ABSTRACT
In the process of his preparation, Heath Ledger compiles, cuts, sketches, writes, highlights, underlines and scribbles, emphasizes what he finds, (re-)discovers, imagines and remembers from other films, TV, magazines, comics and more. Ledger’s Joker chooses a “killer smile”, as Daniel Wallace remarks in his Visual History of the Clown Prince of Crime, while “[c]ritics praised Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker as a bringer of anarchy. The repertoire of Ledger is an open source of influences and inspiration. While the process of clowning, with the predecessors, the films and the graphic novels, develops to a process of gaming, toying with several possible modalities, the very instance of what Ledger achieves is the Joker as a bearer of confusion. Before the film, Ledger, the actor works up interests in the work, in his fellow-actors, in props and set designs, in the camera, to bring, at least in part, the Joker to life.
