EAST OF EDEN (1955) on TCM January 11

[charliechaplinfan]

Unstable is a word I'd chose to describe Dean, going off Hollywood folklore and I've no idea as to the veracity, isn't this the same man who stubbed cigarettes out on his own body? He seems a tortured soul and whilst I've no doubt that he would given us some more great performance I still feel that he would have perished early from some kind of self abuse. In this way I see him more akin to Montgomery Clift who carried his own demons around and perished at the age of 45. Brando's career was bumpy, I tend to think that was because of his arrogant self belief and laziness and for that I have a love hate relationship with Brando the actor, he gave some of the best performances of the latter half of the twentieth century and starred in some films that he just shouldn't have done.

Paul Newman is someone I see as very different than Dean, although Dean's intended film roles went to him, Dean's performances feel like they've come about from a lot of hardwork and reaching into his inner being, I never get that feeling with Paul Newman, I might be completely wrong but I think Newman was more of an instinctive performer, like a Gary Cooper. I've no idea if Newman went through the Actor's studio, I'd just be surprised if he had.

Julie Harris dodn't make much impression on me in East Of Eden, I just saw her as some redemptive force, someone who saw the good in others.

[JackFavell]

I see Dean as very loose, a lot like Brando, and unafraid of making a fool of himself. There is something that is just so.... odd about him, it makes you want to watch what he will do next, makes you wonder what he is all about. Perhaps it stems from an extremely unhappy childhood, like Brando's? I really don't know. He let it all hang out, so to speak. You get it all- all the pain the suffering and the oddness, the feeling of being DIFFERENT. Sometimes that's good, and sometimes that's bad. It's what MAKES East of Eden, He is SO very different from all the other players, even Julie Harris as Abra - she loves him, but she doesn't understand him. It helps that he has a director who is intuitive and excited by that spark of creativity, but who also has an iron fist as far as the filmmaking is concerned.

That "let it all hang out" mentality works against Dean at the end of Giant, it just doesn't play right for old Jett. And Stevens is a wishy washy director, as far as I am concerned.... he lets his movies get away from him many times, and has a hard time choosing a direction.... most of his films waffle between comedy and drama, and I am not sure whether he knows it. It's as if he were unable to control his storylines. You simply cannot have an undisciplined actor AND an undisciplined director. I agree that the scene with Elizabeth Taylor is the highlight of the film, but the rest (aside from the funeral train arriving) is just a mish mosh and plays as a comedy. I do enjoy it, and I do recommend seeing it all the way to the end, to get the idea that Stevens was after. I applaud his sensibility. But seeing Dean's scared little boy, translated to an old man (in bad makeup) is just unseemly, and worse it's comical.

I see Paul Newman as far more disciplined and workmanlike than Dean, and simply speaking, he is tighter. But because of that, he is less exciting in my book. That's not to say that I don't like him - I think Somebody Up There Likes Me is as fine a performance as he ever gave, and Cool Hand Luke is one of my all time favorite films. Dean delves into those unseemly emotions in a way that Newman never does. He revels in the unseemly. Newman at his best is all about class. They are as far apart as can be.

[charliechaplinfan]

To look at A Place in the Sun and Giant both starring Elizabeth Taylor, I can't believe that the same man directed them, although I did think that Elizabeth had similar chemistry with both Monty and Jimmy Dean. I don't think her and Rock had much chemistry at all.

[jdb1]

Let us remember that James Dean was very young when he made his movies, and the fact that he was so young makes his intense and well-considered performances all the more admirable. The thing that attracted me to Dean in the first place was his emotional breakdown scene in Rebel -- "You're tearing me apart!" Up until that scene, I thought the movie was just so-so, really, but Dean dug down so deep into his character that he made what could have been a trite and whiny teen having a hissy fit into a monumentally confused and suffering Everyteen. After that, I could never take my eyes off him when he was on the screen in anything.

It's possible that Dean could have remained an undisciplined oddball, like so many other actors we could name, many of whom seem to be appreciated here at SSO more than elsewhere, or he could have found his mature and steady voice and become cinema's greatest actor. As has been said on this thread, we'll never know. The possibilities are tantalizing.

[JackFavell]

I totally agree about Rebel.

Dean really cuts to the heart of the matter, in each character he is playing. He digs in and finds the motivation better than anyone else, and it is always one overriding emotion that causes his actions. His characters always follow that through line that actors like to talk about so much, but seldom can find. From beginning to end, we see exactly what that character is after, and why he goes to such lengths to get it. And best of all, we really feel for that character, even when he does something horrifying.

Brando is incredible at just "being". Newman is smart as a whip and sees the hypocrisy of everyday life, people and their actions. McQueen is stubborn and funny, but deadly serious when confronted. But Dean really slices through all the unessential junk and follows a character's deeply felt emotion.... he really "gets" what Cal is - just a kid who needs love from his dad - it's all stripped bare and cut away to that one essential emotion.

[charliechaplinfan]

I once read that the film had been planned earlier with Montgomery Clift or Brando or both. I don't think either could have pulled off Cal as well as Dean did. Another film I'll have to pull out and rewatch

[ChiO]

This could have gone in the "Method" thread, but it seems a bit more appropriate here...in the Moment.

