Performers make a crucial contribution to the achievement of narrative films. By moving through exemplary sequences, this book closely follows the movement and behaviour of screen performers — Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Widmark — and by emphasising their relationship to other aspects of film style — camera, location and plot — it develops accounts that are specific and involved. This study concentrates on films from the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood and moment-by-moment descriptions enable fresh interpretations to emerge and evolve. These reveal the significance and intensity of a performer’s engagement with the world of a film.
