100 greatest performaces of all time
Stone me
http://www.premiere.com/best/2692/the-100-greatest-performances-of-all-time.html
Of course, I disagree with numbers of the selections.
I think some of them doff a cap to great films, rather than an individual
performance.
Some performances make great films, and some even provide the only
remarkable
thing about them.
For myself, I regard acting as great when I become totally convinced of the
role being
played, forgetting who is playing it.
Example 1: Robert DeNiro, Taxidriver.
2: Dustin Hoffman, Midnight Cowboy. An ugly little film, probably relying
solely on his
brilliance, although I think he always plays a little bit to the front
seats, so to speak.
I hear he has something of an ego, in a town of them.
3: Eric Bogosian Talk Radio. I know I am alone in thinking this, but Stone's
picture
becomes a Bogosian Show. I really believe he is the nasty, self obsessed,
exploitative
wretch until the very end.
So rather than list your 100 best, what should be the elements of a great
screen acting
performance, forgetting if you can, the Oscars.?
Stone me.
George Peatty
>So rather than list your 100 best, what should be the elements of a great
>screen acting performance, forgetting if you can, the Oscars.?
When the performance is so good, so convincing, that you hate (or love) the
performer as well as the character onscreen, making no distinction between
them, for if any actor has truly lost himself in a role, there is no
distinction between them ..
wull
"Stone me" <the...@open.com> wrote in message
news:wsctk.106529$gM4....@newsfe25.ams2...
few for Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman and Ellen Burysten
(sp). I would not include K Hepburn who acted way beyond the time she
should have retired gracefully.
Wull
Tom Sutpen
> So rather than list your 100 best, what should be the elements of a great
> screen acting
> performance
*****
Everything Marlon Brando did in 'Last Tango in Paris'
Tom Sutpen
william
> Everything Marlon Brando did in 'Last Tango in Paris'
>
I completely agree. There's a lot of chatter about that film and
deciding what is actually true and what isn't is difficult. My
favorite story is that Brando's performance is so good because he
improvised all his lines. From what I understand, Brando -- like John
Barrymore -- couldn't improvise a "come in" after a knock on the door.
Whatever you think of the film, it is an astounding performance.
William
www.williamahearn.com
Sean O'Hara
> I've been browsing this article:
> http://www.premiere.com/best/2692/the-100-greatest-performances-of-all-time.html
>
>
> Of course, I disagree with numbers of the selections.
> I think some of them doff a cap to great films, rather than an
> individual performance.
>
Yeah, ranking Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life over Vertigo or the
Mann Westerns is crazy. And there's way too much emphasis on De
Niro, Pacino, and Brando -- haven't these people ever seen Robert
Ryan and John Garfield?
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
People go on about places like Starbucks being unpersonal and all
that, but what if that's what you want? I'd be lost if JJ and people
like that got their way and there was nothing unpersonal in the
world. I like to know that there are big places without windows
where no one gives a shit.
--Nick Hornby
/A Long Way Down/
JohnBL
actor brings more to a role than would have been possible with any
other actor in the role.
Shoulda been on the list:
Orson Welles - Citizen Kane
Montgomery Clift - From Here to Eternity
James Cagney - Angels with Dirty Faces (or White Heat)
Andy Griffith - A Face in the Crowd
Jonathan Pryce - Brazil
Bette Davis - What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Angela Lansbury - The Manchurian Candidate
Kirk Douglas - Ace in the Hole
Robert Mitchum - Night of the Hunter
And at least one by Edward G. Robinson. And Scott as Patton is way,
way too far down on the list.
John L
Jim Beaver
"George Peatty" <peattyg...@copper.net> wrote in message
news:3elab4lr6nr94m84j...@4ax.com...
An actor who has truly lost himself in a role to the point that there is no
distinction between them is a terrible actor. Even Method acting, which has
been denigrated (falsely) for abjuring technique and embracing pure
emotional response, in actuality requires, demands, considerable technique.
