Method Acting: Blessing or Curse? Living or Dead?

[moira finnie]

Since Method Acting in Hollywood is the Star of the Month on TCM in January, I was wondering how members feel about the influence of Stanislavski's ideas on movies? While several great performances have resulted, (many, though perhaps not all of Marlon Brando, James Dean & Montgomery Clift's portrayals, for example), I wonder if overall people think it has been a good, bad, or given critic David Thomson's ringing the death knell for the Method here recently, a relevant cultural phenomenon?

Also, since some of Stanislavski's various interpreters, many of whom seem a tad, uh, inflexible, at times, are there any performances that seem to be particularly hampered by a suspected adherence to the Method in the movies?

The TCM article about this featured highlight of the month can be seen here.

[charliechaplinfan]

I started a thread recently after reading Shelley Winters biography about Method acting, I confess I'm not terribly sure what it is. I think the actor has to inhabit the character he is playing, sometimes meditating or pretending to be that person for a time. I've heard stories of actors inhabiting the character for the duration of filming and insisting on being addressed as the character. The actors I mainly think of when thinking about Method are Brando and Clift, I don't think they took it to this extreme or actors in their generation. The acting of Brando and Clift has a freshness about it and I think that's part of the joy of their performances for me but I like in equal measure actors like Gable, Flynn, Bogart etc. So I don't mind, whatever works for the person who's playing the role. If I were an actor or director that would be different,I think I would like to work with non method actors.

[charliechaplinfan]

Your last point is an interesting one, I hadn't thought of it like that. Newman and the early Brando have so much blue collar sex appeal, not so much Clift, he's more romantic rather than downright sexual and although believable as blue collar I see him more as a white collar guy. The women method actresses are not so glamourous and sexual. Is that because they were rejecting the images of the previous generation, the studio goddesses who were posed, primped and cossetted and made up to the nines. Or is it simply that we reject the images of our mother's generation and our father's afterall no father would have wanted his son looking like Brando, Newman or Dean.

[Ollie]

I'm following this topic - here and on TCM - closely because there is so much noise about The Method and I'll be interested to see if my Sherlock cap works well enough to figure it out. I keep thinking of the Woody Allen joke he recites in STARDUST MEMORIES, where he decries the criticism that he's narcissistic, that if he was going to model himself after a Greek god, it wouldn't be Narcissus. Who then? "Zeus."

[charliechaplinfan]

I guess when it comes to the actors of the fifties unless they're the famous figures of method acting I'm unsure who was trained at the Actor's Studio, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach are actors that come to mind whose performances I've enjoyed over the years.

Kazan is a director who's films I really enjoy, I love the films he made with Brando and recently discovered Wild River with Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick. None of his work has a theatrical feel to it, with the exception of A Streetcar Named Desire that still felt a little stage bound to me.

[charliechaplinfan]

You share my cynicism about today's actors. I don't find any of the enthralling like I do with many actors from a few decades ago.

[Ollie]

An actor today can (take) a kickboxing class rather...

What a winning statement. I give them full license to do that and this works for young adults, maybe into their 30s. Fine. Please - do all the action, all the nudes, etc. Fine.

But please, Today's Actors - when your career tops out when you start sagging, please don't waste my oh-so-precious media-attention time whining about "not getting great scripts". Please don't whine about international Jewish conspiracies when you're driving drunk in Malibu. Please don't look like a Michelin-Man version of Steven Segal and then complain that you can't even get good action film-scripts. You never GOT good scripts, period!

Or if you smoke 8 packs a day among your other loads of drugs injested, please don't ask me for my attention when you kill yourself in a Manhattan apartment before some latest Batman film shows up. Tug down yer cowboy hat and ride the horse that brung ya!

Meanwhile, Jimmy Durante played a good piano all of his life. He had so few talents and he went so far with them.

[MichiganJ]

An actor today can probably advance his--or her--career more by taking a kickboxing class rather an acting class, Method or otherwise. Think of Tobey Maguire. Here's someone born to play Brandon de Wilde roles, Keir Dullea roles. He did in THE CIDER HOUSE RULES. Then the dude bulks up to play Spider-Man. Today that's what a great career move looks like.

I'm not sure I understand the implication. Is Tobey Maguire a lesser actor for toning up and playing Spider Man, or was he simply bad to begin with? He also lost a lot of weight for Seabiscuit. (Is that better or worse?) How about "method actor" Nicholas Cage; he shows his guns in many movies including Con Air, The Rock and Ghost Rider. Is he dismissed, too? DeNiro? (Raging Bull--heck he tones and fattens up); Tom Hanks? (At least in Cast Away, "Wilson" didn't go on a crash diet!); Is Matt Damon a terrible actor for being buff in the Bourne movies?

Are all these guys simply hacks?

Or if you smoke 8 packs a day among your other loads of drugs injested, please don't ask me for my attention when you kill yourself in a Manhattan apartment before some latest Batman film shows up. Tug down yer cowboy hat and ride the horse that brung ya!

Just curious, but do you have the same sympathy for the likes of Marilyn and Judy? Lugosi? George Sanders? Jean Seberg? The list is unfortunately long and, while It may have actually started earlier, I blame Wallace Reid. Doesn't matter how he became an addict--the dude got what was comin'.

Am I right or am I correct?

[charliechaplinfan]

I just feel so turned off to modern blockbuster movies I've almost given up. There are glimmers of light, Young Victoria, Casino Royale, Che Part 1 and 2. Maybe it's because we know so much about today's stars that there's no mystery or respect anymore. I guess I just want to see stars yo yo dieting or falling out of nightclubs.

Are there still method actors in today's current crop of younger stars? Or do they concentrate more on the stage?

[Ollie]

MichJ, yes, a long list of substance abusers that may or may not get what they deserve. I have zero sympathy for any of them - I've spent most of my life in an industry surrounded by those types and seldom do I see justice meted out on Earth. I dislike having days, weeks and now months of TV coverage begging for faux sympathetic views for these types. Let Heath blow smoke into his infant's face and laugh at the baby coughing. Let Michael fill his bed with little boys. All of those are quickly forgotten when the media feel like they can sell more Flash-Ads by sunshine pumping. I cannot pay those people back with my horror stories - I'm only sorry I am forced to endure theirs.

[jdb1]

Are there still method actors in today's current crop of younger stars? Or do they concentrate more on the stage?

A better question might be can the current crop of younger stars act at all? There are some exceptions of course, but I find that most of them posture, pose and make faces and call it acting, which is what the Methods were accused of doing. Only the Methods got much better results.