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Shhh, It’s time
for RomaFictionFest!
by Gianpiero Cognoli |
Just over, and by all accounts a complete success, RomaFictionFest was a larger-than-Second-Life™ event: a week-long TV-movie and TV-series smorgasborg with showings split between two of Italy's grandest movie theatres: the Cinema Adriano multiplex and Auditorium Conciliazione. Now I won't mention the usual statistics, the 3,000 hours of programming, 140 shows, 29 world premieres, 2,700 accredited personnel, 33,000 total viewershi... oops, I should really learn to keep my mouth shut. As any actor should. Silence is golden and, in my opinion, is what won the gold in Best Acting at FictionFest. Let me explain.
Actors work off the scripted word. If they're not careful, their acting does as well, producing a dull, cold and mechanical performance. This happens when the actor is thinking about the words, rather than the thoughts (of the character) behind those words. Too often, actors suffer from this gab disorder, a condition that Michael Margotta (director of The Actor's Center-Roma) calls "a dictatorship of words".
Nowhere is that more obvious than in the land of the loud, wordy and boisterous "Commedia dell'Arte". Italian acting tends to be loud and external, i.e. forced, with too much emphasis on the words. Many blame the Commedia for having started this trend. Ironically, the Commedia dell'Arte was based on improvisation, rather than scripted text, part of the genius behind it's success. Its actors certainly did not suffer from a dictatorship of any kind. Well, perhaps, political... but that's another story.
Unfortunately, today, studying acting in Italy is more like studying public speaking, with focus placed on diction, pronunciation and vocal projection. Empathy with the character, listening, emotional and neural connections - the more interesting, and more human, parts of acting - place last on the list of priorities at most acting schools in Italy. Turn to most Italian movies or TV shows and you'll see what I mean. It takes time to adjust to the exaggerated speaking style of many of the actors on screen, and many have less talent than an uneducated pine cone.
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RomaFictionFest |
Fortunately, things are changing. Many of the made-for-TV entries in the festival featured silence among their starring cast. What I mean is that time, and space, was given to the acting and the actors. Much more than in the past. Not to get too technical but pauses, sub-text, thinking time all take... time. And it was evident that actors who were given more time made for better TV. Simple as that.
I expected to see large differences in silence, and thus acting quality, when comparing the Italian products to those in English. Oddly enough, the shhh factor (yes, a more appropriate moniker would be nice) was perfectly demonstrated when I compared two different American series featured at the festival: Criminal Minds and The West Wing, the latter featuring a stunning performance by Martin Sheen and the entire cast, while the former, at least in this episode, was lacklustre at best. It took me a while to figure out why. The actors all looked great, costumes were bang-on, photography was adequate, etc. So what was it?
Silence. The actors' performances in West Wing were laden with rich pauses and stares and glares and sub-text. The rhythm of the Criminal Minds episode was not unlike one of the team's machine guns, word-word-word-word. I have a feeling if you count the seconds of silence in one and then do the same for the other you will see exactly what I mean. I think I'll try that... Stay tuned.
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