And technique by definition eliminates losing oneself completely in a role
to the (presumably hyperbolic) point that there is no distinction between
actor and role. Brando, Redgrave, Hopkins, Olivier, wherever your personal
choice for "great actor" might lie -- they all have one thing (among others)
in common: they know what they're doing. They're aware of the process as
it happens. And this awareness means they can never truly lose themselves
in roles. Not that they'd want to. It's counter-productive even to try.
Or maybe you just meant "seem to truly lose himself in a role" (forgive the
split infinitive).
Jim Beaver
Jim Beaver
"Sean O'Hara" <sean...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6hletfF...@mid.individual.net...
> In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful Stone me declared:
>> I've been browsing this article:
>> http://www.premiere.com/best/2692/the-100-greatest-performances-of-all-time.html
>> Of course, I disagree with numbers of the selections.
>> I think some of them doff a cap to great films, rather than an individual
>> performance.
>>
>
> Yeah, ranking Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life over Vertigo or the Mann
> Westerns is crazy.
Not arguing your points, but the telephone call scene in IT'S A WONDERFUL
LIFE is, in my estimation, one of the purest, most perfect examples of
acting I've ever seen.
Jim Beaver
moviePig
> "George Peatty" <peattyg47-1...@copper.net> wrote in message
Iirc, Jeffrey Schwartz, the UCLA researcher who helped Leonardo
DiCaprio simulate Howard Hughes's OCD, said he'd also studied DiCaprio
*while* performing, and found fundamental changes in his patterns of
brain-activity when immersed in a role. So, there may be some
argument for, if not a "loss" of oneself, then perhaps at least a
"reconfiguring" ...like a hand-puppeteer "becoming" his character,
even though his right hand still knows what his left hand's doing.
--
- - - - - - - -
YOUR taste at work...
http://www.moviepig.com
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
Out of curiosity, I would be interested in your opinion of Luise
Rainer's (as Anna Held) phone call scene in _The Great Ziegfeld_ (1936),
especially quite a few viewers do not think she deserved her Oscar.
"Hello, Flo... Yes. Here's Anna... I'm so happy for you today, I could
not help calling you and congratulate you... Wonderful, Flo! Never
better in my whole life!... I'm so excited about my new plans! I'm going
to Paris... Yes, for a few weeks, and then I can get back, and then I'm
doing a new show, and... Oh, it's all so wonderful! I'm so happy!...
Yes... And I hope you are happy, too... Yes?... Oh, I'm so glad for you,
Flo... Sounds funny for ex-husband and ex-wife to tell how happy they
are, oui?... Yes, Flo... Goodbye, Flo... Goodbye..."
I tell you now that I find Rainer's acting style old-fashioned and
totally endearing, emotional and moving. And you?
--
Frank in Seattle
____
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
"Millennium hand and shrimp."
unklbob
I'd add Meryl Streep in Kramer vs Kramer to that list.
George Peatty
wrote:
>Or maybe you just meant "seem to truly lose himself in a role" (forgive the
>split infinitive).
Well, I'm not the one who brought it up. I simply commented on what someone
else said. My interest was in something of an open speculation about
whether there is a relationship between a common audience reaction of
identifying an actor with a role, so closely as not to distinguish between
the two (like the soap opera villains who regularly get hate mail), and an
actor who seems to lose himself in a part. I offered that there was a
relationship. Then, here you come, throwing cold water on my daydreams by
reminding me that actors work at what they do the same as how we work at
what we do: by concentration, effort, preparation, and practice. ;)
nick
>
> Of course, I disagree with numbers of the selections.
> I think some of them doff a cap to great films, rather than an individual
> performance.
>
> Some performances make great films, and some even provide the only
> remarkable
> thing about them.
>
> For myself, I regard acting as great when I become totally convinced of the
> role being
> played, forgetting who is playing it.
>
> Example 1: Robert DeNiro, Taxidriver.
