National Board of Review Magazine (Jan 1939 - Jan 1942)

May, iQSP 7 There is one peculiar feature of motion picture production which seems to interest people. I am often asked, "How can an actor keep any sense of continuity when scenes are shot without any continuity at all? Sometime you do the beginning of the picture at the end, and vice versa, and then you jump around from scene to scene." Very few people that I know are able to maintain a sense of continuity, but I am sui-e directors maintain it. Continuity is something with which, perhaps, the actor does not need to bother. It is a question of necessity, I know, to jump around from one scene to another, because the studio has prepared a set, and it is necessary to get all the scenes on that one set shot at the same time, no matter where they may come in the continuity of a picture. Sometimes an actor is required for some other picture, and it is necessary to shoot all of his or her scenes as quickly as possible. However, the continuity is not one of the actor's problems, I can assure you. From all of this you might surmise that the minimum requirements of an actor are memory and health. There is another factor which should be added to that, and that is recognizability. It used to be quite a problem, they tell me, in the old days, to find people who looked the same in any two scenes. That is what they call being photographic. These days, with the high fidelity and high speed films, I do not think this is such a problem. It might be put in as one of the minimum requirements of being an actor. As for the problems of acting for pictures, here I am getting on a little more indefinite ground. You will pardon me then if I get even a little more vague. The main problem, to my mind, is relaxation. The eye of the camera is so acute, and through the camera the eye of the audience is so close to you at times, that just simply being there and existing is enough of a problem in itself. The additional problems of emotion and timing are, in many cases, gilding the hly as far as motion picture performance is concerned, because the contributing factors, the possibilities of cutting, the possibilities of pruning* the actor's performance afterwards, makes it sometimes very easy to register almost anything you want. I haven't much more to say about the actor's contribution to motion pictures. Beyond this point it gets even more indefinite. So perhaps I would be allowed to close my talk and ask if there are any questions anybody would like to ask on any points that might be of interest. Question : Can you tell me whether you feel more relaxed on the legitimate stage than you do before the camera ? Answer : I feel more relaxed on the legitimate stage because, after all, on the legitimate stage the actor carries all the burden of creation at the time of performance. He need have no fears of what may happen to his performance, because it is right there. It is much easier to relax with the results immediate, than when they are quite a way off, and in the hands of so many other people. Question : If an actor has a strong feeling about the emotion of a picture, is he allowed to express that when it is contrary to the director's idea? Suppose you were asked to do a performance in a way that you did not feel was the right one, would you be allowed to suggest a change? Answer: Yes, of course. Often scenes are shot two or three different ways. If a director feels very strongly that the scene should be shot as one emotion, and the actor feels strongly that it should not be, it depends on the bargaining power of the actor. However, the directors that I have met are generally very willing to take suggestions from actors as to their feeling about their parts. If there is disagreement the directi)r will very often shoot the scene two difi^erent ways. One or the other will be junked in the cutting room. Question : ■ When a scene appears on the screen shot from a number of different angles, was it done on the set with various cameras shooting simultaneously or did they use one camera and shoot a few feet from one angle, then cut, and shoot from another angle ? Answer : Both ways are used. Often two or three cameras cover one scene. But the general method is to take each individual angle by itself. It gives the photographer