Emozioni di celluloide. Melodramma e gestualità nel cinema delle origini

Redundant acting, usually attributed to the entire silent cinema, reveals to be a crucial trait especially of early cinema, where the unspeakable is at home much more than elsewhere and the language of the bodies is necessarily entrusted with the task to communicate to the spectator the meaning of the situations represented, releasing the entire emotional charge. This gestural redundancy certainly intercepts nineteenth-century popular acting, essentially made up of codified expressions and fidelity to the handbooks of scenic poses. But it does not rely solely on these; rather, it adapts the repertoire to the specific needs of the new medium, among other things by developing its own technique and an autonomous, extremely energetic, flexible but effective gestural heritage, which constitutes its most original and significant trait. An excessive gesture, in fact, fully embodies the Brooksian idea of melodramatic staging. And, imposing itself as melodramatic, it forces us to consider the transversal presence of the melodramatic in a large part of the cinema of those years – even when not fully attributable to "melodrama" as a genre – precisely because of the important role of bodies.