Though it is often neglected in cinema scholarship, screen performance is a crucial element in the ideological and emotional impact of films. More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance features twelve essays that analyze performance in post-1950s film, addressing distinct questions about the working relationships between actors and directors and discussing the interplay between performance and cinematic techniques. The authors explain the context for performance analysis as they address an international array of film genres, actors, and directors including Alfred Hitchcock, Gus Van Sant, Robert Bresson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, John Sayles, Neil Jordan, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Stanley Kubrick, Jim Carrey, and John Woo. More Than a Method provides the reader with a historical perspective on film performance theory and explains the relevance of analyzing acting. The essays are divided into three sections: modernism, neonaturalism, and postmodern film performance, each opening with a descriptive discussion of screen acting and the ways dramatic characters are constructed. The authors clearly define terms relating to acting and acting styles and provide brief overviews of the significant themes and predominant visual styles of each director. The volume's essays share a focus on the art and craft of acting, each emphasizing performance as it is presented on-screen, challenging the idea that the best (or only) way to categorize performance is by training or working method. Through dynamic and sophisticated analyses of a wide range of acting styles and choices, More Than a Method fills an important gap in today's film scholarship.

"A significant contribution to the literature on screen performance studies, Reframing Screen Performance brings the study of film acting up to date. It should be of interest to those within cinema studies as well as general readers."
---Frank P. Tomasulo, Florida State University

"Reframing Screen Performance" is a groundbreaking study of film acting that challenges the long held belief that great cinematic performances are created in the editing room. Surveying the changing attitudes and practices of film acting---from the silent films of Charlie Chaplin to the rise of Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio in the 1950s to the eclecticism found in contemporary cinema---this volume argues that screen acting is a vital component of film and that it can be understood in the same way as theatrical performance. This richly illustrated volume shows how and why the evocative details of actors' voices, gestures, expressions, and actions are as significant as filmic narrative and audiovisual design. The book features in-depth studies of performances by Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, and Julianne Moore (among others) alongside subtle analyses of directors like Robert Altman and Akira Kurosawa, Sally Potter and Orson Welles. The book bridges the disparate fields of cinema studies and theater studies as it persuasively demonstrates the how theater theory can be illuminate the screen actor's craft.

"Reframing Screen Performance" brings the study of film acting into the twenty-first century and is an essential text for actors, directors, cinema studies scholars, and cinephiles eager to know more about the building blocks of memorable screen performance.

Cynthia Baron is Associate Professor ofFilm Studies at Bowling Green State University and co-editor of More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance. Sharon Carnicke is Professor of Theater and Slavic Studies and Associate Dean of Theater at the University of Southern California and author of Stanislavsky in Focus.