The Sneak

Bigger than Life (1956) / Nicholas Ray

When Ed Avery (James Mason, tremendous ol' fashioned craftiness), only recently informed of an illness and disturbed, therefore, by the prospect of how it will disrupt his middle-class American life, goes to the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror - he decides after a few moments of private contemplation to take the 'miracle drug' (the McGuffin in the film) that may cure him. When he causes the mirror cabinet to open, thereby causing the reflecting surface to swivel, one may catch a quarter-second glimpse of an intruder, a trespasser of Eddie's solitude, another occupant of the bathroom - half-crouched but very alert, it is the director of the film, Nicholas Ray, dressed in what seems to be a off-white (more white than off) overcoat. This is a very curious incident - one that momentarily interrupts the sustained poetic realism of the film up till the point but also, at the same time, enforces Mason's performance of Avery as a normal everyman desperate to live up to someone else's standards.

A Mere Mortal After All

Indian cine-legend and super-ham Dev Anand died of cardiac arrest last December (2011) in London. The initial reaction to his death was one of collective shock ("Dev Anand is dead?"), that later transformed into national bewilderment ("Dev Anand is dead?"). Anand, much like his contemporary, actor A. K. Hangal, was thought of as eternal: a timeless object incapable of mortality.


Continue: http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/75/75devanand_malhotra.php

The Shimura Trick

Takashi Shimura is the eternal sufferer of the Akira Kurosawa universe; while Mifune is the primary architect of the Kurosawa narrative (via an anxious intention or a corrupt soul), it is Shimura who must bear the brunt of the former’s actions – together, therefore, they form a formidable team of assassination-specialists: the first kills, the second destroys evidence. Mifune is the impulsive protege; Shimura the elder statesman. This elaborately-conducted assignment of roles will reflect directly in their performances too – while Mifune is always overbearing physically, conducting his performance via-physical mimicry (a lion in Rashomon, an old man in I Live in Fear, a 20-feet tall statue in Hidden Fortress); Shimura is timid and weak, the sort of man you would favour yourself against if it came down to a slap-match. 

A Shimura performance is placid, burdened with the torment of the world, prepared to absorb the effects of all the misery of the world, responding with nothing more than a faint quiver of his large shock-absorbing lower lip. This is a meticulously constructed framework of faux-tranquil though – it is an entire plane of normalcy created to underline the single moment of abnormality, because if Mifune trembles, bulges his eyes and contracts his foreheads with a deep guttural grunt, it is just him acting – but if Shimura happens to do it, something must be wrong.

The Shimura Trick is a clever set-up – the actor will, having played the part in an absolutely ‘normal’ manner (the greatness of a Mifune lies in how visible the performance is; Shimura, on the other hand, must leave no traces of a ‘performance’ behind to be called ‘great') up till that point in the film, will, just moments before the single moment of abnormality (usually a shocking disclosure) turn the normalcy up a few notches: he will use his hanky to clean the sweat behind his ears, light up a cigarette, smile at a character standing in front of him – all to lead the undiscerning viewer into thinking ‘everything’s fine’ when suddenly, the moment will take place and Shimura, acting via-prop, will bring whatever maneuver of faux-normalcy he has been involved in to an abrupt halt. The hanky, possessed no longer by a firm grip, will dangle between his fingers, the cigarette will tilt vertically down and the smile will vanish – the entire intention behind such a ruse being to fully transmit the state of shock Shimura’s character is under. The ruse reveals itself to a viewer only after one’s watched a few Shimura performances – after a certain point, you wouldn’t fall for it anymore and what’s more, you can predict its occurrence – the moment Shimura, unnaturally upright in posture and a hesitant user of props – takes out a hanky or a cigarette or a large grin, you know something’s gonna change.

I Live in Fear (1955) / Akira Kurosawa

The First Half of a Song-Performance

From Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi (1966) / Shaheed Latif:

At the moment of the beginning of the song's performance, both the sisters are in love with the same man (he plays the piano like someone kneads the dough). In a manner that belongs very much to Bergman, both of them project their feeling of entitlement to such a luxury ( being the object of love of a man) very aggressively onto the whole situation. Neither is willing to concede any ground in this ménage à trois (more sexual than it is spiritual) - both demand their own respective close-ups, their private eyeline-matches with the actor and their very own, astutely choreographed, set of gestures (the first flutters an eyebrow, the second twitches a lip; the first betrays a cutesy grin, the second blushes a black-and-white blush etc.) 

What is interesting too, ofcourse, is how the scene is directed to play a willing audience to their wholly presumptuous universes of a privately blooming love (entirely hypothetical at this point too - what if he doesn't love either?) - the camera lingers on the first, and then on the second, with the meticulously created impartiality of a newly elected leader who wants to be 'there for everyone'. Both are permitted an audience, as also equally divided immutable time-slots reserved exclusively for an individual performance.

As it stands, the picturisation itself becomes almost entirely about the act of 'looking' - as such, the scene becomes an assortment of fleeting glances, moony-eyed glazes, and rather intrusively-affixed stares. The song itself becomes the permeating fiber that is the basic material for this network of 'looking' - as the actor begins to sing, the camera dollies out, his voice being projected into meaningless vacuum, until the members of his audience are revealed through a cut : the sister-duo, at which point the camera dollies-in; thereby forming a system of projection-absorption of the actor's song.

