Acting
Performance as a symbolic code: face, voice, body and the gap between what is said and what is shown.
- acting
- reference
- symbolic-code
Everything a performer contributes to meaning: casting, gesture, posture, vocal delivery, stillness, and the calibrated distance between dialogue and behaviour. In analysis, acting is read like any other code — as choices, not as people simply being.
What to look for
Where does the performance contradict the line? What does the body do while the voice is polite? How does casting itself carry meaning (star persona, type)?
Canonical cases
Anthony Perkins in Psycho — the parlour scene — boyish charm laid over flinches, stammers and a jaw that hardens on "falsity"; the performance narrates what the script hides. Ellen Burstyn's Oscar-winning Alice in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), built with Scorsese through improvisation — and star power that shaped the whole production: see Commerce.
Sources
Truffaut on directing Perkins; Biskind on New Hollywood performance style.