make these compromises, he will get a crystal clear view his work, and therefore a greater understanding of it which means the actor can define his own aesthetic (ie – what it is he actually does, or wants to do, his theory and technique of art as it were ), and then apply that aesthetic to each situation (castings, rehearsals, etc) he is confronted by in order to deal with it, as oppose to trying to re-invent himself for each situation. Of course, the individual actor must fit himself into the mode of the production at hand and not vice versa (and anyone who has worked with an actor who thinks the whole production should fit into his individual mode knows that this leads to misery for all concerned). The director is the actor's boss, and the actor must do the job he is brought in to do, which often means that the application of the actor's personal aesthetic is done in private, rarely will the actor work with people whose aesthetic matches his perfectly, he may even encounter colleagues whose aesthetic is contradictory to that of his own, however, the point is that the actor should not freak out, politic, or collapse into a slough of despair, rather he should rise to the challenge for the challenge is a test of his aesthetic, and if his aesthetic does not hold up under pressure, then perhaps he need go back to the drawing board instead of brandishing everyone around him an idiot (whether in public or in private). And so then, by defining a practicable aesthetic, the actor becomes a happier and more productive, and in the end, more creative worker – suddenly he possesses the capability to liberate all that he has to offer, potential is translated into accomplishment, and becoming that person he always wanted to be begins to seem possible. Ultimately, after producing is own work, the actor can come away with a greater sense of his own value, a rational self-esteem, and he can proceed with confidence – he is an individual creative artist who takes responsibility for his work.
There are those who say that actors should not be entrepreneurial but should hang around hoping to be picked, some even say that if the actor has created his own work rather than been given it, then that work is not “legitemate”, and/or the actor should feel “shame” for casting himself. I might point out that it was only in the latter part of the 20th century that actors became toy soldiers, until then they offered leadership in British theatre, Olivier** is the obvious example, of whom Marlon Brando said had done more than anyone to keep the fire of British culture alive after World War Two. I also refer to the astonishing number of actors who have gone on to create great masterpieces of cinema, Orson Welles and John Cassavetes are two immediate examples. Would film culture be richer of poorer if they had declined to force their visions upon the screen, at great personal cost, and had decided, instead, to spend their lives “going on auditions”? I, for one, will always hold their example aloft without shame, but with pride, for their accomplishments are worth aspiring to.
*Infact, the young actor does not view these compromises as compromises, but as evidence of his own incompetence, which diminishes his confidence still further, leaving his well being in the hands of the arrogant and manipulative.
** Laurence Olivier was the founding artistic director of the National Theatre here in London, it's europe's largest theatre complex. Very difficult to see an actor appointed as artistic director today, much less given the responsibility for starting up such an organization.
So often the actor must make compromises in his work because he is dealing with directors, other actors, writers etc, and these compromises can leave the actor, especially the young actor*, bewildered, and this is especially true when the young actor comes up against a forceful director who speaks nonsense, muddying the muddiest of waters. However, by writing and producing his own work, the actor needn't make these compromises, he will get a crystal clear view his work, and therefore a greater understanding of it which means the actor can define his own aesthetic (ie – what it is he actually does, or wants to do, his theory and technique of art as it were ), and then apply that aesthetic to each situation (castings, rehearsals, etc) he is confronted by in order to deal with it, as oppose to trying to re-invent himself for each situation. Of course, the individual actor must fit himself into the mode of the production at hand and not vice versa (and anyone who has worked with an actor who thinks the whole production should fit into his individual mode knows that this leads to misery for all concerned). The director is the actor's boss, and the actor must do the job he is brought in to do, which often means that the application of the actor's personal aesthetic is done in private, rarely will the actor work with people whose aesthetic matches his perfectly, he may even encounter colleagues whose aesthetic is contradictory to that of his own, however, the point is that the actor should not freak out, politic, or collapse into a slough of despair, rather he should rise to the challenge for the challenge is a test of his aesthetic, and if his aesthetic does not hold up under pressure, then perhaps he need go back to the drawing board instead of brandishing everyone around him an idiot (whether in public or in private). And so then, by defining a practicable aesthetic, the actor becomes a happier and more productive, and in the end, more creative worker – suddenly he possesses the capability to liberate all that he has to offer, potential is translated into accomplishment, and becoming that person he always wanted to be begins to seem possible. Ultimately, after producing is own work, the actor can come away with a greater sense of his own value, a rational self-esteem, and he can proceed with confidence – he is an individual creative artist who takes responsibility for his work.
