The Great Acting Blog: “Powerful Storytelling”

The Great Acting Blog: “Powerful Storytelling”

Mauro Bolognini’s 1963 film La Curruzione is the fabulous story about Stefano Mattoli, played by Jacques Perrin. At the start of the film, we see Stefano graduate from college before journeying back to his family home in order to get permission from his father to start a career as a Catholic priest. His father, played by Alain Cuny, is a wealthy entrepreneur, running his own publishing house, and he assumes his boy is coming home to take over the family firm.

La Curruzione is a film choc full of terrific scenes, with a powerful script and note-perfect acting. However, there was one scene in particular which piqued me. After Stefano has been home for a while and generally had a  good time, it is time for bed. As he is walking through the family mansion with his father, Stefano gets onto the subject of his future career. Just as his father turns the light off in one of the rooms, Stefano informs him that he won’t be going into the family business,  that he is going to join a monastery and become a priest. There is a pause in the darkness. We know that his father, a strong and domineering man, is not going to be happy, but all through the pause I was thinking; how will he reveal his disatisfaction? Simple: by turning the light back on. We see, in an instant, his father’s surprise and irritation at the news, we see in an instant his internal volte face from doting father to angry dad. There follows another excruciating pause where the father just silently glares at his son, before deciding to have a chat about it.

A lesser filmmaker would not have used the light to express the internal condition of the father, they would simply have cut to him glaring at the boy. Bolognini however, does not even put the camera on the father when the light goes back on, it was on the son, and yet that was more powerful because we felt the domineering presence of the father more acutely.

The lesson here is that the objects around the actor can be used to infer the complex inner struggle of the character, and this inference can often lead to more provocative expressions than having the actor try to show it directly. Imagine if the father had simply exploded with rage? It would’ve been ok, but we would have been robbed of that moment with the light.

Storytelling is more powerful when we infer rather than portray.

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