The Books of My Life: Film Performance

In Film Performance: From Achievement to Appreciation (London: Wallflower, 2005) St. Anne's College, Oxford, film scholar Andrew Klevan explores film performance in relationship to position and perspective--the film performers relationship to the camera and their position within the shot-- location--the relationship of film performers to décor, furnishings, and objects within the screen frame--and plot--the relationship between film performer and the narrative development of a film--by analysing ten films from the "golden age of Hollywood".

To be honest, I am not sure what to make of this brief monograph. On the one hand it is a well written close analysis of sequences from ten golden era Hollywood films that yields interesting and sometimes insightful, if perhaps overinterpreted and not entirely compelling interpretations of film performances and film meanings. On the other hand, since the analysis is grounded solely in textual analysis (crystal ball textualism) and doesn't make use of archival materials, interviews with Hollywood performers and other craftspeople, including the producers and directors who made the films, it remains speculative, and ultimately can be seen as an example of one person's--one person embedded within academic and broader economic, political, cultural, demographic, and geographic contexts-- response to what the sequences within ten films under the glare of the academic gaze, mean.