Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro: modelli di recitazione nella New Hollywood

This work belongs to the area of research which studies film acting and focuses on the analysis of three actors, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, during the period between the beginning of the 1960s and the end of 1970s. It was in fact during that period that these three actors established themselves as acting models, contributing to the renewal of the Acting Hollywood Style. Analyzing the acting techniques of these three actors also means coming to terms with the refining of the way film acting is analyzed. We decided to aim the research chiefly towards a philological study, mainly analyzing the text, that is the film, which is the place where acting actually takes place, and where it takes part in the creation of the meaning of the film. The study is divided into two levels of analysis: the first level investigates the object from a theoretical approach, trying to create a systematic method of studying the acting performance; the second level coincides with the philological analysis of the films. These two levels are completed by the historical contest, in order to develop a map to study the single performances of the actors during their careers in the given period. We had to consider various aspects: the body language, the use of the voice, the interaction with the other aesthetic elements of the film and with the director’s poetics, the interaction with the other actors, the type of character and how Lee Strasberg’s Method, which all three of the actors have come into contact with at some time, has been used in their performances. The work is divided into three main sections which retrace the entire careers of the three actors. We decided to analyze all the films played by them in the given period, in order to see the performance details of each actor from a progressive point of view, and focusing on those films where the actors developed those distinctive features which turned them into acting models. Thanks to their acting method and antiheroic features, Nicholson, Pacino and De Niro were able to embody the new aesthetic and narrative perspectives of New Hollywood, giving birth to a new acting model. Not a type anymore, but an individual, who completely embodies the antihero. Jack Nicholson’s facial expressions and his ability to both capture and dominate the attention of his audience, Al Pacino’s neurotic performance and gestural tension between action and passivity, Robert De Niro’s mimetic obsession conveyed through the complete identification with the character, can summarize a hypothetical New Hollywood acting model.