How often are you genuinely impressed by a performance?
I’m not talking about your friend’s “dude, you gotta see this” type of rave because let’s face it, they’re easily impressed by strange Youtube videos.
I’m also not talking about situations where critics all jump on a tiny, overcrowded bandwagon and herald a performance or movie as spectacular and must-see, except no one can really remember anything about it six months later.
I’m talking about a genuine, “oh my God” moment where you actually feel like something special is being created right in front of you.
When it comes to TV, perhaps surprisingly, I’ve had a few of those revelatory experiences in the last few years.
Maybe it’s the scale or the intimacy created by seeing a character develop over weeks, but it’s not a rare event for me to feel blown away by an actor. But when it comes to movies, I can’t remember the last time I was both moved and impressed by a performance.
Sometimes, I think that the relentless media machine makes it impossible to see a movie, without already knowing minute details of the production (Tuesday was chili day at kraft services!) in advance.
It’s not so much that we’re lacking the element of surprise; it’s that we’re not given the chance to experience a movie without all the added bonus features being frontloaded.
Instead of whetting our appetite, it makes us feel like we’ve already seen the movie before we’ve even bought the ticket.
In order to escape from my movie ennui, I decided to step back into my Netflix time machine to experience actors that I haven’t had much exposure to, in order to complete my film education.
Could I truly call myself a movie fan if I’d never seen "On The Waterfront"? How is it that I’ve never seen a Monty Clift movie?
And what I discovered is that I can still be blown away by tremendous acting.
Unfortunately, it seems to be that I’m mostly a fan of actors who are dead.
Now, I’m not saying that all older movies are good. Just because something’s in black and white doesn’t mean it’s not tacky, schmaltzy or even downright bad, and I’m not afraid to say a movie’s awful even if it’s on AFI’s top 100 list.
After all, the studios specialized in creating sausage, not filet mignon. But regardless of what was on the menu, there was a certain caliber of actor that delivered a stellar performance, no matter what.
This isn’t an “it’s not the pictures that got small” kind of lament, it’s almost that the actors became too big.
The publicity machine existed just as feverishly back then and it hid more than it shared.
Money was big, too, as was the lifestyle that many of the stars lived.
So what’s changed?
Why is it rare to feel a performance resonate inside you nowadays? Why do I need to watch a B&W movie to rediscover what great acting is?
There are less movies made today than back then, and I don’t think that the studios ever considered themselves a sanctuary for artists.
It may be that the era I chose, the late '50s was a time when performers studying Method acting really exploded on screen, and you had a chance to watch a new way of acting being born.
Maybe the studios churned out so much sausage that they didn’t pay attention to every movie, and that led to some accidental filet mignon development.
But mostly, it seems to come down to the performers we have.
They’re great at being stars — at walking red carpets and doing Vanity Fair cover stories, and sometimes they’ll even do theater for some street cred but very few of them are going to be remembered for their acting. And that’s the reason why I’m rarely wowed in color and rely on B&W to fill in the gaps.