Making Room in Films For Deaf Performers
Millicent Simmonds doesn’t like scary movies, but it’s not because they frighten her.
The cawing of birds, the heavy breathing on the phone, the dundun- dun- dun of the approaching shark — these are largely lost on Ms. Simmonds, the 14-year- old ingénue who has just made her debut in Todd Haynes’s silent- f i l m- era movie “Wonderstruck.” She is deaf.
“Scary movies depend on sound a lot to scare people,” she said, signing in a FaceTime interview recently as her mother interpreted off- camera. “When I look around and see people are jumping in their seats, I think: Why? Why? Nothing happened!”
Deaf and hearing audiences could delight equally in silent films, but deaf actors always appeared as hearing characters. Charlie Chaplin cast the best known of the deaf actors, Granville Redmond, in films.
In the decades since, deaf audiences have struggled for equal access. Closed captioning is widely but not unfailingly available in theaters. But ask people to name deaf movie actors, and you will probably get exactly one name: Marlee Matlin, who won an Oscar for her role in “Children of a Lesser God” 30 years ago. Now, “Wonderstruck” has cast a new spotlight on the hurdles facing deaf audiences, performers and storytellers in filmmaking.
Ms. Simmonds plays Rose, a lonely deaf girl enamored of silent movies in 1927 New Jersey and of one star in particular ( played by Julianne Moore, the hearing actress who al- so plays the grown-up Rose). Rose’s story alternates with that of Ben (Oakes Fegley), a Minnesota boy who becomes deaf when he is struck by lightning in 1977.
In Brian Selznick’s best- selling book, Rose’s story is conveyed wordlessly in pencil drawings; Ben’s is shared entirely in words. In the movie, her story unfolds without speech in black and white, his with 1970s pop color but — for nearly an hour — no dialogue.
“I was completely shocked by how little dialogue there was in the film,” said Mr. Haynes, the director.
Carol Padden and her husband, Tom Humphries, who both teach at the University of California, San Diego, were advisers for “Wonderstruck.”
Ms. Padden, a MacArthur Fellow for her research in world sign languages, was born deaf to deaf parents and grew up in deaf culture. Mr. Humphries lost his hearing when he was 6, had no deaf family and did not learn sign language until he went to college.
“For hearing viewers,” Ms. Padden said in an email, “being ‘deaf’ is about signing, or seeming silent, but for deaf viewers, it’s the entire embodiment of that life: the eyes, the shoulders, the hands, the walking and, of course, the looking. Until hearing viewers see deaf actors playing them, they may not realize entirely the hard work of embodying an entire different kind of life.”
Ms. Matlin said that not much has changed in movies since “Children of a Lesser God.” But a recent Ukrainian film, “The Tribe,” has gone further than any Hollywood movie. It was filmed entirely in Ukrainian Sign Language, with a cast of deaf actors, and no subtitles or voice- overs.
Ms. Matlin said that on TV and streaming services, however, “there are many, many deaf actors, writers, directors and producers — and lots of stories to tell.” The cable TV series “Switched at Birth” ran for five seasons, featured multiple deaf actors and included an episode shot almost entirely in sign language, she said.
Ms. Simmonds said that she “never, never, never” even dreamed of being an actress. But here she was on location in New York State, already at work on her second movie, “A Quiet Place,” with John Krasinski and Emily Blunt.
“I always wanted to be a cop or a fireman or do something dangerous,” she said.