There are those who say that actors should not be entrepreneurial but should hang around hoping to be picked, some even say that if the actor has created his own work rather than been given it, then that work is not “legitemate”, and/or the actor should feel “shame” for casting himself. I might point out that it was only in the latter part of the 20th century that actors became toy soldiers, until then they offered leadership in British theatre, Olivier** is the obvious example, of whom Marlon Brando said had done more than anyone to keep the fire of British culture alive after World War Two. I also refer to the astonishing number of actors who have gone on to create great masterpieces of cinema, Orson Welles and John Cassavetes are two immediate examples. Would film culture be richer of poorer if they had declined to force their visions upon the screen, at great personal cost, and had decided, instead, to spend their lives “going on auditions”? I, for one, will always hold their example aloft without shame, but with pride, for their accomplishments are worth aspiring to.
*Infact, the young actor does not view these compromises as compromises, but as evidence of his own incompetence, which diminishes his confidence still further, leaving his well being in the hands of the arrogant and manipulative.
** Laurence Olivier was the founding artistic director of the National Theatre here in London, it's europe's largest theatre complex. Very difficult to see an actor appointed as artistic director today, much less given the responsibility for starting up such an organization.
So often the actor must make compromises in his work because he is dealing with directors, other actors, writers etc, and these compromises can leave the actor, especially the young actor*, bewildered, and this is especially true when the young actor comes up against a forceful director who speaks nonsense, muddying the muddiest of waters. However, by writing and producing his own work, the actor needn't make these compromises, he will get a crystal clear view his work, and therefore a greater understanding of it which means the actor can define his own aesthetic (ie – what it is he actually does, or wants to do, his theory and technique of art as it were ), and then apply that aesthetic to each situation (castings, rehearsals, etc) he is confronted by in order to deal with it, as oppose to trying to re-invent himself for each situation. Of course, the individual actor must fit himself into the mode of the production at hand and not vice versa (and anyone who has worked with an actor who thinks the whole production should fit into his individual mode knows that this leads to misery for all concerned). The director is the actor's boss, and the actor must do the job he is brought in to do, which often means that the application of the actor's personal aesthetic is done in private, rarely will the actor work with people whose aesthetic matches his perfectly, he may even encounter colleagues whose aesthetic is contradictory to that of his own, however, the point is that the actor should not freak out, politic, or collapse into a slough of despair, rather he should rise to the challenge for the challenge is a test of his aesthetic, and if his aesthetic does not hold up under pressure, then perhaps he need go back to the drawing board instead of brandishing everyone around him an idiot (whether in public or in private). And so then, by defining a practicable aesthetic, the actor becomes a happier and more productive, and in the end, more creative worker – suddenly he possesses the capability to liberate all that he has to offer, potential is translated into accomplishment, and becoming that person he always wanted to be begins to seem possible. Ultimately, after producing is own work, the actor can come away with a greater sense of his own value, a rational self-esteem, and he can proceed with confidence – he is an individual creative artist who takes responsibility for his work.
There are those who say that actors should not be entrepreneurial but should hang around hoping to be picked, some even say that if the actor has created his own work rather than been given it, then that work is not “legitemate”, and/or the actor should feel “shame” for casting himself. I might point out that it was only in the latter part of the 20th century that actors became toy soldiers, until then they offered leadership in British theatre, Olivier** is the obvious example, of whom Marlon Brando said had done more than anyone to keep the fire of British culture alive after World War Two. I also refer to the astonishing number of actors who have gone on to create great masterpieces of cinema, Orson Welles and John Cassavetes are two immediate examples. Would film culture be richer of poorer if they had declined to force their visions upon the screen, at great personal cost, and had decided, instead, to spend their lives “going on auditions”? I, for one, will always hold their example aloft without shame, but with pride, for their accomplishments are worth aspiring to.
*Infact, the young actor does not view these compromises as compromises, but as evidence of his own incompetence, which diminishes his confidence still further, leaving his well being in the hands of the arrogant and manipulative.
** Laurence Olivier was the founding artistic director of the National Theatre here in London, it's europe's largest theatre complex. Very difficult to see an actor appointed as artistic director today, much less given the responsibility for starting up such an organization.
