I, an Actress (1977) User Reviews

the meaning of I, an Actress

[mrdonleone · 6/10 · 9 November 2009]

this is my interpretation of 'I, an Actress'. the opening and ending credits music is the same, a happy song with funny music, which probably means everything we will hear is actually fake, nothing of what we see is real. this is true, because what we see and hear, is simply an audition of an actress, but also the audition of an actor. the male/female thin is very important in this movie, perhaps the most important thing, because the overacting we witness is really bad. the colors of the movie are bad too, but the camera plays with a lot of shadows. again, we must think about what we see, because what we see is fake, it's just an audition. this means again there's a director protagonist (even though we only hear him yelling this time, and it's but the question whether or not the actress is the real protagonist or he). together with these thoughts, we must realize this is all about homosexuality, just as the other films of Kuchar. but here more obviously hidden homosexuality (the male/female thing, the 'cheating without sex' theme, the cigarette thing, the blow job suggestion, ...), quite obvious in the scene with the man without female breasts, even though he wants us as viewers to see the breasts in our imagination. does this mean he wants to be a woman? does this mean he wants to be the actress auditioning for the part? does he love the actress? is this the meaning of the title 'I, an Actress'? I guess it is. nice short film.

weird meta movie

[framptonhollis · 5/10 · 15 December 2017]

George Kuchar, one half of the low budget filmmaking sometimes-duo the Kuchar brothers, directed this quick oddity. It's extremely short and extremely meta, it focuses on a woman acting and a man (played with much humor by George Kuchar himself)directing her. They go over the script, she rehearses her lines, he communicates to her what he really WANTS her performance to be, and by the end she mostly seems to have delivered. My description of the film doesn't at all capture what it FEELS LIKE, however, because the whole short is strangely chaotic. The audio is pretty amateurish, the camerawork is sloppy, the entire film has an atmosphere that borders on claustrophobia, the actress' shadow paints a German Expressionism-esque portrait of black on the wall behind her and it adds a slight angle of unsettling weirdness. It feels like you're really there trying to get the movie made, and I can kind of relate with this film in how it portrays the amateur movie making process. It is simultaneously very fun and very hectic. Both of these elements are portrayed quite well in this short. It's pretty funny, but it's also kind of stressful and seems to be intentionally annoying to watch.

"Haven't you seen women on their knees before?"

[classicsoncall · 4/10 · 29 October 2017]

Director George Kuchar and his brother Michael were making movies even before they were teenagers, and as they got older, embraced Hollywood with a camp sensibility. This film resulted from a college course George was teaching, and features student Barbara Lapsley who was a budding actress at the time and did this project as sort of a screen test. Actually it was a class project that involved every student in the course who put together the flimsy set and a make believe character (a post with a coat thrown over it), leaving about ten minutes for Lapsley to do her thing. Ostensibly, Lapsley is castigating her 'boyfriend' for cheating on her, and goes through a series of admonitions. Unable to refrain from giving her advice, George becomes part of the film by inserting himself to 'direct' Lapsley's performance. Quite honestly, I thought she was doing okay on her own, but she did follow through with Kuchar's recommendations while occasionally busting a gut over how silly it all was. Performed in class, it was apropos to see a chalkboard behind them with the words 'keep it funky' written on it. I think that objective was met, but unfortunately for Barbara, this was her only screen credit. I can't imagine why.

Fun Short from Kuchar

[Michael_Elliott · 28 September 2016]

I, an Actress (1977)

*** (out of 4)

George Kuchar directed this ten-minute short, which has him playing himself, a director, who is giving direction to actress Barbara Lapsley. Basically for ten straight minutes we see Kuchar acting out what he wants the actress to do and then she gives her take on the screen. Kuchar is a cult filmmaker like no other but the majority of the film's I've seen from him were just confusing and downright bizarre to say the least. This film here is actually a pretty good one on a number of levels but the biggest is just getting to see the fun Kuchar appears to be having because he really gets into the role when trying to explain what he wants to see from the actress. I would also argue that Lapsley is also very good here and the two certainly work well together and that makes for a fun short.

One of the better films on the DVD...and it makes me wish George Kuchar had acted more in films.

[planktonrules · 3 May 2012]

This George Kuchar film can be found in "American Film Treasures/Avant Garde Film: Disc 2"--a compilation of mostly forgotten art films of the 20th century. This DVD set is NOT for the casual viewer and sometimes I wonder why I watched the films--as some of them were VERY artsy and weird!

Barbara Lapsley was a young actress who agreed to make this film. It consists of her doing a monologue but is unusual because the director, Kuchar, appears on the film and gives her direction. It's is very interesting as you see the creative process AND because Kuchar was really good when he acted out her parts and giving her direction (frankly, he was better than she was and I wish he'd just done the reading or acted in more of his films). It's all very unusual but a great film for up and coming actors. And, oddly, is much more watchable than most of the films on the DVD. Difficult to rate but well worth seeing.