Beneath the Stillness...
Swirling Emotions

Liliana Cavani put her finger on a unique quality in Bogarde’s skill as an actor: ‘his façon pâle - a quality that enabled him so effectively to convey hidden depths of extreme anxiety.’ (Coldstream, 375-376)

Bogarde never thought of himself as ‘an extrovert actor’. He was instead ‘an introvert; instinctive rather than histrionic.’ (Snakes and Ladders, 129). When he discussed the essence of Garbo’s talent, he might have been describing his own skill in ‘behaving’ and ‘thinking’ for the camera versus surface acting and histrionics:

‘Garbo was not an actress, as she so inaccurately is called; she was an “instinctive” and a “behaviourist” – very different things altogether. Acting, as such, is surface; “behaving” is interior and only surfaces in thought. The camera photographs thought as readily as it photographs acting, but it sets both on the screen, and the result, which most often touches the audience, is the “thought” rather than the histrionics. Garbo had thought in abundance. It is not an intellectual thing, it is simply a “gut” thing.’ (For The Time Being, 183-184).