As I grabbed a Christmas present to continue to read, the first paragraph of the evening jumped off the page. Here's an insider's outsider view:

The current style, not method, of acting is a phony naturalism born out of Strasberg and the limited imaginations and supplies of audace in the journeymen actors and actresses comprising the great majority of the profession. This has been evident from the time Newman imitated Brando in a Stewart Stern screenplay [The Rack] written for the purpose of cashing in. And Beatty's imitations of Dean [Splendor in the Grass] were as studied as Newman's were of Brando. With the accelerated closing of the gap that money brings about, both Brando and Newman began wearing homburg hats, and a death blow was dealt to natural, spontaneous, intellectual- or egghead-ism. Newman's forced intellectualism has been a consistent embarrassment, as opposed to Brando's rare appearances, which to my memory have been simple, unpretentious, and direct. The Black Method has harbored both Brando and Newman. One is a major talent, the other finally has become a fair journeyman actor with enough talent or imagination to believe his own image. Dean, also a major talent, never got the sheets warm at the Actor's Studio -- Strasberg kicked him out after three sessions. -- Nicholas Ray (1971)

[JackFavell]

Harsh, but fascinating.

[charliechaplinfan]

This reminds me of something said in Shelley Winters biography about James Dean, she referenced it to the Actor's studio

Jimmy Dean came in wearing an immense overcoatover a white T-shirt and from the way he moved we knew he was alone in that imaginary crowd. Then he steppedto stage right where he took off his overcoat and took out a switchblade. Leaning on the pole next to me he began to weep, I looked at Strasberg, who was watching Jimmy in a intellectual and dispassionate manner. Jimmy began playing with an unopen knife. He was smiling, but the tears were flowing down his face. I was terrified for him and kept looking at Strasberg seeing if he would stop the exercise. I noticed a thin line of blood that Strasberg couldn't see from were he was sitting. I automatically reached out and grabbed Jimmy's hand. We struggled for the knife and he started laughing.

As we struggled I noticed a white scar on Jimmy's right wrist and when I grabbed his other hand , I noticed a scar on Jimmy's left wrist.........

Lee asked Jimmy what he was working for and although he was very inarticulate he managed to explain that he was fighting his feelings of alienation because he fet everyone else wasn't real.

Shelley then goes on about feeling responsible for Jimmy and not being able to shake him all day, he was hungry so she bought him breakfast, she felt he was lonely, had no where to go, he even went to the airport with her to see her off. She doesn't mention him again.

I have my doubts as to Shelley's complete veracity but I don't think she'd make up seeing him in the Actor's studio.

[knitwit45]

Alison, I read once (who knows where?) that Dean was into self multilation, both with knives and cigarettes.. He was just creepy.

[Dewey1960]

Here are some additional insights about James Dean, as found in Bernard Eisenschitz's brilliant biography of Nicholas Ray:
In Dean, Ray found his ideal actor, not because of his association with the Method and the Actors' Studio, but because of their mutual understanding of codes of conduct or morality: Dean's "urgent, inquisitive curiosity," his "kind of pathological desire for tension" (as composer Leonard Rosenman put it), the actor's very arrogance, in which Ray himself was unaware. Dean is said to have improvised the opening shot (of REBEL), remembering a painting by Manet; and the format of this painting unmistakably suggests the CinemaScope screen. A toy monkey clashes mechanical cymbals; behind it, a young man falls to the ground, plays with the monkey, puts it to bed under a newspaper, and curls up beside it while the credits unfold in red letters over the nocturnal street. Ray fills the frame with this mannered mime, which suggests an adolescent Emil Jannings as much as the Method. Dean the actor himself becomes an element in the making of the film, the movement that carries it along.

[ChiO]

Alison wrote:

I have my doubts as to Shelley's complete veracity but I don't think she'd make up seeing him in the Actor's studio.

As to Nicholas Ray's statement that "Dean, also a major talent, never got the sheets warm at the Actor's Studio -- Strasberg kicked him out after three sessions.", I have no idea whether it is literally true that Dean was at the Actor's Studio for only three sessions. From what I am gathering from I Was Interrupted: Nicholas Ray on Making Movies, the point that Ray was making was that Dean was a natural actor who was able to bring intense emotion to a role, and that Dean did not get that from Lee Strasberg in spite of the popular notion that Dean was a Strasberg-Method actor.

My sense is that Ray had great respect for Stanislavsky, but disagreed with Strasberg's Method, almost to the point of considering it to be a perversion of Stanislavsky's approach.

He [Dean] became other people with obvious passion and relief. "If I were he," he would say -- and bless him for that, for it was a great part of his magic as an actor. It was the magic IF Stanislavsky had learned about from all the great actors he'd interviewed. But Jim hadn't learned it, not from Lee Strasberg, for chrissake. Nobody learns it, and nobody can breathe it into another. -- Nicholas Ray (1968)

A cynic and amateur psychiatrist might say that Ray was trying to reclaim the Dean legacy for himself (and his pal Elia Kazan). I shall read on.

[ChiO]

And, speaking of Nicholas Ray, my calendar just reminded me that at 6:00am (EST) tomorrow (Tuesday) on TCM is PARTY GIRL. Not to be missed.