Introduction: Gesture in film

Abstract

In his classic study, Gesture, Adam Kendon describes the visible actions that comprise utterances (Kendon, 2004, pp. 1-2). These visible utterances can occur in conjunction with, or independently to, speech. Kendon's definition of gesture draws attention to it as a deed and a doing. Gesture is an activity, a product of energy and motion. Human gestures occur as a result of movements of the body, of the face (such as rolling the eyes, winking), the neck (nodding, shaking the head), the hands (the V sign, waving), the shoulders (shrugging), the knees (genuflecting), the torso (bowing, turning your back on someone), the buttocks (mooning, twerking) or combinations thereof. Many gestures form pictures through specific motions: outlining an absent object's dimensions or mimicking exploits. David McNeill distinguishes between imagistic and non-imagistic gestures. For him, as Kendon summarises, 'imagistic gestures are those in which movements are made that are interpreted as depicting the shape of an object, displaying an action of some kind, or representing some pattern of movement' (Kendon, 2004, pp. 99-100). These kinds of gestures are moving representations of acts or of artefacts: motion pictures of a kind. Given that gestures are often imagistic, connecting gesture and film, as this collection of essays proposes to do, is an evident, if not unproblematic, move to make. It is, of course, easy to examine gestures made by actors in films. Recently, André Habib has movingly explored his enduring memories of the gestural power and influence of the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud's left hand, particularly in Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Féminin (Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1966), but also in other films (Habib, 2015). Gesture forms a key means by which an actor can establish the personality of a character. In films such as Cruising Bar (Dir. Robert Ménard, Québec, 1989), in which one actor assumes multiple parts, gesture works alongside make-up and voice to establish character differentiation. The actor Michel Côté plays four different roles in Cruising Bar, four aspiring Lotharios whose temperaments are each associated with a specific animal. Côté is Jean-Jacques (the peacock), Gerard (the bull), Patrice (the lion) and Serge (the earthworm). Each possesses distinctive gestural traits: Jean-Jacques is upright, elegant and strutting, Gerard lumbers and ruts, Patrice is touchy feely and extravagant with his movements, while Serge is uptight, gesturally repressed, repeatedly baring his teeth in a nervous smile. Cruising Bar amplifies how gesture is used by an actor as a tool to create and detail a given demeanour. Gesture frequently forms an integral dimension to a film's mise en scène, a bodily contribution to mood. In 12 Angry Men (Dir. Sidney Lumet, USA, 1957), for example, the gestures of each of the jurors play a major role in establishing their personalities and their shifting positions within the evolving power dynamic in the jury room. The thoughtfulness