Ofcourse, it is also at another level about the confusion inherent in an eyeline-match : if used well, such as in this case, you may not know exactly what the actor is looking at - the sisters are confused themselves (or are, unarguably clear who the song is being sung for) and their confusion transmits to the audience as well (if you do not know any better). In that, the editing becomes particularly essential too - because the shot of the actor looking in the sisters' direction is never followed directly with the close-up of one of the sisters, since such a schema will annihilate the ambiguity and reveal to us the object of his affection; instead, the reverse-shot of the shot of him looking is always a long-shot of both of them, which may then dolly-in to one of them, depending on who summons the camera first.

On Posture

Drive (2011) / Nicolas Winding Refn

Like a lot of Gosling performances, the one in Drive is essentially a catalogue of various human postures. Much like Warren Oates, a similarly brave actor, who acted with the length of his beard (dense growth: disgruntled, maniac, psychotic; stubble: violent but tragic, clean-shaven: in love, optimistic but a tad cynical), Gosling acts with the angle at which he reclines his back. Therefore Half-Nelson is a perpetual slouch while Lars and the Real Girl is an overtly-perpendicular spine. Ofcourse, Drive is wholly about a character placed against/as an inextricable part of a milieu/setting (no film in recent times, not even quirky indies, have such elaborate wallpapering: the home has redder-warmer tones, the motel has greener, unwelcoming tones) – therefore, Gosling’s driver-character is often placed against a stark background – his silhouette is pasted upon wallpapered-backgrounds, his profile is often used against a flurry of Los Angeles-at-night lights while he drives the car. The much-discussed credit sequence plays like a clothing ad – Gosling does a lot of things but accomplishes very little – he sits in his car with a leg stretched out, walks with a jacket hung over one shoulder, walks even more – but he never really is getting anywhere in the fade-in, fade-out montage. It is because the credit sequence, emblematically of the whole film, is a simple-minded ode to posture (much like any advertisement for cosmetics or clothes). 

As a result, the film, much like any Melville, reveals its lead protagonist’s mental state through an external quality – when Gosling’s character is falling in love with a residential neighbour and reasonably satisfied with the quality of his life, he stands/walks/sits with an upright, perfectly vertical back with not a hint of a slouch – but when he goes about extracting revenge in the final half-an-hour of the film, his body contorts into weird awkward shapes. When the final mutual kniving-session does take place, director Refn decides to film the dueling parties in shadows, therefore, in strictly pictorial terms, Gosling’s body turns into a shape – one which struggles uncomfortably atop the boot of the car. When order is restored in the final shot (or is it?), Gosling’s profile, straight-as-an-arrow and immovable, once again fills the frame from its head to toe, while Los Angeles lights pass by in the background.

Cagney

James Cagney

Cagney’s film performances usually function on successive levels of nastiness, which in turn might vary from the immaculately composed to the terrifyingly vicious. While Mifune might be a rare example to the contrary, acting for cinema will remain a derivative of the theatre till the time (and only till the time) it is performed in a close-up. It is only in a close-up that an actor can act only for the cinema and not for any other medium. Now, cinema is an art not of replication, but of representation. It is the medium that at its informative best, can only evoke a notion of an object, but never of the object itself. As a director of cinema, one can only suggest a reality, but never really state it. 

Great actors of cinema use their faces like gearboxes – graduating to higher levels of the same emotion, or reducing it to a tiny drawl to the point of obscurity. In close-ups, the status of a certain particular feature suggests which level of intensity (of the singular emotion) they are functioning at. Like De Niro uses the forehead better than anyone else (except, perhaps, Tony Leung), and the way Leaud’s hair falls onto his head will tell you how messed up his character truly is in the event of that scene – most of Cagney’s acting is done through the lower half of his face, with eyes featuring sometimes as backing vocals. 

His is the machismo not of the brash temperamental egoist that people fear, or of the invincible war machine that people just cannot compete with, but of the most supreme kind, that of the ‘kung-fu master’; of the Yoda-type, the old sage whose wisdom everyone can benefit from, but they do not have the foresight to. Unlike a lot of his descendants (Malcolm McDowell or Joe Pesci, actors compared to him often), he is not impatient or abrasive. The characters he plays have grown up on the streets, and thus, can lay a successful claim to exclusive wisdom. One of the rules that the acquired wisdom dictates is that Cagney’s character will never instigate – or initiate a conflict. He will infact exhibit remarkable reserve and composure, even in the face of unwitting incitement. Much like the kung-fu master, he will not lose his calm if the pupil commits stupid errors; rather, he will merely smirk wryly – the luxury of a person who knows better. This is the second gear, the infant stages of the Cagney nastiness.

 

The Cagney Smirks

 

Cagney will hope, however, that his patience is not mistaken for coyness. He will not stamp his authority, but he will not allow a violation of it either. It is at the very instant – the unfortunate instant – in which he will realize that he is being taken for a fool, that he will shift to a higher gear, the penultimate level of nastiness. Once he reaches this stage, he will doubtlessly proceed to the next. ‘The revelation’, as one may call it, lasts only for a mini-second, and is akin to the moment when the pin of the grenade is removed. The instant features in the various levels of nastiness, but it is only during this very instant when Cagney realizes that he has been short-changed that he is not nasty. He is distraught and heartbroken. The tragedy of a man who is let down by the world repeatedly.

 

And then, finally, Cagney reveals his filthy soul. He gets really nasty. 

 

The only reason White Heat might be the greatest Cagney performance is because in that, people who surround him constantly challenge the authority of his wisdom, and such blatant encroachment of his exclusive position means that Cagney’s pin is removed throughout the film.