The Great Acting Blog: “Symptom Of A Lie”

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“Look for the truth and tell it” – Harold Pinter

Dirk Bogarde is a great actor. A great actor. He shows us that a person walking through a hallway can be a work of art. Admittedly, I know less about his earlier work, when he was mainly doing light populist pictures like the “Doctor” series. Therefore, when I think of Bogarde, I think of his work with Basil Dearden, his two films with Luchino Visconti, Death In Venice and The Damned, where he co-starred with Charlotte Rampling and Ingrid Thulin. Then there was The Night Porter again with Rampling, and his collaborations with Joseph Losey, The Accident and The Servant, both scripted by Harold Pinter (Bogarde being a natural Pinter actor: austere, urbane, intense, ironic). That wonderful haunted face, an innate oddness, along with that star quality we might call energy, meant that Bogarde cut a compelling figure on screen, and all of which was given expression by Bogarde’s technical mastery. He is an actor in complete control of his instrument, a real maestro of acting. Rarely have we seen an actor capable of delivering such intensity of expression with such precision and clarity. And of course, the cherry on top is that wonderful speaking voice with it’s force and immaculate diction.

The great voice coach, Cicely Berry, tells us that a deterioration in speech is the first sign that a person is ill at ease with what they are saying – it’ the stumbling and the mumbling, and the speaking too fast. I say this deterioration is brought about by the speaker’s lack of conviction in what he is saying, it is infact a symptom of a lie. The speaker does not believe what it is they are saying, which leads to the uneasiness. The rules of life are the same on stage as they are off, and yet we are told that the actor who mumbles and stutters and stumbles over words, who adds words that aren’t in the script, who says the same line twice even though it is written only once, and who huffs, blows, puffs and fluffs before they say a line, do so in the interests of “realism”. This is nonsense. The actor who muddies the waters with the above listed gak, does so because he is lying to us, and he waffles along hoping the audience doesn’t notice. But the audience does notice, it’s just that they choose to ignore it because they want to have a good time and they’re not about to let an incompetent actor spoil it for them.

This is a long long way from Dirk Bogarde. He knows exactly what he is saying, and means every word, there’s no vaguery here. It is troubling to fully commit to something, and it requires courage, because you are putting your own self-regard on the line. Perhaps, when analyzing our scene in the script it is easier to skip over that beat we are unsure of, afterall, a script analysis which encompasses every single line requires a discipline of thought which may not be appetizing to many. We may even kid ourselves that it will magically just snap into place, the acting fairies will sort it for us in the middle of the night. No. I say it’s better to make the effort, to work thoroughly and rigorously on our voice, on our speech, and on our commitment to our action, so that when we step before the camera, or upon the stage, we can, in the words of James Cagney, look the other fella in the eye and tell the truth.

 

RESOURCES

Snakes And Ladders – Film Memoir by Dirk Bogarde

 

 

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