About the Book
What actors do on-screen is a fascination for audiences all over the world. Indeed, the cultural visibility of movie stars is so pronounced that stardom has often been regarded as intrinsic to the medium's specificity. Yet not all great cinematic performances are star turns, and so, what really makes a cinematic performance good, interesting, or important has been a neglected topic in film criticism. This two-volume set presents detailed interpretations of singular performances by several of the most compelling actors in cinema history, asking in many different and complementary ways what makes performance meaningful, how it reflects a director's style, as well as how it contributes to the development of national cinemas and cultures. Whether noting the precise ways actors shape film narrative, achieve emotional effect, or move toward political subversion, the essays in these books innovate new approaches to studying screen performance as an art form and cultural force.
This second volume focuses on international cinema, and includes case studies of key performances from actors like Ingrid Bergman, Gael Garcia Bernal, Nikolai Cherkassov, Alec Guinness, Setsuko Hara, Isabelle Huppert, Peter Lorre, Madhubala, Anna Magnani, Toshir Mifune, and Choi Min Sik, amongst many others.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Great International Performance, Kyle Stevens and Murray Pomerance1--Victor Sjöström in Wild Strawberries, Homer Pettey2--Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel, Jerry Mosher3--Charles Laughton in Hobson’s Choice, Marcia Landy4--Nikolai Cherkasov in Ivan the Terrible, Karla Oeler5--Peter Lorre in M, Janet Bergstrom6--Anna Magnani in The Golden Coach, Sergio Rigoletto7--Alec Guinness in Last Holiday, R. Barton Palmer8--Ingrid Bergman in Stromboli, Victoria Duckett9--Toshirô Mifune in Throne of Blood, Douglas McFarland10--Setsuko Hara in Tokyo Story, David Desser11--Marcello Mastroianni in 8 ½, Adrienne L. McLean12--Jeanne Moreau in The Bride Wore Black, Adrian Danks13--Michel Serrault in La cage aux folles, Kyle Stevens14--Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam, Corey K. Creekmur15--Michael Caine in Alfie, Jason Jacobs16--Amitabh Bachchan in Deewaar, Ulka Anjaria17--Catherine Deneuve in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Alexia Kannas18--Jean-Pierre Léaud in Stolen Kisses, Aaron Taylor19--Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher, Alison Taylor20--Emma Thompson in The Remains of the Day, Tim Vermeulen21—Tilda Swinton in I Am Love, Murray Pomerance22---Denis Lavant in Holy Motors, Nick Davis23--Choi Min-sik in Oldboy, Hye Seung Chung and David S. Diffrient24--Maggie Cheung in In the Mood for Love, Gina Marchetti25--Omotola Jalade Ekeinde in Mortal Inheritance, Noah Tsika26--Gael Garcia Bernal in The Motorcycle Diaries, Dolores TierneyContributors
About the Author :
Murray Pomerance is an independent scholar living in Toronto and Adjunct Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is the author of The Film Cheat: Screen Artifice and Viewing Pleasure (2020), Grammatical Dreams (2020), Virtuoso: Film Performance and the Actor’s Magic (2019), A Dream of Hitchcock (2019), and Cinema, If You Please: The Memory of Taste, the Taste of Memory (2018), among many other volumes, and editor or co-editor of more than two dozen books including The Other Hollywood Renaissance (2020). He edits the “Horizons of Cinema” series at SUNY Press and the “Techniques of the Moving Image” series at Rutgers. A Voyage with Hitchcock and Color It True: Impressions of Cinema are both forthcoming. Kyle Stevens is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Appalachian State University. He is the author of Mike Nichols: Sex, Language, and the Reinvention of Psychological Realism, and his essays have appeared in Cinema Journal, Critical Quarterly, Film Criticism, World Picture, as well as several edited collections. He is also editor-in-chief of New Review of Film and Television Studies.
Review :
Pomerance and Stevens's collection adds a significant international scope to the field. In volume 1, America, standouts include Anna Everett on Ethel Waters’s resistance in The Member of the Wedding and Lucy Fischer on Bette Davis and metaperformance in the studio era. In volume 2, International, performances from Western Europe to Asia are examined. Noteworthy among the contributions are Douglas McFarland on Toshiro Mifune, Kyle Stevens on Michel Serrault in La cage aux folles, and Noah Tsika on Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde in Mortal Inheritance.'
Mustering a wide array of voices and perspectives, these game-changing volumes provide a welcome scholarly corrective to the scandalous undervaluation of actors, acting, and performance that has prevailed in cinema studies for far too long. This collection promises to shape discourse on screen acting for many years to come.