So often the actor must make compromises in his work because he is dealing with directors, other actors, writers etc, and these compromises can leave the actor, especially the young actor*, bewildered, and this is especially true when the young actor comes up against a forceful director who speaks nonsense, muddying the muddiest of waters. However, by writing and producing his own work, the actor needn't make these compromises, he will get a crystal clear view his work, and therefore a greater understanding of it which means the actor can define his own aesthetic (ie – what it is he actually does, or wants to do, his theory and technique of art as it were ), and then apply that aesthetic to each situation (castings, rehearsals, etc) he is confronted by in order to deal with it, as oppose to trying to re-invent himself for each situation. Of course, the individual actor must fit himself into the mode of the production at hand and not vice versa (and anyone who has worked with an actor who thinks the whole production should fit into his individual mode knows that this leads to misery for all concerned). The director is the actor's boss, and the actor must do the job he is brought in to do, which often means that the application of the actor's personal aesthetic is done in private, rarely will the actor work with people whose aesthetic matches his perfectly, he may even encounter colleagues whose aesthetic is contradictory to that of his own, however, the point is that the actor should not freak out, politic, or collapse into a slough of despair, rather he should rise to the challenge for the challenge is a test of his aesthetic, and if his aesthetic does not hold up under pressure, then perhaps he need go back to the drawing board instead of brandishing everyone around him an idiot (whether in public or in private). And so then, by defining a practicable aesthetic, the actor becomes a happier and more productive, and in the end, more creative worker – suddenly he possesses the capability to liberate all that he has to offer, potential is translated into accomplishment, and becoming that person he always wanted to be begins to seem possible. Ultimately, after producing is own work, the actor can come away with a greater sense of his own value, a rational self-esteem, and he can proceed with confidence – he is an individual creative artist who takes responsibility for his work.
There are those who say that actors should not be entrepreneurial but should hang around hoping to be picked, some even say that if the actor has created his own work rather than been given it, then that work is not “legitemate”, and/or the actor should feel “shame” for casting himself. I might point out that it was only in the latter part of the 20th century that actors became toy soldiers, until then they offered leadership in British theatre, Olivier** is the obvious example, of whom Marlon Brando said had done more than anyone to keep the fire of British culture alive after World War Two. I also refer to the astonishing number of actors who have gone on to create great masterpieces of cinema, Orson Welles and John Cassavetes are two immediate examples. Would film culture be richer of poorer if they had declined to force their visions upon the screen, at great personal cost, and had decided, instead, to spend their lives “going on auditions”? I, for one, will always hold their example aloft without shame, but with pride, for their accomplishments are worth aspiring to.
*Infact, the young actor does not view these compromises as compromises, but as evidence of his own incompetence, which diminishes his confidence still further, leaving his well being in the hands of the arrogant and manipulative.
** Laurence Olivier was the founding artistic director of the National Theatre here in London, it's europe's largest theatre complex. Very difficult to see an actor appointed as artistic director today, much less given the responsibility for starting up such an organization.
I'm delighted to share "Man Crossing Street" with you, a no wave short film I made recently, about the individual amid the turburlence of a busy city.
So often the actor must make compromises in his work because he is dealing with directors, other actors, writers etc, and these compromises can leave the actor, especially the young actor*, bewildered, and this is especially true when the young actor comes up against a forceful director who speaks nonsense, muddying the muddiest of waters. However, by writing and producing his own work, the actor needn't make these compromises, he will get a crystal clear view his work, and therefore a greater understanding of it which means the actor can define his own aesthetic (ie – what it is he actually does, or wants to do, his theory and technique of art as it were ), and then apply that aesthetic to each situation (castings, rehearsals, etc) he is confronted by in order to deal with it, as oppose to trying to re-invent himself for each situation. Of course, the individual actor must fit himself into the mode of the production at hand and not vice versa (and anyone who has worked with an actor who thinks the whole production should fit into his individual mode knows that this leads to misery for all concerned). The director is the actor's boss, and the actor must do the job he is brought in to do, which often means that the application of the actor's personal aesthetic is done in private, rarely will the actor work with people whose aesthetic matches his perfectly, he may even encounter colleagues whose aesthetic is contradictory to that of his own, however, the point is that the actor should not freak out, politic, cause trouble or collapse into a slough of despair, rather he should rise to the challenge for the challenge is a test of his aesthetic, and if his aesthetic does not hold up under pressure, then perhaps he need go back to the drawing board instead of brandishing everyone around him an idiot (whether in public or in private). And so then, by defining a practicable aesthetic, the actor becomes a happier and more productive, and in the end, more creative worker – suddenly he possesses the capability to liberate all that he has to offer, potential is translated into accomplishment, and becoming that person he always wanted to be begins to seem possible. Ultimately, after producing is own work, the actor can come away with a greater sense of his own value, a rational self-esteem, and he can proceed with confidence – he is an individual creative artist who takes responsibility for his work.
