Comparison Of Movie Performing Arts Between Tony Leung Chiu Wai And Nicolas Cage

In an age dominated by visual culture and “the economy of attention”,audio-visual language plays an increasingly important part in films, whileperforming—the supposed spirit of film art seems unappealing to audience any more.This is the very context that emerged two popular film “stars”—Tony Leung Chiu Waiand Nicolas Cage, both of whom would put their mind to playing roles, no matter incommercial movies or art ones, to achieve a perfect interpretation of the characters.They are, on the one hand, carriers of changes taking place in the one-hundred-yearhistory of movie, and on the other hand reflecting the modern fashion of diversificationin film performing. Thus they should be crowned with “film artists” rather than beingplainly called “stars”.“What is a good film performances?” Mary Allen O’Brien begins with thisquestion in her book “Film Acting(The Techniques and History Acting for Camera)”.To address it in another way, this paper makes a systematic comparison of the twoextraordinary actors’ performing from three aspects.Firstly, after introducing the status quo of performing arts researches done byscholars at home and abroad, the author will elaborate on Tony Leung Chiu Wai andNicolas Cage’s film performing experience, and by comparing the most typical filmsthey performed early in their film career, reveal the factors that affect theirdevelopment of performing style. Through a linear analysis of the films theyperformed, this part comes to a conclusion that the two actors resemble each other incareer experience—transforming from performing their own temperament tosophisticatedly building characters.Secondly, an analysis of their performing in commercial and art films will becarried out in a specific way, mainly based on a horizontal comparison of the similarrole they played in different career stages and types of film. In conveying informationof characters to audience accurately, they chose different ways as to control facialexpressions and body gestures. Take gangsters movies as an example, when portrayinga character, Tony Leung Chiu Wai preferred to interpret its inner conflict by a contrastof facial expressions and languages, while Nicolas Cage would rather show its emotionand power by obvious body languages.Thirdly, a research will be done on the elements affecting their formation ofperforming style—the melancholy temperament and impressive eyes that determine the roles they chose and being arranged to play, the influence exerted by on theirperforming, and the auteurs who changed and influenced their performing style. In aword, this part will explain the elements contributing to their ability to manage anyroles in any type of films in terms of three parts—the two actors’ physical appearances,their performing principles and their directors’ auteurism.