It’s been more than 20 years since Marlon Brando passed away, but his influence on the art of film acting was so thorough that younger generations of moviegoers may have a hard time figuring out exactly what difference he made on screen. in new video onEvan “Otaku Writer” Pushak uses one scene from Elia Kazan to illustrate and remind us of them. on the waterfront. No, that’s not the scene you think of, even if you haven’t seen the movie. Pushak chose an earlier scene, a conversation between Brando’s professional boxer-turned-shoreman Terry Malloy and Eva Marie Saint’s young Edie Doyle, the sister of the colleague who unwittingly lured Terry to his death.
When Edie asks Terry how he got into boxing, Terry glances at the floor and begins his answer. “I cannot overstate how revolutionary a choice like this was in 1954,” Pushak says. “The actors had no such distractions. They were trained in theatrics to hit the nail on the head, articulate their lines, and play on emotions that were instantly understandable to the audience. They didn’t interrupt a conversation to look under the table or turn away from the microphone in the middle of a conversation. They didn’t speak while chewing their food.” Just a few years ago, a “name brand tweet” would have been unthinkable in a feature film. rear on the waterfrontit became a permanent part of popular culture.
Much of the evolution of film is a story of liberation from theatrical tropes. Early feature films were simply records of stage performances statically constructed from the familiar perspective of the audience seats. Just as advances in camera movement and editing techniques and technology allowed movies to reach their full potential on a visual level, the nature of actors’ performances also had to change. In the mid-1940s, electrified microphones allowed Frank Sinatra to sing with intonation and delicate speech. Shortly thereafter, Brando similarly utilized film’s technical capabilities to capture a variety of what would become known as his own signature idiosyncrasies.
on the waterfront It opened almost immediately after the film starring Brando. A streetcar named desire and wild oneSomething like ; has not come yet one eyed jack, godfather, last tango in parisand apocalypse of hell. Although Brando didn’t only appear in critically acclaimed films, especially in the latter decades of his career, he never gave a performance that was completely uninteresting. Incorporating the tics, hitches, and self-repressed impulses that plague all communication in our real lives, he understood the potential for both realism and strangeness in exposing a character’s inner world to the light of day, usually against their will. But none of this would have been possible without the performances and reactions of his fellow cast members, especially the formidable Eva Marie Saint. At 101 years old, he is one of the few living links to the important and seemingly grim realm of postwar Hollywood cinema.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