There are those who say that actors should not be entrepreneurial but should hang around hoping to be picked, some even say that if the actor has created his own work rather than been given it, then that work is not “legitemate”, and/or the actor should feel “shame” for casting himself. I might point out that it was only in the latter part of the 20th century that actors became toy soldiers, until then they offered leadership in British theatre, for example, Olivier** is the obvious example, of whom Marlon Brando said had done more than anyone to keep the fire of British culture alive after the World War Two. I also refer to the astonishing number of actors who have gone on to create great masterpieces of cinema, Orson Welles and John Cassavetes are two immediate examples. Would film culture be richer of poorer if they had declined to force their visions upon the screen, at great personal cost, and had decided, instead, to spend their lives “going on auditions”? I, for one, will always hold their example aloft without shame, but with pride, for their accomplishments are worth aspiring to.
*Infact, the young actor does not view these compromises as compromises, but as evidence of his own incompetence, which diminishes his confidence still further, leaving his well being in the hands of the arrogant and manipulative.
** Laurence Olivier was the founding artistic director of the National Theatre here in London, it's europe's largest theatre complex. Very difficult to see an actor appointed as artistic director today, much less given the responsibility for starting up such an organization.
I recently watched a film that was so phoney, where the filmmakers and actors displayed such a lack of commitment that the film could ONLY have been made to get me to part with my hard earned cash, no proper attempt was really made to even amuse me, and this happened to the extent that it started to demoralise me. So I switched it off after 45 minutes. Apparently we are supposed to be respectful and always see a film through to the end, but I wasn't going to waste another hour of my life and risk depression on this feeble pile of gak.I put a different film on, Sam Fuller's House Of Bamboo, a film, so it turned out, that was so beautifully crafted in all aspects (and containing a brilliant performance by Robert Ryan) that not only did it entertain me, but it refreshed me and left me stronger.If it's rubbish, turn it off.
I recently watched a film that was so phoney, where the filmmakers and actors displayed such a lack of commitment that the film could ONLY have been made to get me to part with my hard earned cash, no proper attempt was really made to even amuse me, and this happened to the extent that it started to demoralise me. So I switched it off after 45 minutes. Apparently we are supposed to be respectful and always see a film through to the end, but I wasn't going to waste another hour of my life and risk depression on this feeble pile of gak.I put a different film on, Sam Fuller's House Of Bamboo, a film, so it turned out, that was so beautifully crafted in all aspects (and containing a brilliant performance by Robert Ryan) that not only did it entertain me, but it refreshed me and left me stronger.If it's rubbish, turn it off.
“ I could have been a superstar in America – I was certainly taken out there. But I said, “no way Jose, I'm not staying here in this madhouse”. So I left and said, “I'm gonna make arthouse films now”. - Charlotte Rampling.
Whether you agree with Rampling's decision or not, the point is she made a choice, and crucially, her choice goes against the grain of our times; she used her head and listened to her heart and chose a life true to herself rather than becoming rich beyond her wildest dreams. It's also important that she has come out and articulated her choice in public, and it's important because it shows that actors can choose and define their working lives as oppose to being condemned to the cumbersomely unproductive casting process, and it's important because it's all too rare that young actors have this example before them, most mainstream actors seem to have contempt for what they do, and many others are frightened to speak in a serious way about acting because they fear criticism for being "pretentious" or being called a "luvvie". Rarely do we see an actor presented as an artist making aesthetic decisions, mostly we are bombarded by images and stories of actors as celebrities....now, we all enjoy a little bit of gossip but we must be careful not to mistake it for the work itself, because what happens is that this image of actor-as-celebrity encourages, each year, gazillions to become actors because they think acting will give them that celebrity lifestyle, and even more ludicrously, I see many young actors mimicking the behaviour of celebrity actors as if that is enough to get a career, and the net result is a devaluing of the currency - “there is an actor on every street corner”.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's not easy to stand your ground, the tendency is to fall in with the crowd and go with the flow which may be less exhilarating but it's also less terrifying, and the meaningless chattering cacophony will keep you from feeling alone. But I say the artist must stand his ground, for it is from there that art will come.
“I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time” - Orson Welles
If it's good enough for Orson Welles, it's good enough for me.
NB – Of Rampling's films, I highly recommend The Damned by Visconti with Dirk Bogarde, and more recently, a British film noir, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, directed by Mike Hodges and co-starring Clive Owen and Ken Stott.
