And yet Lang had a long and productive relationship with Joan Bennett and
worked with Dana Andrews, Edward G. Robinson, Ray Milland, Gloria Grahame
and a number of other actors with superb results. I also tend to wonder
about the idea of the 'tyrannical' director. How much of it is a kind of
rhetoric dating from the early classical period when Hollywood enticed
many European 'masters' to the studios while the American press reproduced
juicy gossip about the 'Great Men' and their strange accents, working
habits and personal tics. How much of it was poor communication skills?
American culture generally has always been in awe and somewhat bemused by
imported genius. In his autobiography, Josef von Sternberg fairly revelled
in his reputation. I can't help thinking that this history is a kind of
auteurist discourse avant la lettre.
How many accounts do we have of European actors being traumatized by
tyrant directors? Was Simone Simon terrorized by Renoir, Jannings by
Sternberg, Arletty by Carne, for examples...?
Musing on a wet Wednesday...
Richard
On Wed, January 26, 2011 11:15, Henry M. Taylor wrote:
> Another tyrant that comes to mind has to be Fritz Lang.
>
>
> H
>
>
>
>
>>>
>>
>> Well I'm sorry, Mike, but it's my understanding that Hitchcock had
>> enormous respect for the majority of the actors with whom he worked.
>> He treated them as professionals - had faith in them - and gave them
>> parameters within which they were free to be and invent their
>> characters, including improvising bits of business that he, Hitchcock,
>> might happily incorporate in his mise-en-scene. There were many far
>> more despotic and far less pleasant directors than Hitchcock, and his
>> ability to pre-conceive an entire film in his head (while still leaving
>> the actors the freedom I have indicated) was a mark of genius, and a
>> valid cinematic methodology. (Read Bill Krohn's 'Hitchcock at Work',
>> for starters.) To my mind, Robert Bresson was just as much or more of
>> a 'tyrant' than Hitchcock.
>>
>> What does Mike make of this from Bresson about film performers:
>>
>>
>> 'Models who have become automatic (everything weighed, measured, timed,
>> repeated ten, twenty times) and are then dropped in the medium of the
>> events of your film - their relations with the objects and persons
>> around them will be RIGHT, because they will not be THOUGHT.'
>> (Bresson, 'Notes on the Cinematographer', p. 32)
>>
>>
>> - KM
>>
>>
>
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