Virtuoso -

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Résumé :

Elizabeth Taylor's electrifying performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The milkshake scene in There Will be Blood. Leonardo DiCaprio's turn as Arnie in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? What makes these performances so special?

Eloquently written and engagingly laid out, Murray Pomerance answers the tough question as to what makes an exceptional, or virtuosic performance. Pomerance intensively explores virtuosic performance in film, ranging from classical works through to contemporary production, and gives serious consideration to structural problems of dramatization and production, actorial methods and tricks, and contingencies that befall performers giving stand-out moments.

Looking at more than 40 aspects of the virtuosic act, and using an approach based in careful meditation and discursion, Virtuoso moves through such themes as showing off, effacement, self-consciousness, performative collapse, spontaneity, acting as dream, acting and femininity, virtuosity and torture, secrecy, improvisation, virtuosic silence, and others...

Biographie:

Acknowledgements

Overture
Chapter 1: A Brief History of the Virtuosic Moment
Chapter 2: Showing Off
Chapter 3: Effacement and Allure
Chapter 4: Money
Chapter 5: I Am Acting
Chapter 6: I Am On Show
Chapter 7: Charisma as Commodity
Chapter 8: Outstanding
Chapter 9: Virtuosity Superimposed
Chapter 10: Spontaneity
Chapter 11: In Dreams Awake
Chapter 12: A Feminine Mystique
Chapter 13: Tortures
Chapter 14: Secret Virtuosity
Chapter 15: (In)Credible Belief
Chapter 16: Touched by the Camera
Chapter 17: Improvise
Chapter 18: Breathe
Chapter 19: Director/Virtuoso
Chapter 20: Heimlichkeit
Chapter 21: Collapse
Chapter 22: Bigger Than Life
Chapter 23: The Spectacle of Things Falling Apart
Chapter 24: Limping On
Chapter 25: The Eternal Return
Chapter 26: Borders
Chapter 27: Facing
Chapter 28: Louder Louder, Softer Softer
Chapter 29: Virtuosity Classical
Chapter 30: Near Misses
Chapter 31: Discounts
Chapter 32: Virtuosic Silence
Chapter 33: Virtuosic Support
Chapter 34: Control
Chapter 35: Virtuosic Play-Within-Play
Chapter 36: Upstairs Downstairs
Chapter 37: Lost in the Stars
Chapter 38: Virtuosity Pianissimo Virtuosity Forte
Chapter 39: Virtuosity as Event
Chapter 40: Indelibles
Chapter 41: Virtuosity and The Virtuoso
Chapter 42: Negative Virtuosity
Chapter 43: Virtuosic Slippage
Chapter 44: The End or End of Virtuosic Performance

Coda: A Thought of Conclusion

Bibliography
Index