Actors and the Eras of American Independent Cinema

Abstract

This chapter commences with a literature review of the scholarship on American independent cinema, and it demonstrates that despite the blossoming of the field in the past twenty-five years, there is very little research on questions of acting and performance. The authors attribute this lack of academic interest to scholars often seeing performance as part of a film’s mise-en-scène, which directors ostensibly control. With American independent cinema having been approached primarily through the prism of auteurism, questions about actors’ performances and their roles in supporting independent cinema through fundraising, championing small films, and even producing many pictures have been largely overlooked. The chapter discusses examples of actors who have been at the center of independent filmmaking’s different expressions throughout its history. These examples range from the early years of American cinema and the establishment of United Artists by star-actors such as Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to the ways actors and acting styles define recent expressions of independent film such as mumblecore. The chapter also clarifies how the book defines the different historical expressions of American independent cinema.