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Post by MCDemuth on Dec 22, 2018 20:01:43 GMT
Oh... You're one of THOSE.
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Post by petrolino on Dec 22, 2018 22:42:46 GMT
I consider Jane Fonda to be the most influential American actress of her generation. There was "the method" coming into its own in the 1950s and she started around 1960. But I think several things came to set her apart from her contemporaries, in addition to her legendary work ethic. Firstly, that she went to Europe to work when she was young. She met Simone Signoret and Yves Montand, hit the streets and got political. At the same time, she lived a hedonistic lifestyle with international artists from all walks of life who socialised with film director Roger Vadim in Paris.
I think a lot of actresses I like, of different ages, who really found their footing in the early 1970s - think Ellen Burstyn, Jill Clayburgh, Sissy Spacek, Diane Keaton, Kay Lenz, Cindy Williams, Cheryl Smith, Goldie Hawn, Cybill Shepherd, Susan Sarandon etc. - owe a significant debt to Fonda and her advancement of the craft. This is due to her mastering of "the method", her iconic screen persona, her innate naturalism and her fascinating choice of projects. That she became a genuinely iconic performer shouldn't be underestimated. This is hard to achieve in any era and it can become even harder to deliver good work; Faye Dunaway is another 1960s icon who did great work in the 1970s and set cinematic trends, but for me, she's a different kind of actress, and in some ways a glorious throwback to charismatic stars of the big studio era.
"As with several female Hollywood stars in the 1950s and 1960s (among them Shelley Winters, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn and Jane Fonda) Marilyn Monroe found in the Method a refuge from the typecasting she had come to resent. She became a regular at the Actors Studio, and had private lessons with Lee Strasberg – something that divided opinion at the Studio, some recognising in her a real acting talent, others resentful of the special attention Strasberg gave her. Monroe’s portrayal in Bus Stop of a saloon singer who yearns to be respected for more than her looks, and who faces the overbearing affections of a naive cowboy (a wincingly misjudged, yet somehow Oscar-nominated performance by Don Murray), is a model of the Method style – an exposing performance drawn from within. The contrast was still more pronounced in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), with Monroe’s Method interiority contrasting sharply and compellingly with Laurence Olivier’s British stage technique."
- James Bell, The British Film Institute
Fonda's career in America is interesting. You had the giants of the Golden Age of Television in America and Canada coming to work more and more in cinema. These men understood classical filmmaking but also shooting live on tight schedules. In addition, they were largely fans of the various "new wave" movements popping up around the globe which also informed their work. Coming to the party with diverse skill sets, they looked at Jane Fonda, almost to a man, as being the performer they wanted to work with. Over the years, she'd appear for Arthur Penn, Sidney Lumet, Norman Jewison, Alan Pakula, Sydney Pollack, Robert Ellis Miller, George Roy Hill, Elliot Silverstein, James Bridges and Mark Rydell.
I think Fonda pioneered a more naturalistic acting style in America that became the most dominant style of the 1970s. In this regard, 'Klute' was a really important way to start the decade and it won her an Oscar. Clearly, Fonda had picked up on new ideas and developed her technical skills while working in France, where she witnessed a different approach to filmmaking taking shape, but she's an American icon.
"Critics of Strasberg’s Method claimed that his unrelenting focus on inner work neglected such external matters as voice and projection, and out of this common complaint emerged the stereotype of the mumbling, unwashed Method performer who ended up playing his or her own neuroses rather than the psychological truth of their character. To be sure, there are potential pitfalls in his Method, and Strasberg wasn’t always scrupulous in protecting his actors from them. But, used with common sense, his Method sharpens and develops the gifts of talented actors. At the Studio, and in the classes of Adler and Meisner and the other Group gurus, craft was examined in terms of theatrical performance and scenes were selected primarily from the work of noted American playwrights. But in fact the inner work practised at the Studio was ideally suited for the intimacy of film acting – and it was both apt and inevitable that the Studio’s Method was presented to the world on television, on prestigious dramatic series such as Studio One and Playhouse 90, and popularised in four transcendentally well-acted films by Elia Kazan: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), East of Eden (1955) and Baby Doll (1956). But was there no equivalent of the Method before the Studio or before the term itself became a household word? Was there no great acting in American films before the explosion of acting talent in the postwar period? The answer to both questions is, yes there was. Often causing consternation among disciples, Strasberg would cite movie stars of earlier generations, such as Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy, who seemed to him to be doing the Method by instinct. With a glance, a silent reaction, a pause, a gesture, naturalists like Cooper and Tracy could convey a rich sense of their character’s inner life. Strasberg often cited Garbo as a Method actress before the fact and Kazan hailed her Camille as the finest, most complete film performance by an actress he had ever seen. However, it isn’t usually Cooper, Tracy or Garbo who are cited as early Methodists but John Garfield, a refugee from the Group Theatre, who indeed was the first actor trained in the style to achieve Hollywood stardom. Garfield brought an unvarnished city-boy veneer to each of his roles, but his brand of realism didn’t quite have the depth charges that Strasberg in class and Kazan on screen were in search of. It is in the work of Montgomery Clift first, followed by Brando and then Dean, that the Method broke through to cinema. All three actors were popularly associated with the Actors Studio, though none attended regularly and Brando many times said that his mentor was Stella Adler rather than Strasberg. Nonetheless the work of the three is marked by the kinetic projection of an inner life that for Strasberg embodied truth in acting."
- James Bell, 'Birth Of The Method : The Revolution In American Acting'
In the 1970s, a child actress came along who also had a diverse skill set, and for me, became the most influential American performer of her generation. Jodie Foster was trained at Disney and their training regime is second to none. She then learnt another language and started travelling, studied abroad, made films in France, Italy, Canada, New Zealand. She also worked in French television. She was somebody everybody from Roger Corman's stable (now a powerful presence in Hollywood) seemed to want to work with once they saw her with Martin Scorsese. In the 1980s, they also sought to work with Jennifer Jason Leigh (who was also a child actress) and Michelle Pfeiffer who many knew about because she'd started out at the California drive-ins. But Foster had these added skill sets and combined everything she'd learnt on the road with a fierce intellect to become a major figure in the film industry. Like Fonda, Foster endured a very public political case played out in the press and remained individualistic, unconventional and controversial. Like Leigh, Fonda witnessed family tragedy first-hand but fought through it.
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Post by jervistetch on Dec 22, 2018 23:27:03 GMT
I saw Jane Fonda on location filming ROLLOVER with Kris Kristofferson in Albany, New York in the early 80s. She was beautiful. He looked pretty good, too. In fact, they both still do.
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Post by wmcclain on Dec 23, 2018 0:03:00 GMT
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Post by petrolino on Dec 23, 2018 0:14:44 GMT
I love this movie. It's probably my favourite anthology film of the 1960s. For the 1970s, I think I'd probably choose Walerian Borowczyk's 'Immoral Tales' (1973).
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