[HN Gopher] What was so special about Greta Garbo?
___________________________________________________________________
What was so special about Greta Garbo?
Author : prismatic
Score : 15 points
Date : 2021-12-08 17:29 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| dang wrote:
| The wonderful _Impro_ by Keith Johnstone has a memorable passage
| about Garbo, saying critics should have raved about her spine,
| not her face--because her instrument was really the whole body.
|
| I was inspired to look up the quote:
|
| _Critics raved about her face: 'Her face, early called the face
| of the century, had an extraordinary plasticity, a mirrorlike
| quality; people could see in it their own conflicts and desires.'
| People who worked with her noticed that her face didn't change.
| Robert Taylor said: 'The muscles in her face would not move, and
| yet her eyes would express exactly what she needed.' Clarence
| Brown said: 'I have seen her change from love to hate and never
| alter her facial expression. I would be somewhat unhappy and take
| the scene again. The expression still would not change. Still
| unhappy, I would go ahead and say "Print it." And when I looked
| at the print, there it was. The eyes told it all. Her face
| wouldn't change but on the screen would be that transition from
| love to hate.'_
|
| _Garbo had a stand-in who was identical to her, and who was said
| to have 'everything that Garbo has except whatever it is Garbo
| has'. What Garbo had was a body that transmitted and received. It
| was her spine that should have been raved about: every vertebra
| alive and separated so that feelings flowed in and out from the
| centre. She responded spontaneously with emotion and warmth, and
| what she felt, the audience felt, yet the information transmitted
| by the body was perceived as emanating from the face. You can
| watch a marvellous actor from the back of a big theatre, his face
| just a microdot on the retina, and have the illusion you've seen
| every tiny expression. Such an actor can make a wooden Mask
| smile, its carved lips tremble, its painted brows narrow._
| jfengel wrote:
| As an actor and director myself, I'm constantly wondering what
| it is that makes some actors "it" and others not.
|
| It's often my job to figure out why a performance is
| uninteresting and make it more interesting -- mine, or somebody
| else's. I have a large toolbox of tricks to apply, with varying
| levels of success.
|
| Yet none of it can ever do what "Stars" do. Even when stars
| give performances that are mediocre by every measure I know how
| to apply, they'll be riveting to at least some audiences. You
| really can see it from the back of a theater, and I have very
| little idea of how it works.
|
| Not quite none. I do know that it's not at all about the
| external features, like the spine or the eyes. We don't have
| anywhere near enough control over that. (Though it is
| fascinating to work with animators, who _do_ have that level of
| control over their performances.)
|
| We actors say it comes from being "truthful" in the untruthful
| circumstances of the theater or the studio, though in the end
| that doesn't really mean very much. It's just a way of trying
| to get people to stop doing whatever they're doing consciously
| and let it happen... whatever the hell it is.
| rnd0 wrote:
| The power of suggestion, maybe?
|
| Honestly, I wonder how much of it isn't the effect of
| publicity affecting people's expectations? If you have two
| people giving the same performance who look similar but the
| audience for one goes in with the expectations of seeing a
| maestro perform and the other is just watching an unknown
| they would feel differently because they're carrying
| expectations with them that skew their view of the
| performance.
|
| I don't want to go too far out on a limb and say this is
| definitely the case; I'm not in the industry. But I was
| wondering about the same subject (what makes a star's
| performance "riveting" even in something mediocre?) and that
| was the best answer that I could come up with.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I was wondering the same thing. Is it just the case that
| people for whatever reason see those more-familiar to them
| as better actors? Which also explains celebrity worship
| that certain people engage in, where they might go wild to
| see George Clooney, but would just walk right by a less-
| famous but equally or more skilled actor?
|
| If you took who was a hermit in Alaska with no media
| exposure for their entire life and showed them 3
| performances from 3 different tier actors, would they
| actually say that the A-lister is better than the B-lister,
| who is better than the C-lister?
| ectopod wrote:
| There are a few actors where I still remember the first
| time I saw them in a film. I had no idea who they were
| but they were mesmerising. They all became stars. Being
| gorgeous helps (and is sometimes enough to succeed) but
| some people really do have an astonishing talent.
| jfengel wrote:
| The experiment isn't entirely meaningful, because it is
| culturally dependent -- not just the star-ness, but the
| expectations of the performance. You don't have to go
| back very far in time to watch actors who were highly
| praised but seem off now. And go 20 years in the future,
| and a lot of what you see now will seem weird and fake.
|
| It's also really, really hard to tell from a finished
| product. There is a lot going on in a film between the
| performance and what you see in a theater: editing,
| music, lights, sound. A good cinematographer can make
| anybody, if not a star, at least somewhat charismatic. I
| wish I knew how they did that -- it's spooky magic, but
| I've watched it happen.
|
| I know that's not really what you meant. I'm just
| highlighting the challenge of defining what "it" even is.
|
| I can say that a lot of it isn't really about "better"
| acting. A lot of people who are only mediocre actors, or
| worse, are stars. George Clooney is both a genuinely
| talented actor and also a star -- but the two are almost
| entirely orthogonal.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/e0Uqk
| Animats wrote:
| Since her estate was worth US$50 million at death, she obviously
| didn't need to keep working. So she quit. "Famous" is a job.
|
| _" The mass trials are going well. There will be fewer Russians,
| but better ones."_ -- Ninotchka
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-12-10 23:00 UTC)