company of actors (Nashville, 1975; Short Cuts, 1993;
Gosford Park, 2001); Mike Leigh and various actors
(Life Is Sweet, 1991; Naked, 1993; Topsy-Turvy, 1999;
All or Nothing, 2002); and John Cassavetes and
Gena Rowlands (Faces, 1968; A Woman under the
Influence, 1974; Gloria, 1980).
The Cassavetes–Rowlands collaboration is par-
ticularly important and impressive, not only for
what it accomplished but also for the respect it
received as an experimental approach within the
largely conventional film industry. “John’s theory,”
Rowlands explains,
is that if there’s something wrong, it’s wrong in the
writing. If you take actors who can act in other
things and they get to a scene they’ve honestly tried
to do, and if they still can’t get it, then there’s some-
thing wrong with the writing. Then you stop, you
improvise, you talk about it. Then he’ll go and
rewrite it—it’s not just straight improvisation. I’m
asked a lot about this, and it’s true, when I look at
the films and I seethat they look improvised in a lot
of different places where I know they weren’t.^41
Improvised acting requires directors to play
even more active roles than if they were working
with prepared scripts because they must not only
elicit actors’ ideas for characters and dialogue but
also orchestrate those contributions within overall
cinematic visions. Ultimately, directors help form
all contributions, including those of actors. Nearly
all directors who employ improvisation have the
actors work it out in rehearsal, then lock it down
for filming, perhaps radically changing their plans
for how such scenes will be shot. This is how, for
example, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro
worked out the originally silent “You talkin’ to me?”
scene in Taxi Driver(1976). Unless directors and
actors have talked publicly about their work, we
seldom know when and to what extent improvisa-
tion has been used in a film. Because we know that
Cassavetes prepared his actors with precise scripts
that they refined with extensive improvisational
exercises, by studying the original script we can
prepare to look for the improvisation, to judge its
usefulness, and to determine whether improvised
performances seem convincing or, ironically, less
convincing than scripted ones.Directors and Actors
Directors and actors have collaborated closely
since the days when D. W. Griffith established
screen acting with Lillian Gish. Inevitably, such
relationships depend on the individuals: what each
brings to his or her work, what each can do alone,
and what each needs from a collaborator. Such dif-
ferent approaches taken by different directors in
working with actors are as necessary, common, and
useful as the different approaches taken by differ-
ent actors as they prepare for roles.
Some veterans of the studio system, such as
William Wyler and George Cukor, are known as
“actors’ directors,” meaning that the directors
inspire such confidence they can actively shape
actors’ performances. Although Wyler may have
enjoyed the trust of Bette Davis, Fredric March,
Myrna Loy, Barbra Streisand, and other notable
actors, the atmosphere on the set was considerably
tenser when Laurence Olivier arrived in Hollywood
for his first screen role, Heathcliff in Wyler’s
Wuthering Heights(1939). Olivier had already earned
a considerable reputation on the London stage and
was frankly contemptuous of screen acting, which
he thought serious actors did only for the money.
Wyler, on the other hand, was one of Hollywood’s
great stylists, a perfectionist who drove actors
crazy with his keen sense of acting and love of mul-
tiple takes. Everyone on the set perceived the ten-
sion between them. Wyler encouraged Olivier to be
patient in responding to the challenges involved in
acting for the camera, and eventually Olivier over-
came his attitude of condescension to give one of his
greatest film performances.
In developing his relationships with actors,
director John Ford encouraged them to create
their characters to serve the narrative. He pre-
ferred to work with the same actors over and over,
and his working method never changed. John
Wayne, who acted in many of Ford’s films and has
been described as the director’s alter ego, said Ford(^41) Gena Rowlands in Actors on Acting for the Screen, ed.
Tomlinson, p. 482.
ASPECTS OF PERFORMANCE 321