Hayao Miyazaki at an event for Ponyo (2008)

Since the beginning of cinema, the theater has been a major influence on the medium. Cinematic staging is largely based on precepts from the theater. Though cinema developed its own language, a lot of traces of theater are still present. To point out the obvious, most acting techniques come directly from theater.

Perhaps in Hollywood cinema the major influence was the Stanislavski system. Stanislavski proposed a school of acting where the actor was expected to control every facet of his performance in order to mix theatrical emotions with real ones to create a truly dramatic performance. This style can be seen in Robert De Niro’s performance in Raging Bull, or in almost every Daniel Day-Lewis performance.

The literary counterpart of this was incarnated in the person of the German poet and writer Bertolt Brecht. Brecht proposed the “epic-theater”, where the thoughts were more important than emotion. For Brecht a play was completed outside the theater, in the reflections of the audience when the play is over. To achieve this he employed the verfremdungseffekt (distancing effect), a strategy which constantly reminded the audience that they were in a theater.

In Brechtian theory, if the spectator knows that what he is watching is fiction and is not driven by an emotional identification, he can complete the play in his mind. Brecht was also a Marxist and his main interest was to expose contradictions from the stage, and involve the audience. He never gave complete answers which would go against dialectical exercise.

The 14 Best Movies Influenced by Bertolt Brecht’s Theater Techniques

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