Cut to Tobin, who slyly smiles and remarks, “I think he’s cute.” Cut to Chevalier, who becomes uncomfortable, squirming and frowning. MacDonald whispers something in Tobin’s ear while Tobin stares at Chevalier, clearly impressed. “Oh!” she says, eyes widening in surprise. Another close-up shows Chevalier, still frowning but looking more puzzled and concerned. MacDonald whispers again. “He can?” Tobin asks, looking Chevalier up and down in frank wonder and admiration. “Yes, he can!” says MacDonald proudly. In his next close-up, Chevalier is baffled and openmouthed. “Let’s see him do it!” Tobin cries in delight. MacDonald crosses to Chevalier and sweetly pleads, “Darling, look like an owl!”
Lubitsch’s nonmusical comedy Trouble in Paradise (1932) might seem different because it’s filled with Samson Raphaelson’s witty dialogue, but it, too, involves imitation. In an opening scene, Herbert Marshall stands in the moonlight on the balcony of a hotel in Venice, looking down at the Grand Canal as an obsequious waiter hovers behind his shoulder, addresses him as “Baron,” and offers to serve him:
| WAITER: | Yes, Baron, what shall we start with, Baron? | |
| BARON: | Hmm? Oh, yes. That’s not so easy. Beginnings are always difficult. | |
| WAITER: | Yes, Baron. | |
| BARON: | If Casanova suddenly turned out to be Romeo, having supper with Juliet, who might become Cleopatra, how would you start? | |
| WAITER: | I would start with cocktails. | |
| BARON: | Excellent. It must be the most marvelous supper. We may not eat it, but it must be marvelous. | |
| WAITER: | Yes, Baron. | |
| BARON: | And waiter? | |
| WAITER: | Yes, Baron? | |
| BARON: | You see that moon? | |
| WAITER: | Yes, Baron. | |
| BARON: | I want to see that moon in the champagne. | |
| WAITER: | Yes, Baron. (Writes.) Moon in champagne. | |
| BARON: | I want to see, umm. | |
| WAITER: | Yes, Baron? | |
| BARON: | And as for you, waiter . . . | |
| WAITER: | Yes, Baron? | |
| BARON: | I don’t want to see you at all. | |
| WAITER: | No, Baron. |
Amusing as the words are, the charm of the scene has as much to do with Marshall’s performance, which epitomizes the popular 1930s idea of ultracosmopolitan masculinity. His well-cut tuxedo, his slicked-back hair, and his elegant pose, with one hand holding a cigarette and the other in a jacket pocket, all create an air of sophistication befitting an advertisement in a luxury magazine. Marshall also speaks amusingly, in a plummy English accent, almost singing his lines in a tone of worldly, romantic melancholy. In keeping with the dialogue, he’s too good to be real. Indeed, we soon learn that he’s not a baron but a jewel thief, perfectly suited to a film in which almost all the characters are pretending or wearing social masks.
Another form of imitation can be seen when actors play characters that try to hide their true feelings from one another or that put on a comic or ironic act—something that inevitably occurs in films that have theater or playacting as a subject. Such films often make it difficult to distinguish truth from pretense. In All about Eve (1950), for example, Bette Davis plays an aging theatrical star threatened by the offstage machinations of an apparently naïve and worshipful young understudy, played by Anne Baxter. Baxter’s performance is cleverly balanced between innocence and gimlet-eyed guile, so that we glimpse just a hint of her deception even when it fools others. Discovered as a waif standing in the rain outside a theater, she’s invited into Davis’s dressing room, where the star’s director-husband and a famous playwright have gathered after the show. Humble and shy, she passionately praises Davis and flatters everyone else in the room, converting them into a hushed audience curious to hear the story of her life. Just as her story begins, Thelma Ritter, in the role of Davis’s dresser and maid, suddenly enters and briefly disturbs the expectant mood. After a pause, Baxter proceeds: she’s a poor farmer’s daughter from Wisconsin who has always loved theater but took a job as a secretary in a brewery to help support her family; there she met and married her husband, Eddie, who also loved theater. But World War II intervened, and Eddie was killed in the South Pacific. Since then, she’s been finding work wherever she can and attending Davis’s performances at every opportunity. She tells all this with an absence of self-pity and an idealistic, worshipful attitude toward the stage, where “the unreal seemed more real to me.” There are several clues that she’s giving a performance: she’s a bit too pretty and nicely made up, her voice is a bit too cultivated and melodic, and her story contains a few too many sentimental clichés. Even so, she causes Bette Davis, whose face is covered with cold cream, to pluck a tissue from a box and wipe a tear from her eye. Thelma Ritter, a woman who has seen many actors come and go, is also impressed. “What a story!” she sighs. “Everything but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end!”
