The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier

Author:Sidney Poitier [Poitier, Sidney]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General
ISBN: 9780061747489
Google: OF9ycRxQNcIC
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2000-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

DESTRUCTION OR RESURRECTION?

THOSE OF US fortunate enough to be in the movie business and to have our faces spread across the screen for many years become slightly iconographic figures, mythic figures, whether we want to be or not. Those who are given the designation “stars” cease to be simply actors and become a part of the collective unconscious, part of the dream fabric of the culture. It’s a tremendous responsibility, and one that members of my profession take on with highly varying degrees of success.

There’s a mystery to the relationship between life and an individual human personality, and I think the camera sees that mystery. The individual human personality has, bound up inside itself, a connection to all the wonders of the universe. When an artist is genuinely at work in his craft, he’s more fully calling on those connections to the universal.

What does the camera capture when it looks at me? I’ll leave that for others to assess. But staring back at that lens from within myself, I feel that so much of what I’ve otherwise kept hidden is captured and filtered. What emerges on the screen reminds people of something in themselves, because I’m so many different things. I’m a network of primal feelings, instinctive emotions that have been wrestled with so long they’re automatic. The things I don’t like about myself, the things I do like about myself, the things I’m not but I’d like to be, the things I am but don’t want others to know about—these are all percolating inside. All these contradictory aspects are the basic me. Courage and cowardice, strength and weakness, fear and joy, love and hate—that’s what makes up the actor so that’s available to the camera.

The lens sees what it sees; it’s entirely neutral in its gaze. It’s not looking for my best or my worst, and there’s no guarantee that it will capture something truly representative. It can’t mirror the self completely, but I do know that it can tell when I’m thinking, and I know that it can tell when there’s something I’m trying to hide.

When I play anger in a scene, it’s different from when I experience anger in life. Anger in life is so genuine that it’s instantaneous. It may be triggered explosively; it may be triggered at a low level and, depending on what follows, then escalate or subside. That’s life. If someone slaps my kid and I see it, then I’m ready to take that person apart. Correct? Okay, now the actor who doesn’t have a child but must play such a reaction in a film, where does he go for examples of the feeling? Where does he go for as close as he can get to the stuff of that emotion, and how does he access it so instantaneously that it’s as if, in fact, it were real life?

He goes to his sense memory. He goes deep inside himself into a place where all his individual sense memories are stored, and that place them connects him with the universe.

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