NOTES ON THE CINEMA
Often seeing a movie, he is aware that the story they are telling is credible only because of being well-acted. The story is so-so, a little 'shaky images a little' already seen, but he / she is fantastic and worth the ticket price. Many of the films we see are built on this capacity that the actor has to know how to convey emotions and feelings. That's why we talk about actors. And to do so with knowledge of the facts, and without going into the magical world of the star system, we must rely on the work of the actor who has made a reason for living. Konstantin S. Stanislavski, the great Russian actor and director (1863 - 1938) has systematized and theorized the creative process that takes place whenever an actor plays a part. Being an actor is not a job like any other, requires courage, inner discipline and a great deal of patience and curiosity.
The creative process that makes the actor to play a part (any part) comes from within. The expression is something that is born, is agitated, it is stimulated, is driven by internal events. The actor must be able to tap into his inner feeling to act on the scene. In order to create each time a new character, the actor must become another self, to expand her creative self, to develop all possible conscious and unconscious. This is the meaning and purpose of the actor's work on himself. What would be Marlon Brando, James Dean, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, without this ability to draw on their emotions. How could interpret these characters so real and yet so strong that the film has passed?
Even today, the actors who want to get to the heart of his audience, must examine themselves and their inner dynamics, must become aware of what is and what it can become. All the wealth or poverty of the character and the actor has everything that the scene will always depend on its ability to get involved.
What we look at the movies? First of all, I believe, the truth of what we see. The recognition, the likelihood of the stories we are told. For an actor is to see and say what is present, alive and authentic. Show us what he really sees. Not what it seems to see. Telling the truth, for an actor, you go through a process made of organic authentic experiences. Only in this way we believe we viewers. But you can go further. For an actor, the word has an absolute value and experience very different from what we give us mere mortals.
What constitutes an experience for an actor? What is its nature? The experience (in life and then when it says) is unaware. Does not follow a conscious process. The mind is never very useful when you arrive at the experience. The mind works in a linear fashion. Whatever the mind tells you the experience, it is wrong.
There is a difference between idea and experience. Think the idea of tiredness and fatigue proper. Think about what it means to live a pain or just imagine it, or what it means for you to kiss a woman or a man you are attracted / or feel the warm sun on your skin or the chill of the wind on my face. These are experiences. Look for that of the non-rational and emotional responses in relation to what happens. And the good actors are moving in this direction. They decide to live that interpret the scene, rather than think and then recite it mechanically.
To express real emotions, for an actor, does not mean being "emotionally upset" or excited on command "because it is required, but really let this happen on the scene, look for a real painful emotion that moves and guides our actions and emotions do arise in that soil which is the logic of the character that we live. The actor tends by its nature to wipe out the inner conflicts that are the ones that generate the experience, which is the very soul of the staging.
Just letting go to your hearing is the nature of experience.
The art of expressing himself, his secret (which is true for the players but also for all of us) is largely in the quality of the questions that arise. In this art there are no recipes. However, remains an important key that opens many doors if used.
We are terrified of not having answers. Get instant answers when we want to express the same as being dead. We are looking for answers to everything and then we wonder why we are so refractory to be alive, agile, ready and perhaps curious! We have been trained and educated to have a life of right answers. But we must learn to be free, to believe that an application can match multiple right answers. Worth trying ... learning from the actors' work.
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