GAVELA’S DIGRESSIONS ON FILM

This article puts forth and discusses Branko Gavella’s thoughts regarding acting in the movie from the essay The Actor and Audience (Theater Problems), first published in 1934 in the fifth issue of Krleža’s magazine Today. Although cursory, these comments are still particularly noteworthy because Gavella clearly distinguishes the nature of on-screen acting and acting in theater. Based on this insight, he concludes that, due to its technical nature, a movie can make an actor surreal, or in other words, surpass many realistic assumptions and directly go to an entirely spiritual manifestation. In the process, Gavella dwells on the connection between actor and ambient in a movie in particular, specifically the possibility of a movie’s means of expression highlighting or subverting an actor’s face and expression. Since the essay puts forward both Gavella’s (extensive) quotes and detailed insight into his remarks, this article discusses and contextualizes them within the confines of period-specific film theory and screen-acting theory in particular, and comes to the conclusion that the presented remarks essentially pioneer the definition of screen-acting, not only within a Croatian context, but further abroad as well