A text on movie acting, to be read with handy VCR and cassettes
stacked at your side, by the author of The Magic World of Orson
Welles (1978). Naremore has many enjoyable passages in what in the
end amounts to a laborious read. He begins with a history of the
rhetoric of acting and how the earliest filmmakers attempted to
break away from staginess and the proscenium. What happened is that
acting in movies became a "parading of expertise" - an obvious
"mastery, skill, or inventiveness that is implied in the normative
use of the word performance." What he strives for, in opening up
certain famous performances, is "an indirect commentary on the
social and psychological foundations of identity" - a commentary
about which many readers may say, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a
damn." Meanwhile, they will enjoy his rich anatomizations of
Lillian Gish's expertise in True Heart Susie, Charlie Chaplin's in
The Gold Rush, Marlene Dietrich's in Morocco, James Cagney's in
Angels with Dirty Faces, Katharine Hepburn's in Holiday, James
Stewart's in Rear Window, Marlon Brando's in On the Waterfront, and
Cary Grant's in North by Northwest, all of them marvelously alive
under Naremore's psychoscope, which picks up practically cellular
impressions of the actors' motives. Quite admirable detail -
particularly about how Brando cleverly and sexily handles grieving
Eva Marie Saint's glove in the playground scene, or even about
Grant's bluish-gray socks as the airplane chases him in the
crop-dusting sequence. Reading this is like waiting for a fastball
that never comes, although the pitcher keeps you suckered by his
reserve. Buy by all means - but be prepared. (Kirkus Reviews)
In this richly detailed study, James Naremore focuses on the work
of film acting, showing what players contribute to movies. Ranging
from the earliest short subjects of Charles Chaplin to the
contemporary features of Robert DeNiro, he develops a useful means
of analyzing performance in the age of mechanical reproduction; at
the same time, he reveals the ideological implications behind
various approaches to acting, and suggests ways that behavior on
the screen can be linked to the presentation of self in society.
Naremore's discussion of such figures as Lillian Gish, Marlene
Dietrich, James Cagney, and Cary Grant will interest the specialist
and the general reader alike, helping to establish standards and
methods for future writing about performers and their craft.
General
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