11 Dec A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Mass Transit

The vast majority of films use someone else’s vocabulary, so when you can run across one that helped create that vocabulary it is cause for celebration. Usually the originality is in the vision of the filmmaker, but here it is in the manner of acting, indeed what an actor is.

Brando changed the nature of society’s mind with this. Changed even how actors move in your dreams. Think of it.

To this point, actors existed in as many as two worlds: playing the character in their world; and working on the stage to exaggerate in such a way that the audience was affected. But the character’s world was always viewed from the ‘outside’ of the stage. The ’method’ changed that.

In the method, you literally become the character. The two dimensions and the centre of gravity are changed. That centre is now placed not on the stage but in the character’s world. In other worlds, the play is not set in your mind, rather you are transported to an artificial world outside your mind. Film alone has the power to do this repeatedly now, so in a very real sense film starts right here.

So the two dimensions are now: watching the character in his world, and watching the actor manage the transformation. Brando is pure, at least from here to `Godfather.’ But he opened the door for actors to annotate their management of the transformation, with messages to the audience. Usually those are of an ironic form because it is easy. Sometimes — as with Sean Penn — the real power of the performance is all the extra metadialog that gets overlain on the base of the character.

Leigh tried the transformative bit, and it eventually drove her mad.

Posted in 2001

Ted’s Evaluation — 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.

IMDB