Tarkovsky on Crafting the Artistic Image: The Film Actor

Tarkovsky on Crafting the Artistic Image: The Film Actor

“The search for actors is a long and painful business.  It is impossible to tell until half-way through shooting whether you have made the right choice.  I would even go further and say that the hardest thing for me is to believe that I have chosen the right actor, and that his individuality does correspond to what I have planned” (Tarkovsky 148).  Then, Mr. Tarkovsky, what makes a particular actor the right choice?  And why does it take you so long to determine if you’ve made the right choice?  Half-way through shooting the film makes it a little late to back out.

The Purpose of the Film Actor’s Work

The idea that there is a right choice presupposes that there must be criteria for the right choice.  To identify that criteria for a right choice of film actor, one must first define the purpose of a film actor’s work.  Starting with what a film actor is not, Tarkovsky would say, that an actor in cinema is not a theatre actor.  

First, the actor in film does not have the privilege of the theatre actor in experiencing the “unison of actor and audience as they create art together.  The performance only exists as long as the actor is there as a creator, when he is present, when he is: physically and spiritually alive.  No actor means no theatre” (Tarkovsky 140).  The film actor cannot respond to the energeia in the audience because the film actor is not with them.  Actors of the cinema can only experience the interactions and response of their fellow actors and the film crew.  Even then it is not a chronological flow of the story from beginning to end, but multiple sequences of start, stop, and repeat until the desired outcome for each individual shot or moment is achieved.  In that way, it is an entirely different performing experience from theatrical acting.

Anyone who has experienced a film performance of a story and also experienced a live theatre performance of the same story can testify to all the ways in which they are not the same at all.  Part of the behind-the-scenes build up to live theatre acting, according to Tarkovsky, is the way in which the actor prepares her or his role.  “To the stage actor theoretical questions are of great importance: you have to work out the basis of each individual performance in relation to the overall concept of the production and develop a schema of the characters’ actions and interactions, the pattern of behaviour and motivation that has to run through the play” (Tarkovsky 148).  Conversely "the film actor should never ask those questions that are traditional and perfectly appropriate in theatre [...] -’Why?  What for?  What is the key to the image?  What is the underlying idea?’ ” (Tarkovsky 145).  The actors of the theatre must understand these things because their director’s job, apart from after performance notes, has ended when the curtains open.  The theatre actor must now take all directions they have received, mix it with their understanding of the answers to the above questions, and respond appropriately to how well or poorly their audience seems to be interacting with the play.  Once the play begins, the theatre actors in essence become the directors of themselves for the duration of that performance.
 
How a phenomenon is expressed in a theatrical performance is another way that Tarkovsky differentiates film acting from theatre acting.  “Through a [single] detail theatre will make us aware of an entire phenomenon.  Every phenomenon, of course, has a number  of facets and aspects; and the fewer of these are reproduced on the stage for the audience to reconstruct the phenomenon itself, the more precisely and effectively will the director be using the theatrical convention” (Tarkovsky 154).  According to Tarkovsky’s ideas on theatre acting, it operates upon larger, or macro, concepts of symbolism and metaphor; not permitting itself to get bogged down in every detail, for that would take away from the “poetic truth” being conveyed (Tarkovsky 154).  Too many details would muddy the waters, ruining clarity.  Cinema, however, is built upon authentically presenting life through minutiae rather than through the use of symbolism or metaphor (Tarkovsky 154). 

If the film actor’s performance exists outside of the energeia of direct interaction with their audience, is never built upon the traditional questions of theatre, and ought to avoid symbolism and metaphor; what criteria embodies the right choice of actors for a film?   What is the film actor’s purpose?  The film actor “cannot know all the components which will go to make up the film.  His task is to live! - and to trust the director” (Tarkovsky 140).  And what, pray tell, does that look like?

Qualities of the Right Choice

Let’s start with the quality of trusting the director.  This is the defining of a relationship and as such the director’s purpose must also be known.  In cinema the “director is rather like a collector.  His exhibits are his frames, which constitute life, recorded once and for all time in myriad well-loved details, pieces, fragments, of which the actor, the character, may or may not be a part” (Tarkovsky 140).  So, the director, not the actor, is the collector or assembler of each recorded frame of life to be on display for the audience.  For the actors in Tarkovsky’s films, the director is the one member outside of the cast with whom the actors experience the energeia of interaction.  This first and only opportunity that film actors have to interact with an audience is a singularity of experience with the one person, the director, and thus a closely intimate actors and audience relationship.  The actors only have to connect the life of the story with one person.  This is why Tarkovsky insists that, “In cinema all that is required is the truth of that moment’s state of mind” (Tarkovsky 148).  The burden of assembling the whole story remains in the director’s hands.  Unlike in the theatre, the director’s job does not end at the actor’s performance time, but after the film has been edited.  The film actor is free to live in the present moment unencumbered by having control of the larger outcomes; much like how in any given moment of life we only control our own decisions in the midst of the larger world around us. 

