Post by Doghouse6 on Sept 14, 2017 1:26:26 GMT
I don't think anyone here would pillory you, especially when, as always, you lay out your case so well.
I do wonder, however, if believability is the sine qua non of acting; for me, at least, I find what you described as magnetism, forcefulness, and entertainment to be just as, if not more, vital, as I continually note that acting is unreal ipso facto. That does not mean, I hasten to add, that I dislike believability, but I can never quite convince myself that it's real, even if emotion comes achingly close to reality. (Hope that makes some sense.) Meryl Streep is, as you say, an actress who becomes her character, but even with her I can see the machinery if I look close enough, hidden though it may be. Perhaps that's simply a natural feature of screen-acting, as the screen heightens artificiality just by virtue of its existence. Or perhaps it's some problem on my own part.
Oh, well: I'm no expert on acting, and what I said may be completely off-base, but I am reminded of certain scenery-chewing performances that can never convince me of their reality but that are immensely enjoyable, so much so that I am dragged across the suspension of disbelief line in spite of myself. Certainly one cannot count Stanwyck in this category, but I suppose the point has relevance to your larger argument.
I have never--if I may say so--felt a complete lack of reality with Stanwyck, what I wrote before to one side, except in Ball of Fire (in which I experienced exactly what you're describing in regard to her). Again, hoping this all makes some sense, folks...
What you say about artificiality, for instance, again brings Bette Davis to mind. Although I never saw her apply the word "artifice" to it, I've read - in her own words - that she believed acting was by its very nature something meant to be BIG; not "real life" but larger-than-life. It may be only coincidence that, of all of her screen roles, the two that stand out for me as the most genuine - poles apart as they are - were women whose lives have been invested in artifice...one directed outward, the other inward: Margo Channing and Jane Hudson. Perhaps that's among the reasons they've endured as her most iconic.
Claudette Colbert notwithstanding, Davis as actress and Channing as character seem made for each other, and I've always wondered if stepping into it a scant 48 hours before shooting began didn't contribute to her performance; under the gun and without prep time to "cook up" a characterization, she forgot to "be Davis" and let the scintillating text and her most basic instincts carry her along. Whatever was going on, a hundred understated and convincingly uncalculated nuances produced authenticity I'd never witnessed in any of her prior work. We'll never know, of course, if Colbert - had she not injured her back - might have pulled out the performance of her life (to use Addison's phrase) as Channing, just as Gloria Swanson did the very same year as Norma Desmond, but it's impossible for me to imagine anyone but Davis as Margo.
For all her gargoyle-esque qualities, Jane Hudson can be mistaken for outsized caricature but, as with Margo Channing, Davis's portrayal is threaded with so many marvelous subtleties, and ones that can be easily overlooked in this perhaps most transformative of all her roles. I've no theories like those above about what extraordinary alchemy into which she tapped for this particular one, except to observe that another element it has in common with that of Margo is weariness. In both films, that aspect has the effect of tamping down most of Davis's more typically effusive and at times manic mannerisms.
What has all this to do with Stanwyck? I'm not sure, really. I go off on what Bat and I call in our punny way "George Hamiltons" (a tan gent). But it suddenly occurs to me that what I might've been leading to without realizing it is that I find it easiest to "buy" Stanwyck in roles that were more "character" than "leading lady," as was often the case with Davis. Along with Stella Dallas, she "sells" me in Ball Of Fire - in a way that didn't work for you - by sort of stepping out of herself and exercising muscles for which most roles didn't provide such occasions.
Case in point: there's an apparently neglected 1942 picture of hers called The Great Man's Lady. Told mostly in flashback, it begins and ends with prologue and epilogue in which she's a century old. Along with inebriation, advanced age is one of the most difficult things for a player to portray, if displays in countless films are any indication (a Roger Livesey in Colonel Blimp or an Orson Welles in Citizen Kane are all too rare). Well, Stanwyck is just astonishing in these scenes. Makeup that's incredibly advanced for the period helps, but that gets any player only partway there, and Stanwyck does the rest. So Big is another example of a role that's a character one for a good portion of the picture, and is among those in which I find her most compelling.
So maybe what I miss with Stanwyck has mostly to do with unrealized opportunities to exhibit what might have been her forte; the sense that there was a greater player who could have shone in the sort of "character lead" niche that Davis had pretty much all to herself...and in which Stanwyck could have given her a run for her money.
Thanks, Doctor, I feel better having worked through that. I'll see you next session.