Despite the diversity of method and material, the studies in this
collection all begin from the perception that film acting is best
understood as a form of mediated performance that lies at the
intersection of art, technology, and culture. Contributors’ observations
also reflect a shared understanding that technological developments,
such as cinema, have transformed our ideas about performance,
the body, and the self. Given their focus on work from the
1950s forward, the essays feature analyses of film performances
that give expression or respond in some way to contemporary
notions about fragmented subjectivity and illusory identity.
Author(s): Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Frank P. Tomasulo (ed.)
Series: CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO FILM AND TELEVISION SERIES
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: (355) 372
City: Detroit, Michigan
Tags: Film performance, Film acting
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: More Than the Method, More Than One
Method
Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Frank P. Tomasulo 1
Part 1. Analyzing Film Performance: Logic and Methods
1. Why Study Film Acting? Some Opening Reflections
Paul McDonald 23
2. Screen Performance and Directors’ Visions
Sharon Marie Carnicke 42
Part 2. Modernism and Film Performance
3. Performance in the Films of Robert Bresson: The
Aesthetics of Denial
Doug Tomlinson 71
4. “The Sounds of Silence”: Modernist Acting in
Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up
Frank P. Tomasulo 94
5. Resisting Reality: Acting by Design in Robert Altman's
Nashville
Robert T. Self 126
Part 3. Developments in Neonaturalist Film Performance
6. Playing with Performance: Directorial and Performance
Style in John Cassavetes’s Opening Night
Maria Viera 153
Contents
7. Plain and Simple: Masculinity through John Sayles’s
Lens
Diane Carson 173
8. Passionate Engagement: Performance in the Films of
Neil Jordan
Carole Zucker 192
Part 4. Postmodern Film Performance
9. Acting Prima Donna Politics in Tomas Gutiérrez
Alea’s Strawberry and Chocolate
Ronald E. Shields 219
10. Kidman, Cruise, and Kubrick: A Brechtian Pastiche
Dennis Bingham 247
11. Thinking through Jim Carrey
Vivian Sobchack 275
12. Suiting Up for Postmodern Performance in
John Woo’s The Killer
Cynthia Baron 297
Contributors 331
Index 335
