The actor as a filmic form : an acting studies methodology

Abstract

The article proposes a scientific methodology of the aesthetic study of the work of the actor in the cinema and in the audiovisual, the acting studies. The field of studies, which emerged in the United States in the 1970s and developed afterwards in France and the Anglo-Saxon world, aims to place the film actor at the center of its problematic, as a place of expression, production of meaning, construction of formal and narrative, of possibility of historical circumscription by the chronological study of its practices and of affective intermediation between filmic text and spectator. We propose to return to the seminal texts of the field to condense the collaboration of each author to the field and propose five axes of analysis of the study of the body and persona of the actor, with the purpose of creating a scientific basis for the production of historical and aesthetic knowledge of the actor’s performance in cinema and other media.