Motion picture acting (1947)

Page scan 00085 from Motion picture acting

Record Details:

Title:
Motion picture acting
Date:
1947
Publisher:
New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co
Volume:
Motion picture acting
Leaf #:
00085
Language:
English
Contributor:
Internet Archive
Sponsor:
Internet Archive
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Date Added:
July 19, 2022
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CONCENTRATION will never be anything that can distract you and turn you away from the "feel" of a scene. (I pre- dict you won't stay cold-blooded for long!) You will be assailed by no doubts—there will be no room for such disturbing thoughts when your whole being is surcharged with the dynamic emotional power of the scene you are playing. And make no mistake about it, I am playing a scene to that tele- phone, lamp, or chair. I imagine the first step, concentration, is a bit like the sensation a mystic experiences when he "goes into the silence." I am no "mystic," but I know this—the ability to retreat into your own inner depths and to feel any emotion whatever, the instant you want to feel it, is the greatest protection from distracting influences that any actor can have. Do you realize that, in this connection, I have not used the word thinking? That, instead, I have spoken of feeling, of emotion? This is not a process of the intellect. If I allowed myself to think about that lamp, for instance, and what I am saying about it, I would be jarred out of my concentration im- mediately, and feel like laughing instead of crying. As long as I remain under the spell of the emotion I have evoked and keep on talking, no matter what I say, the tears will come and / cant prevent them 59