>
but I always seem to rewatch Taxi Driver during presidential campaign
seasons). And De Niro does so many gret things in that movie but the
one thing he does that always gets me--And Paul Schrader on the
commentary track says De Niro came up with it--is when he's being
escorted out of the Palentine campaign office by Albert Brooks and
when Brooks tries to touch him, Travis bolts back into that defensive
kung fu position. It's so good because you don't know where it came
from, either Bickle's marine training--and I've never been convinced
he ever was in the marines--or because he's spent too many long nights
at the grindhouse picking up moves from kung fu movies.
Another thing I thought about this time out, as I get older, I lose
the male self-recognition and identification I used to feel with
Travis and find the character more and more repellent with each
viewing. As you get farther from youth, you grow away from the
character's 'morbid self-absorption' and see his core ugliness. It is
a great screen performance.
Jim Beaver
"Frank R.A.J. Maloney" <fr...@blarg.net> wrote in message
news:jNSdnZZGm6rWUCjV...@posted.isomediainc...
It's been years since I've seen it and don't remember it well enough to
render judgment. But I vaguely remember responding positively to it, for
what that's worth.
Jim Beaver
Jim Beaver
Ah, yes. I take your meaning. It's interesting to me, by the way, that
many actors who are inseparable from their characters by their fans (as in
the example of soap-opera types) are often not particularly polished or even
very good actors. I think it's an issue of the viewer rather than the
player, in that case.
Jim Beaver
Jim Beaver
"nick" <nickmacp...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:4106e9a0-a657-4230...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com...
I just happened to watch Taxi Driver last night {purely coincidence
but I always seem to rewatch Taxi Driver during presidential campaign
seasons). And De Niro does so many gret things in that movie but the
one thing he does that always gets me--And Paul Schrader on the
commentary track says De Niro came up with it--is when he's being
escorted out of the Palentine campaign office by Albert Brooks and
when Brooks tries to touch him, Travis bolts back into that defensive
kung fu position. It's so good because you don't know where it came
from, either Bickle's marine training--and I've never been convinced
he ever was in the marines--or because he's spent too many long nights
at the grindhouse picking up moves from kung fu movies.
------------
RESPONSE:
I was in the Marines at around the same time that one might presume Bickle
to have been, based on his apparent age at the time of the story. We never
had any training that looked like that kung fu/karate move. I vote for
grindhouse.
Jim Beaver
Voltronicus
> Not arguing your points, but the telephone call scene in IT'S A WONDERFUL
> LIFE is, in my estimation, one of the purest, most perfect examples of
> acting I've ever seen.
I was never a fan of Jimmy Stewart, always finding something oddly
creepy and disturbing about him. Futhermore, I never have seen him
deliver a convincing performance, it's always like Jimmy Stewart
pretending he's Lindbergh, Jimmy Stewart pretending he's a cowboy, etc
and so on.
"Wonderful Life' is over-long, sanctimonious and boring.
The child actor who played Zuzu was repulsive.
Best performance in it was by Lionel Barrymore.
YMMV
nick
> On Aug 27, 5:06 pm, "Jim Beaver" <jumble...@prodigy.spam> wrote:
>
> > Not arguing your points, but the telephone call scene in IT'S A WONDERFUL
> > LIFE is, in my estimation, one of the purest, most perfect examples of
> > acting I've ever seen.
>
> I was never a fan of Jimmy Stewart, always finding something oddly
> creepy and disturbing about him.
Which, of course, is why he was so well-used by Alfred Hitchcock.
Michael O'Connor
> actor brings more to a role than would have been possible with any
> other actor in the role.
>
With this criteria, one performance I would have to consider is
Charlton Heston from Planet of the Apes. I've always felt this was
probably the best acting performance of his career. I cannot think of
another actor who could have pulled off the role as well, especially
the second act when he lost his ability to speak and had to emote and
couldn't get by with his commanding speaking voice.
Howard Brazee
<jumb...@prodigy.spam> wrote:
>An actor who has truly lost himself in a role to the point that there is no
>distinction between them is a terrible actor.
