The Great Acting Blog: “Exclude The Meaningless”

Devil And The Deep is an old Marion Gering film from 1932, and stars Charles Laughton as a submarine commander who is insanely jealous of any attention given to his wife, played by Tallulah Bankhead, so insanely jealous infact, that he drives her into the arms of his first officer, Gary Cooper. The film is a model of simplicity and precision, in contrast to much of contemporary cinema which is so often drenched in design and camerawork, that it’s difficult to see the film itself. Not so Devil And The Deep – everything is in service of the film. The story is told economically, using largely static shots, uninflected and objective, without explanations like handheld camera work (which so often for me, indicates a lack of conviction on the part of the filmmaker), Gering and his crew don’t explain the film to us, they simply let it take place, thus allowing us to participate and create the film for ourselves. So, the filmmaking in Devil And The Deep, has a wonderful combination of humility and beauty. And in terms of the performances, I finally came to understand something which I have felt but never really been able to articulate about minmalism in film acting.

Now, the art and craft of acting has been in steady decline over the last 50 or 60 years, even to the point where famous directors publicly denigrate the form (“I hate actors and their bag of tricks”), and we’ve got movie stars openly ridiculing acting while simultaneously trousering millions of dollars. Any attempt at a serious discussion about acting is derided as pretentious, and actors have their “value” measured by whether they have been successful in the industrial arena as oppose to the artistic. The acting in Devil And The Deep is sublime, especially from Laughton: the extraneous is cut away and only the essential is included, so that what we see is a precise, true and vivid performance, shockingly vivid at times, and further, every movement serves a precise purpose (much like the script and camerawork). Laughton’s performance delights and compels us, and his generosity is enormous – as when we hear his garrulous laugh after catching only the punchline to his jokes – he warms us, like a log fire does. In short: Laughton is truly expressing himself. It’s the sort of performance that today would be dismissed as “stagey”, and Laughton ridiculed as a mere “luvvie”. Why? Because he does not subscribe to the pinchfistedness laughingly described as “naturalism”. But I say this “naturalism” – the fidgeting, and the meaningless gesturing, the fake stuttering (which is an artificial affectation applied by the actor) is a repression of a crucial aspect of human nature, ie – to play, to perform, to express, to try other people’s clothes on – and in attempting to repress it, we are infact attempting to repress the truth, and in it’s place we put the crocodile tears and verisimilitude of “naturalism”, and wrap it up in do-gooderism in order to justify the lie. But performing is an essential aspect of our lives, that’s why actors exist: TO PERFORM, hence we write scripts, build stages, and turn our cameras upon them in order for them to do so. Why deny it? Why repress this need to see the drama of our lives played out infront of us? Why pretend that what we are witnessing is not a performance? Do ballerinas pretend they’re not dancing?

 The irony of minimalist acting in cinema is that it is theatrical, and the more minimal it is the more theatrical it is. I think of great filmmakers like Yashujiro Ozu, or Robert Bresson, or Aki Kaurismaki, (the acting in whose films is often quite brilliant) who ask their actors to pare back their performances in order to serve the film, and to exclude the meaningless. But what is this paring back? This exclusion of the meaningless? It is a cutting away of the non-essential, and in so doing, a theatrical style of film acting is brought forth, it draws attention to the fact that the actor is performing, afterall, he is supposed to be performing – that’s the whole point – what we see infront of us is a deliberate creation, a deliberate arrangement, a work of art, and, as such, we, the audience, witness performances of great beauty, and which bring us great joy.