Douglas Mercer
September 2 2024
They that do not do the thing they most do show
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
They are the lords and owners of their faces
Others but stewards of their excellence
The movie Marathon Man has Laurence Oliver playing the stereotypically evil Nazi; when it begins he is in South America but learns that he is needed in New York City to retrieve some “stolen Holocaust” diamonds from a safe deposit box there. Dustin Hoffman plays the son of a professor who was "wronged" during the American “blacklist era.” Through a complicated plot twist involving Hoffman’s brother (played by Roy Schneider) Olivier has a scene where he tortures Hoffman with dental equipment in order to get information about the whereabouts of the safe deposit box.
Method Acting was created by Stanislavski in his books An Actor Prepares, Creating A Role, and Building A Character. The method was refined and popularized by Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler in America. Method Acting posits that the actor must become the character he is going to play, during the play run or during the time of filming he must be that person at all times, act like the character, feel like the character, be the character; if she is playing a ballerina she must take on the trappings of a ballerina, become a prima donna, and twirl around her apartment; if he is playing an average bloke he might go to the local pub, quaff some Guinness, and pick up some local color, or go to racetrack and drop a quid on a nag.
When he showed up the day of the scene of torture Oliver was his usual good natured nonchalant self, totally relaxed, fully at ease, a scarf around his neck, and chatted briefly with the director about how they would play it. When Hoffman walked in he looked terrible, he was groggy and disheveled and could barely stay awake. Oliver was taken aback and asked: what happened to you? Hoffman said he had been awake for two days straight in order to prepare for the scene and had not eaten a thing. Oliver looked somewhat bemused and told him: you really might want to give acting a try dear boy—it’s not that hard.
In 1938 Olivier performed two back-to-back plays on the same bill: the first was Oedipus At Colonus and the second was a light French Farce, a bit of boudoir and bed change nonsense, replete with oversized white wigs, much make up and insufferably witty repartee. At the close of the first play Olivier blinds himself as the divinely mad king; those who were there said that when he did so he let out a protracted and heartrending scream or ululation that seemed to shake the theater so blood curdling was it, from such depths did it seem to emanate; the theater was nearly cylindrical so the people at the back were nearly at the top and seemed almost to overhang the stage. When the last of the awe striking cry had made its last reverberation the lights immediately went out and all was darkness; the mood of the crowd was distraught, they had been overwhelmed by the visceral howl and were beside themselves; and then maybe ten seconds later even as the spectators were still reeling from the chthonic blow blinding bright lights came on and out came Olivier as a mincing fop, donning one of those white wigs and a charmingly stylish waistcoat, polished black shoes, and white hose to his knees; his face painted a bright and gaudy pink, ruffles decking his arms; he began to speak some light and airy words full of whimsical charm and ostentatious nothings and prance a bit more around the stage, waving his arms in amusement; meanwhile the crowd could not believe what it was seeing; they still had not got over what seemed to them to have been some kind of primal trauma and here was the man who had delivered those emotions acting as if it were nothing at all, he was now the epitome of a lackey and toady full of self-love and full of great vanity, and was waltzing across the stage as light as air; as if a great king might indeed wring the truth from the world and recoil at the horror of it all and rip his eyes out in elemental pain; but that is no reason why life should not go on just as before as if nothing had happened, and a great French Court must have its intricate artifices and overwrought affectations as if it was just another day.
To act is not to be but to play; an actor is a personae or a mask, and when one controls all one’s aspects one can do or play whatever one wants in an instant; an actor should not inhabit his role but perform it; the coldest and the most technical and most artificial brings about the most verisimilitude; only by turning oneself into a machine does one become real and begin to act, and only the coldest thing of all brings forth real fire.
Acting
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Douglas Mercer
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- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