If All about Eve concerns an actor who feigns emotion, Being Julia (2004), adapted from Somerset Maugham’s novel Theatre, concerns an actor whose excess of real emotion threatens to undermine her performances. Annette Bening plays a middle-aged British stage star of the 1930s, a larger-than-life character endowed with innate theatricality and acute emotional sensitivity. The realistic performance requires Bening to imitate certain conventional models; she must adopt a British accent, and her every gesture and expression, both onstage and off, must suggest the fragile histrionics of an aging diva. When we first see her, she makes a grand entrance into her husband-impresario’s office, complaining with intense bravura that she’s exhausted and in need of a rest. That evening she goes to an elegant restaurant and makes another grand entrance, smiling and nodding to acknowledge her admiring public; but when her homosexual dinner companion tells her that to avoid gossip they shouldn’t keep seeing one another, she breaks into copious tears.
The ensuing plot concerns her affair with an American fan, barely older than her adolescent son, who seduces her and then turns her into a miserable, sexually dependent slave. When the affair begins, she’s lifted out of a mild depression and becomes giddy and girlish; but when her lover withdraws and treats her coldly, she becomes a haggard, weeping neurotic, alternately angry and groveling. What helps her conquer the roller coaster of emotion is her memory of a long-dead director and mentor (Michael Gambon), who magically appears as a sort of ghost in moments of crisis, criticizing her everyday performance and dispensing advice. Gambon is a projection of her own critical self-consciousness, an internal monitor or coach, created through her professional ability to mentally observe her performances as they happen, both onstage and in real life. In Denis Diderot’s words, Julia has within herself, like all the best actors, “an unmoved and disinterested onlooker” (Cole and Chinoy, 162). At her most anguished point, when she’s weeping hysterically, Gambon appears and mocks her ability to “turn on the waterworks.” He advises her to become a more imitative actor, exactly the sort of player Diderot might have admired: “You’ve got to learn to seem to do it—that’s the art of acting! Hold the mirror up to nature, ducky. Otherwise you become a nervous wreck.” In the film’s concluding moments, this advice enables her to emerge victorious not only in her private life but also on the stage, where her lover’s new girlfriend has been cast alongside her.
The stage acting in Being Julia, shown in close-ups, is manifestly artificial and full of tricks: we see heavy makeup on the actors’ faces, we hear the actors’ loud voices projected toward the theater auditorium, and we glimpse Bening struggling with a misplaced prop during a tearful scene. In the offstage sequences, however, the acting looks realistic and the emotions are sometimes expressed in nakedly exposed style. In the scene in which Bening has her tearful breakdown, she wears no apparent makeup and her pale skin becomes red and blotchy as she weeps. We can never know (without asking her) how this scene was achieved—she may have been feigning emotion, she may have been playing “herself” in imaginary circumstances, and she may have been doing both. No matter how she accomplished her task, her performance looks spontaneous, as if she were being Julia rather than imitating her.
At the same time, the audience recognizes Julia as Annette Bening, whose body and expressive attributes can be seen in other films. Her apparent authenticity of feeling, which