Why? As long as the performance works - should his method of
getting there matter to us?
David Oberman
>Well, I'm not the one who brought it up. I simply commented on what someone
>else said. My interest was in something of an open speculation about
>whether there is a relationship between a common audience reaction of
>identifying an actor with a role, so closely as not to distinguish between
>the two (like the soap opera villains who regularly get hate mail), and an
>actor who seems to lose himself in a part. I offered that there was a
>relationship. Then, here you come, throwing cold water on my daydreams by
>reminding me that actors work at what they do the same as how we work at
>what we do: by concentration, effort, preparation, and practice. ;)
George, I see what you're saying. Some great performances feature
actors whose own characteristics seems to disappear as the performance
builds. (Sean Penn's performance in the recent ASSASSINATION OF NIXON
film qualifies here, in my view.) But my favorite performances seem to
be from those actors whose personalities & characteristics &, more
important, technical qualities, become magnified -- to the point that
everything is obliterated except the technique of the actor.
____
Sometimes life enriches our initial intentions, & we
find untold treasures in the simplest of means & ends.
-- David Oberman
Magnus, Robot Fighter
<jumb...@prodigy.spam> wrote:
Jim arn't there moments when during a take or on stage when something
occurs to you on the spur of the moment to try out....or your co-star
does something different and you just naturally change what you were
going to do without thinking about it?*
*This may or may not have anything to do with what we're talking
about.
Jim Beaver
"Magnus, Robot Fighter" <M...@Key.com> wrote in message
news:un8cb49rk4a48nkti...@4ax.com...
Absolutely. All the time, if you're on your game. It's called "being in
the moment" in actor-speak. My wife, the best acting coach I ever had (and
I studied with Maximilian Schell!), used to say that actors have to think in
terms of "in a perfect world." In a perfect world, I (my character) would
walk in, say what I want, and all the other characters would make sure I got
it. But they don't. They throw up obstacles, either intentionally or
because they've got their own perfect world they're trying to create. So I
have to come up with something new to get what I want. And that doesn't get
it for me. So I have to respond to what I did get from them and find a
work-around to get what I want. Well, that's a character being in the
moment. The trick as an actor is to play each line, each action, each beat
as if this is the one that's going to get me what I want, NOT "and now he'll
say 'no' and I'll say 'But...'" If you're in the moment, you are listening
to the other actor as carefully as your character is listening to the other
character. And in each case responding to what you hear and see, whether
your exterior self knows it's coming or not. The reason good actors are
good, in part, is because every lift of an eyebrow or turn of the head on
the part of the player opposite feeds the good actor's response. Because
everything suggests something, and if you're good at what you do, you'll
address whatever comes your way. The richest performances come from actors
who know precisely what they're going to say and do, but always leaven it
with surprise born of feelings at the moment.
Jim Beaver
Jim Beaver
"Howard Brazee" <how...@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:600cb4dmm6hh9qebk...@4ax.com...
What I'm saying is that an actor who has truly lost himself in a role, who
has truly become one with his character is no longer acting. The
performance will not/cannot work.
As I said to the original post, presumably what was intended was this: an
actor who SEEMS to have truly lost himself in a role to the point that there
is no distinction between them. A great actor will give the impression of
having lost himself in the character, but will in fact have great conscious
control over his awareness of the separation between the two. It's
semantics, I think.
Jim Beaver
moviePig
> On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:04:30 -0700, "Jim Beaver"
>
> >An actor who has truly lost himself in a role to the point that there is no
> >distinction between them is a terrible actor.
>
> Why? As long as the performance works - should his method of
> getting there matter to us?
...which might ask, say, how good Audie Murphy was in TO HELL AND
BACK. Instead, I'd propose a metric that favors something like
Karloff/Frankenstein: The "greatest" performance is the one that best
distorts our sense of what (i.e., who) might be "plausible"... which
seems to cover not merely monsters, but all sorts of sinners and
saints, etc..
