1 0
    £83.58 GBP
    £83.58 GBP
    Sale Sold out
    Free UK Shipping

    Freshly Printed - allow 7 days lead

    Moment of Action
    Riddles of Cinematic Performance

    Murray Pomerance (Author)

    9780813564968

    Hardback, published 9 May 2016

    204 pages, 6 photographs
    22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.426 kg

    "The versatile critic and scholar Murray Pomerance analyzes the complexities, casts light on the enigmas, and celebrates the excitements of screen performance with insight, appreciation, and panache."
    - David Sterritt (author of The Cinema of Clint Eastwood: Chronicles of America)
    "Is acting a cinematic element, inseparable from direction, cinematography, special effects, and design? This book by the prodigious, prolific Pomerance will change how you think about screen acting."
    - Dennis Bingham (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis)
    "Moment of Action magnifies every aspect of the art and craft of filmmaking. Murray Pomerance is a scholar and keen observer, whose passion for the subject is very impressive."
    - Elliott Gould (Academy Award-nominated actor)
    "The versatile critic and scholar Murray Pomerance analyzes the complexities, casts light on the enigmas, and celebrates the excitements of screen performance with insight, appreciation, and panache."
    - David Sterritt (author of The Cinema of Clint Eastwood: Chronicles of America)
    "Is acting a cinematic element, inseparable from direction, cinematography, special effects, and design? This book by the prodigious, prolific Pomerance will change how you think about screen acting."
    - Dennis Bingham (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis)
    "Moment of Action magnifies every aspect of the art and craft of filmmaking. Murray Pomerance is a scholar and keen observer, whose passion for the subject is very impressive."
    - Elliott Gould (Academy Award-nominated actor)

    There are hundreds of biographies of filmstars and dozens of scholarly works on acting in general. But what about the ephemeral yet indelible moments when, for a brief scene or even just a single shot, an actor’s performance triggers a visceral response in the viewer? 
     
    Moment of Action delves into the mysteries of screen performance, revealing both the acting techniques and the technical apparatuses that coalesce in an instant of cinematic alchemy to create movie gold. Considering a range of acting styles while examining films as varied as Bringing Up Baby, Psycho, The Red Shoes, Godzilla, and The Bourne Identity, Murray Pomerance traces the common dynamics that work to structure the complex relationship between the act of cinematic performance and its eventual perception.  
     
    Mining the spaces where subjective and objective analyses merge, Pomerance offers both a deeply personal account of film viewership and a detailed examination of the intuitive gestures, orchestrated movements, and backstage maneuvers that go into creating those phenomenal moments onscreen. Moment of Action takes us on an innovative exploration of the nexus at which the actor’s keen skills spark and kindle the audience’s receptive energies.
     

    Acknowledgments
    Preamble: Saw the Air
                Thinking about actors and their allure
    Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause
    viewers’
    love of acting
    momentary performance
    acting, action, and activity
    acting, evidence, and biography
    Linda Darnell
    casting and gatekeeping.
    1                Fantastic Performance
    Thinking about acting style and culture
    innocent and scientific watching, and “
    falling in”

    The Edge of Tomorrow
    The Last Laugh
    With Blood on My Hands: Pusher II
    predictive performance and John Wayne
    transcendent performance and Katharine Hepburn
    Bringing Up Baby
    Now, Voyager
    El Dorado.
    2                Beaux Gestes
                Thinking about language and gesture
    The Disorderly Orderly
    Anthony Perkins in Psycho
    Jeff Goldblum in Le Weekend
    Touch of Evil
    the flower of the gest
    Ralph Richardson and Christophe Lambert in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
    effects gesture
    Life of Pi and keyframing
    animated performance and puppetry
    Blithe Spirit
    Robert Walker in My Son John
    The Stepford Wives
    The MusÉ
    e GrÉ
    vin
    Jacques de Vaucanson’
    s duck
    The Thief of Bagdad
    Charlton Heston and Gary Cooper in The Wreck of the Mary Deare
    cinematic gesture and The King of Comedy
    The Thin Man
    Cool Hand Luke
    The Red Shoes
    hands and handfulness
    actors under direction
    John Frankenheimer, Burt Lancaster, and The Train
    Antony and Cleopatra
    Hitchcock, gesture, and “
    cattle”

    Kim Novak, Vertigo, and vertiginous gesture.
    3                Curtains
                Thinking about the actor’
    s multiple selves
    Vivian Sobchack and the actor’
    s four bodies
    performance amplification
    Alec Guinness and preparation
    rehearsal and “
    downkeying”

    curtain calls
    Whose Life Is It Anyway?
    Murder on the Orient Express
    Citizen Kane
    The Magnificent Ambersons
    The Bad Seed
    “
    behind-the-scenes”
    musicals
    theatrical exhibition spaces
    credit-roll “
    goofing”

    Peter O’
    Toole and Winona Ryder offscreen
    Birdman
    fans and fan logic
    actor-in-the-street stories
    acting audiences
    the Academy Awards.
    4                “
    It’
    s Not a Man, It’
    s a Place!”
                Thinking about setting and the actor’
    s labor
    workplaces under capitalism and factory design
    the sound stage environment
    Rope
    acting and make-up
    Technicolor
    My Dinner with AndrÉ

    Ian Carmichael
    Ingrid Bergman and Under Capricorn
    The Wizard of Oz
    Grey Gardens
    Simon Callow and A Room with a View
    Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame
    Boris Karloff
    2001: A Space Odyssey
    Haruo Nakajima, Godzilla, and body division
    Billion Dollar Brain
    The French Lieutenant’
    s Woman
    Chinatown
    Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers
    the sound boom
    the “
    caffeination schedule”

    acting, editing, and lighting
    predetermined focus
    Suddenly, Last Summer
    The Hands of Orlac
    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    “
    Instructions for John Howell”

    panoptical setting
    Laurence Olivier in Sleuth
    setting and characters
    Bette Davis in The Letter
    the character “
    at home”
    in Marnie
    “
    hypothetical”
    performance, Sandra Bullock, and Gravity
    Andy Serkis
    the actor’
    s mirror
    animation vocalizing
    The Member of the Wedding.
    5                Acting Intimate
                Thinking about actors’
    trade secrecy
    Philip Seymour Hoffman in Boogie Nights
    Anthony Hopkins and Hannibal Lecter
    Colin Farrell and truth-telling
    Joaquin Phoenix in The Master
    zombie performance
    George Herbert Mead
    Hud
    Bob &
    Carol &
    Ted &
    Alice
    onscreen urination and bleeding
    Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained
    the actor’
    s voice
    acting and musculature
    the actor’
    s touch
    interpersonal contact and audience exclusion
    The Bourne Identity
    anxious interiors
    Peter Lorre in Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and Hotel Berlin
    Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
    the “
    Doctrine of Natural Expression”

    anti-intellectualism, the portrayal of genius, and Jesse Eisenberg
    acting the “
    amnesiac”

    forgotten moralities and cathartic awakening.
    Notes
    Works Cited and Consulted
    Index
     
    View full details