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I'm a huge Bette Davis fan, and so are lots of people in the animation industry. In view of that, it's hard to imagine why her style of acting, or anything remotely similar to it, never gets into gig studio feature animation. Our industry churns out cartloads of perky, predictable, feminist Cal Arts heroines that nobody cares about. You'd think that in all that clutter somebody would find room for a heroine based on a different model. Someone more like...well, like Bette.
I thought it might be fun to examine what that style consists of. It's a big subject, and we won't be able to cover it all in one post, but we can make a start.
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Come to think of it, maybe modern actresses would have a hard time doing what Bette did, because her acting style was built around around carefully articulated speech, and not many film actors study that any more. Bette gives almost every new syllable a different facial expression.
I also love the technique (above) called "leading with your eyes," a trick used so often by Davis that it ought to be named after her.
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| Boy, she really fishes (above) for those those consonants. She inflates her chest and cranks her head up in order to snatch them from the air. |
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Davis has great cheeks (above) , that look sunny when she smiles. Sometimes she plays against type and combines happy cheeks with seedy eyes.
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| Sometimes she says a whole word or two with her eyes closed. Dark eyelashes and high, clearly defined eyelashes on a smooth face help the effect. |
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| Sometimes Bette scans the person she's talking to (above) with her eyes. She carefully studies the wrinkles and buttons on the other person's shirt while they talk. This is a classic scene stealer's trick. |
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| Talking about scene stealing, here's (above) Davis stealing a scene from Mariam Hopkins. Hopkins does a lot a lot of broad crying here, and no doubt believed she was the center of attention when the scene was shot, but the scene really belongs to Bette. She employs an attention-getting stare that vaudevillians called "the fish." Once Davis stole a scene from another actress by unbuttoning her blouse in the shadows behind the woman. Davis played hardball, no doubt about it. Let me make it clear that I'm not criticizing her for this. She honed scene stealing into an effective style, and backed it up with virtuoso acting. I wouldn't have wanted her to change a thing. |
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Davis (above)must have spent a lot of time infront of a mirror, getting the character right.
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| She could make faces that were unique and unforgettable, like the one above. Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words.... |
