How can we read film performance? While theorizing of the subject goes back at least to Pudovkin, it remains an under-examined area. The problems of isolating and evaluating the elements of performance within the film text, and concerns about the impressionistic and subjective nature of writing on the subject seems to have limited work on the field.
Using examples from the transatlantic career of James Mason, I will consider how film acting may be understood as a form of mediated performance. Detailed textual analysis of voice, body, gesture and expression will be considered in relation to aspects of film style and genre, as well as the wider social and cultural contexts of Britain and America in the 1940s and 1950s.
See you all on Thursday 18th! Arts One G34 at 5.30pm.
Post Production 