and then letting this preparation pay off in
moments of great theatrical vitality. Look closely,
for example, at the performance of Agnes Moore-
head, with whom Welles had worked in radio pro-
ductions.^43 Moorehead knew exactly how to use the
tempo, pitch, and rhythm of her voice to give unex-
pected depth to the familiar melodramatic type she
plays here. In the carefully designed and controlled
setting—the long room, dividing window, and
snowy exterior—Mrs. Kane, whose makeup, hair-
style, and costume are those of a seemingly simple
pioneer woman, reveals herself to be something
quite different. She is both unforgettably humane
as she opens the window and calls her son sharply
to the destiny she has decreed and—given that her
only business experience has been in running a
boardinghouse—surprisingly shrewd in obviously
having retained Thatcher to prepare the contract
that seals this moment. In fact, this is one of the few
scenes in the movie in which a female character
totally dominates the action—not surprising, for it
is a scene of maternal rejection.
As Mary Kane throws open the window, she
cries out, “Charles!” in a strained, even shrill, voice
that reveals her anxiety about what she is doing;
yet a moment later, sounding both tender and
guilty, she tells Thatcher that she has had Charles’s
trunk packed for a week. Should we read the cold
mask of her face as the implacable look of a woman
resigned to her decision or as a cover for maternal
feelings? (image [7]) Does it reflect the doubt, inde-
cision, and dread any person would feel in such a
situation? Is it the face of sacrifice? Is it all of these
possibilities and more? And how should we read
Charles, who, in the span of a moment, goes
from playful to wary to angry to antagonistic?
(image [8].)
Although the downtrodden Jim Kane protests
his wife’s actions, when Thatcher coolly informs
him that he and his wife will receive $50,000 per
year, he feebly gives in, saying, “Well, let’s hope it’s
all for the best”—a remark that invariably, as it
should, provokes laughter from viewers. And
Thatcher, wearing a top hat and dressed in the for-
mal clothes of a big-city banker, sends contradic-
tory signals. He’s precise in overseeing Mrs. Kane’s
signature, dismissive of Mr. Kane, fawning as he
meets Charles, and angry when Charles knocks
him to the ground. In encouraging this kind of
richly nuanced acting, and its resulting ambiguity,
Welles shifts the challenge of interpretation to us.
As this scene shows, the long take, used in con-
junction with deep-focus cinematography, provides
directors and actors with the opportunity to create
scenes of greater-than-usual length as well as
broader and deeper field of composition. In addi-
tion, the long take encourages ensemble acting that
calls attention to acting, not editing between shots.
Although we tend to think of actors and their per-
formances as acts of individual creativity, we
should not neglect the fact that one actor’s per-
formance often very much depends on another’s.
Indeed, it may rely on an ensemble, or group, of
actors.^44
Ensemble acting—which emphasizes the inter-
action of actors, not the individual actor—evolved
as a further step in creating a verisimilar mise-en-
scène for both the stage and the screen. Typically
experienced in the theater, ensemble acting is used
less in the movies because it requires the provision
of rehearsal time that is usually denied to screen
actors. However, when a movie director chooses to
use long takes and has the time to rehearse the
actors, the result is a group of actors working(^43) Welles reportedly called Agnes Moorehead “the best actor
I’ve ever known”; qtd. in Simon Callow, Orson Welles: The Road
to Xanadu(New York: Viking, 1995), p. 512.
(^44) Further study of the long take should consider the work of
the great Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi, notably the
Lake Biwa episode in Ugetsu(1953). Other notable uses of the
technique can be seen in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos
(1962), which includes a virtuoso eight-minute single shot;
Werner Herzog’s Wo y z e c k (1979); Lisandro Alonso’s Los
Muertos(2004), where most of the movie is divided into very
long takes; and Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth(2006), where
real time and very long takes are the norm. Avalanche(1937),
a work by Japanese director Mikio Naruse, includes a
sequence of very brief shots that are edited together so
seamlessly that they provide the visual equivalent of a single
long take.
HOW FILMMAKING AFFECTS ACTING 325