A Reply to Adrian Martin
by Andrew Klevan

Andrew Klevan, Film Performance: From Achievement to Appreciation (London: Wallflower Press, 2006)

I am very grateful for Adrian Martin's generous and sympathetic reading of my book on film performance, and for vividly articulating its qualities. Responding to some of his queries presents me with the opportunity to reflect upon the age-old matters of text /context - and related matters of intention - as I have experienced them in my own work, and to explain the reasoning behind a form of philosophical criticism. (I should also declare the influence of Stanley Cavell's philosophy and criticism on these thoughts.)  Adrian clearly recognises the aspirations of the book and celebrates its internal consistency: he claims the accounts "penetrate to the heart of a film's dramatic and poetic logic" (my emphasis). Given that he recognises the benefits of the book's "logic" (it "awakens us to details and aspects of these movies . that we have probably never noticed, or appreciated, so well before"), it is somewhat surprising, as appreciation tussles with reservation, that he is frustrated by the absence of elements which do not "penetrate" it.

Adrian writes of the book's "frontal, wilfully reductive vantage point," but this "vantage point" does not feel "wilful" on my part because the films will me, sometimes against my will. Hollywood melodrama and comedy lead me, despite my better judgement, to better judgement, and I am thankful for it.  Beholden to the "film's dramatic and poetic logic," the "vantage point" is less "reductive" than deductive - working things through from what I observe as the film unfolds - and, by Adrian's admission, more than adequately productive.  I am told, usually by people politely reminding me of my (scholarly) limitations, and implying my idiosyncrasy, that this is my "approach," but it is equally true that the good film approaches me (as I reproach myself for inadequately acknowledging it).  Having established a relationship with the film, I am emotionally involved, and it is difficult to look away.  Other "inputs" unavoidably feel like "mere distractions," not because they necessarily are, or because they are unnecessary, but because I am caught in the workings of the fiction, where each moment creates a web of arrangements and associations (performer with object with décor with camera), and where the permutations of meaning ensnare.  It is not easy to escape. 

Therefore, I do not "feign" lack of interest in what the performers "might have had to say about how they approached their craft" but I am committed, for good or ill, to another "vantage point."  It is precisely this "vantage point" that, as Adrian identifies, "awakens us to details . - such as the bodily language of acting - that we have probably never noticed."   I am surprised Adrian puts such faith in spoken testimony, rather than, for example, "bodily language," and thinks my argument about Barbara Stanwyck's performance in There's Always Tomorrow would be "immeasurably strengthened" by looking at her public statements.  This is a rather "reductive" view of intention.  Why are her statements necessarily any stronger than simply seeing what she has done? We will not necessarily find the truth of a crime in what the participants say, but rather through a keen observation of the crime scene.  (Near the end of his review, Adrian writes in reference to another matter that "Klevan, intentionally or not, cleverly reverses this trend.," acknowledging that, thankfully, any cleverness on my part does not need to be a product of what I deliberately or consciously intend.  Only with hindsight might I come to see what I meant, after you have pointed it out to me.)   Furthermore, though I learnt many interesting and relevant facts about the films, I found this evidence to be inadmissible because the aim was to make the case primarily from the films, from the organisation of their internal relationships and their patterns, precisely to illuminate their skill in this regard.  From this point of view, a film's capacity to elicit an intelligent response, without external support, is a fine measure of its achievement.  Films stimulate inference and surmise, for example from "bodily language," where meaning is latent yet accessible, and interpretations are suggestive and various - depending on perspective and observer.  We test the quality of these interpretations against our evolving experience of the film.  Given that film offers this democratic access and right to reply, why seek official validation in the "public record"?  Stanwyck performs on film to create something that will necessarily go beyond her, beyond her explanations, for us to discover, and rediscover, in our experience.  This is her gift (to us). 

Let us accept the gift graciously, and not ask her what she means by it.  Writing is one type of acknowledgement, and is itself an act of substantiation.  I am taken with Adrian's pithy summary of this: "appreciation is what the spectator must rise to, and what she or he can create only in an interplay of description, evocation and analysis (my emphasis)."  The very process of description is a mode of revelation as we labour to articulate the experience of a film's interactions, as they develop and deepen, and we attempt to conjure dynamic and density.  At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I am not a "gifted writer" (but thank you). I am mostly lost for words, but the reward for moment-by-moment responsiveness is that at least the film shepherds my prose.  Much of a film's substance is necessarily ordinary, therefore elusive in its familiarity, and writing on a film enables us to magnify and dwell upon the apparently insignificant, overlooked, or incidental.  Film also has a special capacity to embody the metaphorical in the literal, in the physical and in the real; and we may describe the actual in such a way that discloses the symbolic.  Film criticism translates moving images and sounds, and this conversion into words is investigative, discovering designs that are explanatory and telling but, unlike the "public record," indefinite. 

The film is a direct point of reference, the origin of my interest and, most importantly, the thing we share. I rarely mention the director in the main text because he is not in plain view.  References to the director are like references to external documentation and context; they are non-fictional and prosaic and are not easy to blend with evocations of the fictional and "poetic."  Adrian says that my point about Stanwyck "playing off" a previous scene is "questionable," because only one person was in a position to seize, develop, and take advantage of these resonances, and his name..is Douglas Sirk."  Again, Adrian is literal minded here because Stanwyck does not need to have "attended the shooting" (of the earlier scene) or "watched its rushes" to sense what is at stake.  A cursory glance at the script would suffice and besides she could play off the previous sequence without knowing exactly what happened in it.  Not knowing, in fact, could help her portray Norma's lack of knowledge as she endeavours to interpret the empty house and imagine Clifford's world.  Is it really a "critical fiction," as Adrian claims, that "actors seemingly respond.to the felt needs of 'the film'" or is it rather "critical" to the "fiction"? 

Important as they are, directors do not appear in the film (as the director) and I do not necessarily acknowledge them by explicitly mentioning them. Indeed, if I do "whisper [the director] between parentheses" then this might be an appropriate way of inferring his absent presence.  A good director's artistic personality infuses a film and our consciousness of their style enriches understanding and appreciation.  This consciousness can also overwhelm or become customary, and then regulate or circumscribe response, so it is refreshing to experience the director's style (and their decisions) from the direction of the performers. 

My respect for Douglas Sirk's authorship lies in accepting that I am incapable of realising his immeasurable and untouchable influence.  The result of all the interactions on set, conscious and unconscious, manifest and mysterious, some documented, some forever hidden, is (what we call) "the film."  I mean to celebrate the director's creativity when I say the film has a life of its own.  As I write, I sense many an academic and scholar wincing, after sweating for years in the archives, at my credulity and gullibility.  Indeed, Adrian rather affectionately likens me - as I "return.the act of 'reading a film' to what most filmgoers spontaneously do" - to the "ordinary moviegoer" or "naïve spectator."  Perhaps, spontaneity and naïvety are qualities worth pursuing. Film seeks them, with its eye for ordinary lucidity, and is ideal encouragement.

Andrew Klevan
© FIPRESCI 2008

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