Giving the actors the freedom to live in the moment allowed Tarkovsky’s actors the opportunity for “Original, unique expressiveness - that is the essential attribute of the cinema actor, for nothing less can become infectious on the screen or express the truth” (Tarkovsky 144).  Tarkovsky found that, “If the film actor constructs his own role, he loses the opportunity for spontaneous and involuntary playing within the terms laid down by the plan and purpose for the film” (Trakovsky 139).  Furthermore, “The more analytical, cerebral actor assumes that he knows the film as it will be or at any rate having studied the script makes painful efforts to envisage it in its final form.  By assuming that he knows how the film has to be, the actor starts to play the ‘end product’ - that is , his conception of his role; in doing so he is negating the very principle of the creation of the cinema image”, which for Tarkovsky was to capture the truth or authentic life of the narrative (Tarkovsky 145-146).  And to Tarkovsky, who was often discovering the truth of the story in the process of producing the film, that sort of acting was sabotage for “even the best director, who knows exactly what he wants, can seldom envisage the final result exactly” (Tarkovsky 145).  The end result of such acting for Tarkovsky meant inauthenticity sculpted in time.  This usually comes in the form of a lack of respect for your audience and a megaphoning to them of what they should be getting out of this very uncinematic moment instead of trusting the audience.  Tarkosky said instead, “Never try to convey your idea to the audience - that is a thankless and senseless task.  Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess  and appreciate it” (Tarkovsky 152).  He was asking his actors to trust that he would direct them with what they needed to make each individual moment of the film become a display of life.

According to Tarkovsky, displaying life in sculpted time also meant recording the life of the story in minutiae rather than by broad symbolism.  In contrast to theatre, cinema "reproduces a phenomenon in its details, its minutiae, and the more the director reproduces these in their concrete, sensuous form, the closer he will be to his aim” (Tarkovsky 154).  In Tarkovsky’s line of reasoning, film is most truthful when unfettered from symbolism and when tied strongly to the reality of a moment through that moment’s details.  Symbolism forces something to represent another thing.  Details of intense moments, happy or horrific, are what we remember from our lives for years to come.  If symbols emerge from those details for us, they are symbols or meanings of our own making.  That is how Tarkovsky wanted to allow his audiences to experience his films.  “What the audience deserves is respect, a sense of their own dignity” (Tarkovsky 155).  To achieve this demanded a working relationship with his actors.

Working With a Film Actor 

“A director is obliged to work with the person least fitted to be an actor” (Tarkovsky 145).  In other words, it is hard work to direct an actor who lacks mastery of his or her craft, however, a working relationship can take place with the right choice of actor; the one owning mastery of the art.  “My idea of the real screen actor is someone capable of accepting whatever rules of the game are put to him, easily and naturally, with no sign of strain; to remain spontaneous in his reactions to any improvised situation” (Tarkovsky 144).  In that case, working with the actor is transfigured into a working relationship.  One in which, “The director has to induce the right state of mind in him [the actor], and then make sure that it is constantly sustained” (Tarkovsky 139). 

Questions, Comments, and Concerns

Apart from control of the dispersion of information to the actors,  Tarkovsky wanted his actors to “have total freedom, once he [the actor] has made it clear before shooting starts that he is completely bound by the film's conception" (Tarkovsky 141-144).  It seems that the conception for Tarkovsky’s films were rather loosely bound, because discovery of the truth of the story was a part of the director’s process.  He said in this section on The Film Actor that “each director requires different human types” (Tarkovsky 151).  The right choice of actors for Tarkovsky would have to be or become comfortable with just knowing the broad strokes of the story at the outset.  They would then have to be or become adept at improvisation as the details of individual shots or scenes were made known to them.  If the actors are able to accept those things and understand the benefit of trading off the full knowledge of the story for the freedom to respond spontaneously in the moment, then they would likely have a lot of fun without the pressure that comes with knowing.  There is much trust that must take place in that method of directing, both on the part of the director and the actors.  It’s no wonder that Tarkovsky wasn’t sure about his selection of actors until the half-way point of the production.  It’s also no wonder that he had at least one actor,  Anatoliy Solonitsyn, that was in all of his films before leaving Russia. 

Casting actors is probably the single most important aspect of filmmaking after the script itself.  The painstaking time taken in finding the right choice of actors for his films is no doubt linked to Tarkovsky’s success as a director. Some important take-aways from this are some questions to answer before embarking on the casting quest. What do I see as the purpose of actors?  What are my criteria for the right choice of actors?  How much of the story do I want my actors to know about ahead of time?  Are there actors who are so skilled in their craft that I would throw out or adapt my methodology of directing actors in order to work with that actor?  Know what you value most before launching out to collaborate in that sea of talents deep and wide.  


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Works Cited

Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting In Time. Translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair, Twenty-First University of Texas Press, 2023.