Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T19:00:10.872Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - A Glint of Deathlessness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2023

Get access

Summary

I always felt that picture [They All Laughed] would never really work until everyone in the picture was dead, and then it would sort of become neutral again.

—Peter Bogdanovich

The final third of this book looks at performances in two films directed by Peter Bogdanovich (1939–2022), They All Laughed (1981) and The Thing Called Love (1993). These films, I think, profitably resonate with many of the ideas about performance explored in the preceding pages. Just like many of the other films and performers discussed in this book, They All Laughed and The Thing Called Love have become central to the time I have spent experiencing and thinking about performance in the cinema. And a relatively objective reason for looking at these two films in this book can be found in Bogdanovich's own history as a filmmaker, critic, and actor. As a director, Bogdanovich practices a filmmaking style more classically actor-driven than the comparatively baroque cinema created by his contemporaries who emerged during the moment of the Hollywood Renaissance in the 1970s. Those directors, all of whom deploy a more stylized approach to filmmaking than Bogdanovich, include Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, William Friedkin, and Robert Altman, the latter of whom, while in many respects an actor's director, does not employ a self-effacing style. Bogdanovich, more than his colleagues, is a classical filmmaker, whose style is energized by the presence of performers with whom his camera is frequently smitten. Bogdanovich, further, was himself a part-time actor, trained in his youth by Stella Adler and has appeared from time to time in his own films—see Targets (1968) and Saint Jack (1979)—and in screen work written and directed by others (most notably a seven-year supporting run as the therapist to Tony Soprano in the cable series The Sopranos). His understanding of acting as a director is in this way at least partially the product of having done a little bit of it himself. As a critic and historian, Bogdanovich, although known for his auteur studies of John Ford and Allan Dwan, also has a sharp interest in the art of acting.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shots to the Heart
For the Love of Film Performance
, pp. 47 - 50
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×