Stone me
"Jim Beaver" <jumb...@prodigy.spam> wrote in message
news:kultk.19548$mh5....@nlpi067.nbdc.sbc.com...
>
> "George Peatty" <peattyg...@copper.net> wrote in message
> news:q4lbb4591g58o7ve1...@4ax.com...
>> On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:04:30 -0700, "Jim Beaver" <jumb...@prodigy.spam>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>Or maybe you just meant "seem to truly lose himself in a role" (forgive
>>>the
>>>split infinitive).
>>
>> Well, I'm not the one who brought it up. I simply commented on what
>> someone
>> else said. My interest was in something of an open speculation about
>> whether there is a relationship between a common audience reaction of
>> identifying an actor with a role, so closely as not to distinguish
>> between
>> the two (like the soap opera villains who regularly get hate mail), and
>> an
>> actor who seems to lose himself in a part. I offered that there was a
>> relationship. Then, here you come, throwing cold water on my daydreams
>> by
>> reminding me that actors work at what they do the same as how we work at
>> what we do: by concentration, effort, preparation, and practice. ;)
>
I was trying to distinguish from those actors, who offer only a variation
of the
same character.
For example, (though I admire both of them) for the most part, Burt
Lancaster
and Geoff Bridges do that to me.
Stone me.
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
I was reading a little about Luise Rainer's life yesterday and ran into
in Mini Biography in the IMDb:
'As a young actress, she was discovered by the legendary theater
director Max Reinhardt and became part of his company in Vienna,
Austria. "I was supposed to be very gifted, and he heard about me. He
wanted me to be part of his theater," Rainer recounted in a 1997
interview. She joined Reinhardt's theatrical company in Vienna and spent
years developing as an actress under his tutelage. As part of
Reinhardt's company, Rainier became a popular stage actress in Berlin
and Vienna in the early 1930s. Rainer was a natural talent for
Reinhardt's type of staging, which required an impressionistic acting
style. Rainer, who made her screen debut as a teenager and appeared in
three other German-language films in the early '30s, terminated her
European career when the Austrian Adolf Hitler consolidated his power in
Germany. . . In the late '90s, Rainer praised her director [frajm: _The
Good Earth_ (1937)], Sidney Franklin, as "wonderful," and explained that
she used an acting technique similar to "The Method" being pioneered by
her husband's [frajm: Clifford Odets] Group Theatre comrades back in New
York. "I worked from inside out," she said. "It's not for me, putting on
a face, or putting on makeup, or making masquerade. It has to come from
inside out. I knew what I wanted to do and he let me do it."'
Mark
> "Sean O'Hara" <seanoh...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:6hletfF...@mid.individual.net...
>
> > In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful Stone me declared:
> >> I've been browsing this article:
> >> Of course, I disagree with numbers of the selections.
> >> I think some of them doff a cap to great films, rather than an individual
> >> performance.
>
> > Yeah, ranking Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life over Vertigo or the Mann
> > Westerns is crazy.
>
> Not arguing your points, but the telephone call scene in IT'S A WONDERFUL
> LIFE is, in my estimation, one of the purest, most perfect examples of
> acting I've ever seen.
>
> Jim Beaver
I agree as well as the scene in the bar when Stewart's hand is shaking
and he says "I'm not a praying man ..." I think his performance in
that film is vastly UNDERRATED. It's better than anything I've ever
seen Pacino or DeNiro do.
Mark
Luckily, you are in a very tiny minority on that one. James Stewart is
easily one of the greatest of all motion picture actors.
Mark
To me the best kind of acting is where I cannot see the acting at all
which is why most "method" acting never works for me. I can see the
machinery grinding away so instead of creating a character I often
just see someone doing "look ma, I'm acting!" I find most of Brando's
stuff like this and many others I can name. The more natural actors
(Grant, Stewart, Bogart, Tracy) are the ones that most convince me. I
never see the acting.
