Motion picture acting (1947)

Page scan 00084 from Motion picture acting

Record Details:

Title:
Motion picture acting
Date:
1947
Publisher:
New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co
Volume:
Motion picture acting
Leaf #:
00084
Language:
English
Contributor:
Internet Archive
Sponsor:
Internet Archive
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Date Added:
July 19, 2022
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MOTION PICTURE ACTING the most absurd things about it, tears come into my eyes and run down my cheeks. Now let us take this "stunt" apart and analyze it step by step. The first step is concentration in which I "plug-in" on the emotion I want to express. It is as though I were suddenly wrapped in an emo- tional cloud—a magnetic field—shutting out the world. In the second step, the emotion conjured up in concentration will reveal itself in the tone of my voice. As I speak, the greatest excitant in the world keeps adding fresh fuel to the flames. Nothing so excites and moves us as does the human voice, our own voices included, and after a few short sen- tences, no matter what the words, I am in a state of pure emotion in which every physical manifesta- tion of grief will be present. As for the third step, the tears are only an end- result — of no importance in themselves. They mere- ly follow as they would if I were using the saddest of words and giving expression to thoughts of the utmost pathos, just as they would if I were playing an emotional scene written by a great author. And what is the point of all this for you? The point is, that if you can do this swift creation of synthetic emotion —and that is what all acting is— in what might be described as "cold blood," there 58