Method Acting and the Waterfront

On the Waterfront was a game changer for cinema. Brando's perfomrance in this film was literally the thing that made actors question everything they were doing. And movies were never the same again.

I found two obituaries and posted them below. The first is of Stella Adler, Brando's acting teacher. It does a pretty good job of explaining what method acting is. The second is Brando's. It hits on what made him the unappointed leader of a new style of acting. read both of them and then I've got a question for you at the end.

Stella Adler, 91, an Actress And Teacher of the Method

By PETER B. FLINT

New York Times, December 22, 1992

Stella Adler, an exponent of Method acting whom many considered the leading American teacher of her craft, died yesterday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 91 years old.

[...]

The Method revolutionized American theater. Classical acting instruction had focused on developing external talents, while Method acting was the first systematized training that also developed internal abilities, sensory, psychological, emotional.

Strasberg, who headed the Actors Studio until his death in 1982, rooted his view of the Method on what Stanislavsky had stressed in his early career, that the actor should perform extensive "affective memory" exercises, improvising and conjuring up "the conscious past" to convey emotion: for example, dwelling on a personal tragedy to show anguish.

Miss Adler, opposing this approach, went to Paris and studied intensively with Stanislavsky for five weeks in 1934. She found he had revised his theories to stress that the actor should create by imagination rather than by memory and that the key to success was "truth, truth in the circumstances of the play."

"Your talent is in your imagination," she taught. "The rest is lice." She discussed plays as scripts for actors, exploring the texts for performance clues. She also believed that the art, architecture and clothes of an era were important in shaping a role. The Limits of Reality

One student volunteered, "When you told me to imagine a lake in Switzerland, I couldn't help but remember a real lake I had seen in Switzerland."

"Then put your lake in Morocco," Miss Adler replied. "You must get away from the real thing because the real thing will limit your acting and cripple you. To think of your own mother's death each time you want to cry onstage is schizophrenic and sick."

"Don't use your conscious past," she advised. "Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little."

She encouraged students to read about Stanislavsky's exercises to ease muscular tension and aid concentration, but she did not teach them. Strasberg contended that she had abandoned the internal emphasis of the Method and that her classes were ineffectual. She argued that he so exceeded Stanislavsky's intent that his teaching was psychologically and emotionally intimidating and dangerous, producing neurotic, self-indulgent actors.

Their approaches were vastly different, but the results could be similar. Ellen Burstyn, who studied with both teachers, as many other actors did, concluded: "Stella stresses imagination and Lee stresses reality. You use Stella's imagination to get to Lee's reality. They are finally talking about the same thing." 'You Can't Be Boring'

Miss Adler demanded not only craftsmanship but also self-awareness, calling it the key to an actor's sense of fulfillment. When students failed to understand roles, she acted them out, insisting: "You can't be boring. Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring."

"Get a stage tone, darling, an energy," she advised, " Never go on stage without your motor running."

Stanislavsky, she said, created a way for actors to bring the truth to audiences to lift their spirits and enrich their lives. One student accused Miss Adler of expecting too much of young people who "haven't gone out in the world and done all that experiencing she talks about." But most of her students shared the view of another who concluded, "Stella Adler taught me more in five minutes today than any of my other teachers have taught me in five years."

Marlon Brando Redefined Acting
He combined method acting with his own inner turmoil

AP file

July 2, 2004

LOS ANGELES - Anyone could imitate Marlon Brando — it was as simple as a scowl, a nasal voice and a scratch of the cheek — but few could copy the skill that made him an icon.

The two-time Oscar winner, who died at age 80, popularized the Method style of performing, which stripped away grandiose theatricality in favor of a deeper psychological approach to inhabiting a character.

Generations of young actors were electrified by Brando’s work as conflicted characters in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “On the Waterfront” and “The Wild One,” men who were emotionally vulnerable but savagely dangerous at the same time.

He was the bridge between the heroic screen purity of earlier stars such as Cary Grant, Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda and a generation of gritty, conflicted anti-heroes played by the likes of Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman.

“He was like a godfather to many young actors worldwide but particularly in this country,” said Robert Duvall, Brando’s “Godfather” co-star.

Even directors who never worked with him benefited indirectly — actors were more willing to push themselves, delve deeper into their own psyches, and submit to endless retakes of scenes both to get it right and try things different ways.

“For my generation and for generations to come, he virtually defined truth and honesty, as an actor and then as a public persona,” “Taxi Driver” director Martin Scorsese said Friday. “Everything that we know about the power of great screen acting relates back to him: when you watch his work in ‘On the Waterfront’ or ‘Last Tango in Paris,’ you’re watching the purest poetry imaginable, in dynamic motion.”

Brando’s impact started decades ago with James Dean, who adapted his fellow actor’s streetwise demeanor in a career cut tragically short. To later generations, Brando embodied a no-nonsense ruggedness: in his pre-fame youth, Russell Crowe once recorded a rock song titled “I Want to Be Like Marlon Brando.”

His contemporaries also were impressed. “Marlon Brando is the epitome of actors today, and all actors since the 1950s have been mimicking him,” Tony Curtis said.

But merely learning the tricks of Method acting didn’t guarantee a great performance.

Drawing on inner torment

What set Brando apart was the way that technique unleashed his inner conflict. The same qualities that made Brando a world-class actor also made him, by some accounts, a world-class pain.

The method seemed to harness his anger, warmth, insecurity, charm, cruelty and weakness — separating those traits from the eccentric streak that would define him later in life.

“He was tremendously respected as an actor. I think his personal conduct or his beliefs or attitudes affected people,” said the actress Janet Leigh, who knew him socially. “Not in a good way.”

His tricks in front of the camera varied. He was famous for rehearsing endlessly, for reshooting scenes again and again.

Other times, like on “The Godfather,” he would tape sheets of paper imprinted with his lines to co-stars Al Pacino and Duvall, reading off their chests while they faced away from the camera. He claimed it added spontaneity to his readings.

Eva Marie Saint, his co-star in “On the Waterfront,” said he could incorporate bits of real life into the script.

The famous scene in which he picks up her dropped glove and uses it to toy with her reluctant and shy character was originally written without the glove. She dropped it in a rehearsal, and Brando began to toy with it while they read lines, pulling it over her hand.

Director Elia Kazan liked the suggestiveness of that, and asked them to do the same thing when the camera was rolling.

“This was an accident, and another actor would have picked it up and restarted the scene,” Saint said. “That was the genius of Marlon, always working.”

Mr. Cowlin here again. Two questions: First, what other acting styles have you seen since the 1950s (either for better or worse)? That is to say, can you give a name to a style of acting that you either like or hate? Give us some examples if you can. Second, what moment of On the Waterfront do you think best illustrates Brando's style of method acting?

By the way, probably Brando's most famous performance is his role in The Godfather, with Apocalypse Now a close second. But my favorite is when he plays Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire. You want to see mind-bending acting? Rent it. (I also liked him as Superman's dad in Superman the Movie.)