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>To me the best kind of acting is where I cannot see the acting at all
>which is why most "method" acting never works for me. I can see the
>machinery grinding away so instead of creating a character I often
>just see someone doing "look ma, I'm acting!" I find most of Brando's
>stuff like this and many others I can name. The more natural actors
>(Grant, Stewart, Bogart, Tracy) are the ones that most convince me. I
>never see the acting.
If they do it right (by your criterion), we think it is natural - no
matter how they learned to do it that way. Sometimes we are
surprised to find the actor isn't like his character at all.
Mark
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 10:27:20 -0700 (PDT), Mark <weiss.sl...@yahoo.com>
That is my point but with most of the "method" actors I can see them
acting all the time. And that kills it for me.
Stone me
"Mark" <weiss...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:6ac2a56a-aa53-43fa...@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
As I understand it, Method Acting is not so much of an acting style, but a
method of reaching into oneself to supply the necessary elements that the
part requires.
From the way I have read about the method seems to have been a way of
promoting an actor - such as Brando - rather than anything substantial.
Take acting before or aside from this method. Was there a step change in the
standards of acting achievement, and does every actor now find they cannot
progress in the business without having studied the Method?
My judgment on actors such as Brando is based upon their product,
rather than being influenced by where or how they learned their craft.
In his case, I am surprised how he succeeded with such poor enunciation.
Rather than his "On the Waterfront" , I would prefer his Mr.Christian.
Never quite understood his role as Walter E. Kurtz, but that's probably not
his
fault.
Stone me
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>> If they do it right (by your criterion), we think it is natural - no
>> matter how they learned to do it that way. Sometimes we are
>> surprised to find the actor isn't like his character at all.
>
>That is my point but with most of the "method" actors I can see them
>acting all the time. And that kills it for me.
How did you determine which actors are method actors who you didn't
notice acting?
Mark
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:12:42 -0700 (PDT), Mark <weiss.sl...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> >> If they do it right (by your criterion), we think it is natural - no
> >> matter how they learned to do it that way. Sometimes we are
> >> surprised to find the actor isn't like his character at all.
>
> >That is my point but with most of the "method" actors I can see them
> >acting all the time. And that kills it for me.
>
> How did you determine which actors are method actors who you didn't
> notice acting?
I'm sorry. Please explain the question as it doesn't make sense to me.
It has nothing to do with "method" actors but with any actor who acts
in such a way as to make the "acting" obvious. Most of them tend to be
indentified as "method" actors.
I make this determination by watching performances. It's the actors
that make the mechanics of acting so obvious who turn me off. That may
be "good acting" by some definition but it doesn't create a character
or a complete performance for me when I can see what the actor is
doing. I prefer to see a person on the screen, not an actor. Brando is
the most obvious of this type of actor. His performance in "On the
Waterfront" is an obvious example. Highly acclaimed but it never looks
like anything to me than an exercise in acting. Contrast that with
Crosby in "Country Girl" the same year. I am never aware that he is
"acting" at all and yet he creates a real character. A character, I
might add, who seems like a flesh and blood person and not "hey look
at me, acting!"
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>> How did you determine which actors are method actors who you didn't
>> notice acting?
>
>I'm sorry. Please explain the question as it doesn't make sense to me.
>It has nothing to do with "method" actors but with any actor who acts
>in such a way as to make the "acting" obvious. Most of them tend to be
>indentified as "method" actors.
Whenever someone says "I always can tell when X", I wonder - how does
he know?
If someone says All method actors are poor, because I can always see
that they are acting - I wonder if it is possible that some are good,
because we don't notice that they were acting.
If we didn't notice them as Method actors, we can think that all
method actors are those who we notice using the techniques.
Mark
> On Mon, 1 Sep 2008 15:19:22 -0700 (PDT), Mark <weiss.sl...@yahoo.com>
Of course, I never said "all" method actors. I said that those were
the ones I most noticed. Gene Hackman is an example of a method actor
who one can never see acting. The gears are invisible. Something one
cannot say about DeNiro or Pacino or many Brando performances.