The level of relatability a
character maintains is essential for drawing in the audience and making the
film seem believable. In this paper, I will argue how characters developed
humanistic and relatable qualities within the forty-nine years between Cabiria (1914), Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ (1925), Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ (1959), and Cleopatra (1963).
Cabiria
and Ben-Hur (1925) are the more primeval
of the four films in the way that the film industry was relatively new. Within these two films, the disjointed
relationship between the audience and the characters stems from the robotic
movements, over-acting, emotional disconnect, and lack of auditory familiarity.
Silent movies faced difficulties in creating realistic characters, as there was
no sound. The voices of characters could not be heard, so actors had to
exaggerate interactions. Emotions were portrayed wildly excessive and movements
were sharply mechanical, as seen in Cabiria
when Croessa pleads for Maciste and Fulvius to rescue Cabiria from being
sacrificed. Croessa is over-the-top; she is constantly wringing her hands and
hanging off of Fulvius in a very hysterical manner—making her reaction seem
unrealistic and unfamiliar to the audience.
Within the thirty-four years from
the Ben-Hur film to the more recent
adaptation, there is a giant leap of development in the relatability and
humanism of characters. The first notable difference is sound. Allowing the
audience to hear the voices of the very characters themselves brings a
tremendous amount of acquaintance between the characters and the audience. One
cannot help but feel familiar with Ben Hur once his voice has been heard. This,
coupled with the lack of over-acting, smooth movements, and elaborated
emotional turmoil contributes to Ben-Hur
(1959) and Cleopatra’s abilities to portray characters as actual people
rather than human-looking creatures on screens.
The development of characters into
relatable human beings was a feat drawn out over time. Cabiria, Ben-Hur (1925), Ben-Hur (1959), and Cleopatra all build
off of one another in terms of creating such characters.
I like your arguments about how sound has played a big part in the changing of acting and the connection the audience is able to have with the movie. Im not sure if this would help, but you could also talk about the addition of color gives the audience more visual connection with the audience. The actors are able to play off the colors of their costumes or sets to add to the movie. Its just a thought. Overall this is very good argument.
ReplyDeleteIt's a really interesting thesis. I noticed that you had specific examples in your first body paragraph but not so much in your second paragraph. Examples of the "elaborated emotional turmoil" for Ben-Hur and Cleopatra's portrayal of characters as people would strengthen your argument .
ReplyDeleteThere is a very clear thesis and it is easy to tell what the essay is about. I believe that your essay will be an interesting one to do. Perhaps you might also want to talk about how costumes gave connection to the audience as most costumes where influenced by the era of a given movie.
ReplyDeleteYour abstract reads really well. Just to throw a wrench into your gears, however, you may want to consider that the audience back in 1914 probably didn't expect anything else but overly dramatic pantomime. They were used to the same type of acting from the stage (think of opera, even today), and it may not have prevented them at all from identifying and feeling with a character. That said, I think it would be very interesting to compare scenes with similar content (declaration of love, suicide, desperation, the restoring of hope) in silent movies vs. talkies and see what sound and realistic acting adds that may be missing in the silent movies, or whether there are occasions where the silent movies, despite the fact that they only have pantomime and background music to convey emotions with, do a similarly effective job as sound movies.
ReplyDelete