Artist As Movie Star: Alain Deloin on Jean Pierre-Melville’s Le Samourai
Delon’s reverence for Jean-Pierre Melville, his love for the film and for cinema itself, are obvious, and they inspire and refresh – no mere “exploitation of the form” for Delon. He recognises an auteur film when he sees one. I’ve said before on this blog, that actors need to learn about the aesthetics of cinema in order to choose which work to accept and which to decline, which filmmakers to support, and which to ignore – this is especially crucial with the proliferation of micro-budget cinema in recent years (and similarly, I have called on directors to improve their understanding of the aesthetics of acting, so that they can actually tell the difference between good and bad acting, and not just cast an actor because they’ve got the right colour hair). Delon describes Le Samourai as a work of art, a word ridiculed by self-styled “commercial” filmmakers these days, but perhaps it’s worth thinking about what it actually means, and then we might strive to create same, and find the wherewithal to describe it as such.
Several new posts, catching up!
Charles Laughton’s performance as Quasimodo in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame is one of the most piquant, individualistic and moving, in all cinema. It is also a great technical tour de force: Laughton wore heavy make-up and heavy prosthetics, he even ensured that his “hump” have extra weight so that he really was carrying a heavy load, and which also served to change Laughton’s whole physicality, he also employed an accent not his own. As impressive as this is in terms of creating an illusion, it is not the reason for the power of Laughton’s performance.
The Face of Great Acting: Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc
_ 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._
Peter Mullan in My Name is Joe – Acting is Poetry
There is a scene where Mullan beats up some of McGowan’s goons with a basball bat, then turns and smashes up a nearby Vauxhall Cavalier, and he does so with a force so great that the action goes beyond emotion, beyond reason, beyond the material, beyond the individual, and can only be expressed poetically, as when our love is so great we might say; “my love is like an ocean”. It is an attempt to comprehend the awesome.
More catching up!
The Shy Poetry of Irene Jacob.
Jacob, by her own admission, came from a “shy” family, who rarely if ever expressed their feelings. As a result, through much of her childhood, she will have repressed much of what she felt, locking it away somewhere. Then she discovers cinema:
“They made me laugh and cry, and that was exactly what I was waiting for in a film: to awaken me to my feelings”.
Suddenly those repressed feelings are stirred, and the possibility of being an actor, offers the possibility of an escape from introversion, albeit temporarily and under imaginary circumstances (ie – for the duration of the performance), and the possibility of giving expression to that repressed material. Here’s Jacob again:
“…the protection of a character….it’s the distance that creates the poetry”.
“ 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”.
The Discreet Madness of Michel Piccoli.
“There are musicians who practice all the time but we actors are not able to do that. We don’t have an instrument, except if you say we are our own instrument, and yet I always try to continue searching and working for the moment where you have to deliver.” – Michel Piccoli.
Hartley doesn’t disguise the fact that what we hear is scripted dialogue. An attempt to create “naturalistic” dialogue, is an attempt to convince the viewer that what he is hearing is real – which of course it isn’t.
odilonvert
A True Actor-Director Collaboration
Set in the screening room of The Guesthouse in Cork, I was to play an affable, if eccentric, film lover, who had built a cinema with his own hands, in order to screen the films he loved, and here was opening night, and he was explaining his intentions for the cinema. The cinema did not exist of course, not in the sense that I was talking about it in any case – at one point, I introduced Le Samourai as the next film of the evening to the audience, but there was no audience, and I had no intention of screening Le Samourai. So much for the fiction then. During the improvisation, Rashidi would interject and ask me to speak about my thoughts on cinema generally, about my favourite filmmakers, and what kind of films I loved.