Description
Trade Review"The versatile critic and scholar Murray Pomerance analyzes the complexities, casts light on the enigmas, and celebrates the excitements of screen performance with insight, appreciation, and panache." -- David Sterritt * author of The Cinema of Clint Eastwood: Chronicles of America *
"Is acting a cinematic element, inseparable from direction, cinematography, special effects, and design? This book by the prodigious, prolific Pomerance will change how you think about screen acting." -- Dennis Bingham * Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis *
"
Moment of Action magnifies every aspect of the art and craft of filmmaking. Murray Pomerance is a scholar and keen observer, whose passion for the subject is very impressive." -- Elliott Gould * Academy Award-nominated actor *
"The versatile critic and scholar Murray Pomerance analyzes the complexities, casts light on the enigmas, and celebrates the excitements of screen performance with insight, appreciation, and panache." -- David Sterritt * author of The Cinema of Clint Eastwood: Chronicles of America *
"Is acting a cinematic element, inseparable from direction, cinematography, special effects, and design? This book by the prodigious, prolific Pomerance will change how you think about screen acting." -- Dennis Bingham * Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis *
"
Moment of Action magnifies every aspect of the art and craft of filmmaking. Murray Pomerance is a scholar and keen observer, whose passion for the subject is very impressive." -- Elliott Gould * Academy Award-nominated actor *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPreamble: Saw the Air Thinking about actors and their allure; Natalie Wood in
Rebel Without a Cause; viewers’ love of acting; momentary performance; acting, action, and activity; acting, evidence, and biography; Linda Darnell; casting and gatekeeping.1 Fantastic PerformanceThinking about acting style and culture; innocent and scientific watching, and “falling in”;
The Edge of Tomorrow;
The Last Laugh;
With Blood on My Hands:
Pusher II; predictive performance and John Wayne; transcendent performance and Katharine Hepburn;
Bringing Up Baby;
Now, Voyager;
El Dorado.2 Beaux Gestes Thinking about language and gesture;
The Disorderly Orderly; Anthony Perkins in
Psycho; Jeff Goldblum in
Le Weekend;
Touch of Evil; the flower of the gest; Ralph Richardson and Christophe Lambert in
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan,
Lord of the Apes; effects gesture;
Life of Pi and keyframing; animated performance and puppetry;
Blithe Spirit; Robert Walker in
My Son John;
The Stepford Wives; The Musée Grévin; Jacques de Vaucanson’s duck;
The Thief of Bagdad; Charlton Heston and Gary Cooper in
The Wreck of the Mary Deare; cinematic gesture and
The King of Comedy;
The Thin Man;
Cool Hand Luke;
The Red Shoes; hands and handfulness; actors under direction; John Frankenheimer, Burt Lancaster, and
The Train;
Antony and Cleopatra; Hitchcock, gesture, and “cattle”; Kim Novak,
Vertigo, and vertiginous gesture.3 Curtains Thinking about the actor’s multiple selves; Vivian Sobchack and the actor’s four bodies; performance amplification; Alec Guinness and preparation; rehearsal and “downkeying”; curtain calls;
Whose Life Is It Anyway?;
Murder on the Orient Express;
Citizen Kane;
The Magnificent Ambersons;
The Bad Seed; “behind-the-scenes” musicals; theatrical exhibition spaces; credit-roll “goofing”; Peter O’Toole and Winona Ryder offscreen;
Birdman; fans and fan logic; actor-in-the-street stories; acting audiences; the Academy Awards.4 “It’s Not a Man, It’s a Place!” Thinking about setting and the actor’s labor; workplaces under capitalism and factory design; the sound stage environment;
Rope; acting and make-up; Technicolor;
My Dinner with André; Ian Carmichael; Ingrid Bergman and
Under Capricorn;
The Wizard of Oz; Grey Gardens; Simon Callow and
A Room with a View; Charles Laughton in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame; Boris Karloff;
2001: A Space Odyssey; Haruo Nakajima, Godzilla, and body division;
Billion Dollar Brain;
The French Lieutenant’s Woman;
Chinatown; Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers; the sound boom; the “caffeination schedule”; acting, editing, and lighting; predetermined focus;
Suddenly, Last Summer;
The Hands of Orlac;
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; “Instructions for John Howell”; panoptical setting; Laurence Olivier in
Sleuth; setting and characters; Bette Davis in
The Letter; the character “at home” in
Marnie; “hypothetical” performance, Sandra Bullock, and
Gravity; Andy Serkis; the actor’s mirror; animation vocalizing;
The Member of the Wedding.5 Acting Intimate Thinking about actors’ trade secrecy; Philip Seymour Hoffman in
Boogie Nights; Anthony Hopkins and Hannibal Lecter; Colin Farrell and truth-telling; Joaquin Phoenix in
The Master; zombie performance; George Herbert Mead;
Hud;
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice; onscreen urination and bleeding; Leonardo DiCaprio in
Django Unchained; the actor’s voice; acting and musculature; the actor’s touch; interpersonal contact and audience exclusion;
The Bourne Identity; anxious interiors; Peter Lorre in
Casablanca,
The Maltese Falcon, and
Hotel Berlin; Richard Burton in
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold; the “Doctrine of Natural Expression”; anti-intellectualism, the portrayal of genius, and Jesse Eisenberg; acting the “amnesiac”; forgotten moralities and cathartic awakening.NotesWorks Cited and ConsultedIndex
