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THE FUNCTION OF THE ACTOR
RICHARD GRIFFITH
Although a decade has passed since the promulgation of the theory of montage, film critics still bow down before that revelation as to the final word on the technique of a medium not half a century old. The theory of creative editing of sound and picture, indisputably the basis of cinematic construction, has become enshrined in a holy remoteness where it cannot be reached by dialectic. Montage and montage alone, we have been told ever since the days of Kuleshov, is the significant act in the production of a film, and compared with it every other technical device is either unimportant or irrelevant to the purposes of cinema.
Because of the regrettable supremacy of the star system, acting has long been the target for the most rancorous attacks of the film theorists. Acting is for them the symbol of the cinema's extended bondage to the theatre, its use a confession of inadequate knowledge of film resources. One can understand this dislike, since acting once so far usurped the function of other methods as to threaten to make the camera a means for the mere reproduction of stage plays. When the raison d'etre of a film is the glorification of its star's personality, montage becomes superfluous and the picture loses all significance as an example of cinema. But to attribute this distortion to acting itself rather than to the star system is to judge a device by its systematic misuse. This obvious fallacy, however, has entrapped most of the critics with whose work I am acquainted. There are only a few who have considered deeply this problem of acting.
Of these few I shall take Paul Rotha as representative. In "The Film till Now," Rotha has argued the question so persistently and thoughtfully as to convince a large number of cineastes. He contends, first, that acting is unnecessary in the montage film, and, second, that when employed it destroys filmic reality. He would have the director use, in place of professionals, type actors who happen to be physically suitable to the characters they impersonate, but who are wholly under the control of the director in the characterization of their roles.
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