The Great Acting Blog: “Authenticity”

The Great Acting Blog: “Authenticity”

A few weeks ago I watched Milos Forman’s debut, Audition. An early example of the Czech New Wave, shot in 16mm, the film is essentially a faux-documentary split in two parts; the first centres on the rehearsals of  a group of amateur musicians preparing for the annual brass band championship. The second part, involves a series of auditions, where a string of young hopefuls perform a pop number, it’s a sort of Iron Curtain X-Factor, and it is a performance from this second part that I was particularly struck by, that of Vera Kresadlova, and specifically her performance in the scene shown in the clip above.

Kresadlova’s  here, is utterly captivating. She’s charming and attractive for sure, however, she’s not trying to be anything, she’s not trying to be sassy or cool, she’s not trying to project an image of herself, or control what people think, she is simply trying to perform the song as well as she can. She’s honest. One of the reasons we have become so cynical about contemporary pop stars and movie stars is because their performances are merely the supply of pre-determined effects, no actual creation takes place – for example; on X-Factor we watch the young wannabee perform his song, and somewhere during it we will see him “getting off on it”, marked by some sort of squeal coupled with a grimaced expression, but none of us believes the wannabee is actually getting off on it, we know his squealing is part of some pre-planned routine to make him seem like the real thing, to make him seem as though the music actually means something to him.

There is no more an uplifting sight than someone taking real pleasure in what it is they are doing. Miss Kresadlova seems genuinely to love the song she is singing, seems to love singing it, and seems to love presenting it to the audience. And from this love, comes a certain humility, she respects her opportunity to perform, as she does the audience, not viewing them merely as an appendage to her career, and the net result is that we all benefit from a true performer-viewer exchange. The alternative is a plastic simulcrum of the exchange, fake squealing, where we go along with the ruse but are hardly enriched by it. That’s why it’s important as an actor not to become a jobsworth, even if that is all that is demanded of us, instead we must find the power and werewithal to do more,  otherwise the audience becomes anesthetized to our work and follow  the performance simply because that’s what they always do. We are all energized by the great artist, whereas few have been inspired by the jobsworth.

The joy of Vera Kresadlova’s performance is that it is authentic, and it’s authentic because she is doing something that she genuinely loves.

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