Alison wrote:
It is my feeling that the British tradition emphasises dialogue much more, coming as it does on a strong and high status theatrical tradition. This
has
changed quite a bit over the past thirty years, with greater emphasis nowadays on telling a story through visual cues as well as dialogue (cf 'Trainspotting') , but obviously B7 comes well before this time.
One thing I wonder is if there's a difference between UK and Europe here. I'm supremely unknowledgeable in this area, but I've seen a lot of European films which are incredibly visual and fairly low on dialogue. (I watched some 70s Kieslowski shorts once where the simultaneous translations that the cinema had set up didn't work, but the films' messages were remarkably clear in the absence of any clue from the dialogue [which was in Polish, I guess].)
You do get occasional flickers of the art-film style intense visuality in B7. The mud scenes in 'Traitor', and Deeta's fantastic death scene in 'DeathWatch' spring to my mind.
On the other hand (as we can see in B7) it may damage the credibility of the action sequences, as insufficient thought is given to developing them.
I don't think it's just the thought, but also the intrinsic capabilities of the actors chosen -- though I suppose it's strange that the initial casting didn't try to take the action aspects into account. Few of the actors move well, especially out of doors -- PD, of course, but it's also apparent for GT and JC (eg the beach scenes in 'Orac', or the outside bits in 'Bounty').
Tavia