Sunset Boulevard

Film studies

Pascal Di Betta

Film: Grapes of Wrath

October 29, 2017

                                                                        Acting

A shot that stood out to me was the scene with the dead monkey. As Joe Gills (William Holden) approaches the dead body with drapes on it, we begin to get nerves. Has Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) Killed the poor fella. As she lifts up the cloth we see that it is a monkey. She invited Joe to come up because she thought he was a the coffin guy. She realizes she has invited a total stranger into her house and tells him to leave. He is about to, until he realizes that he knows her. “Wait a minute, haven't I seen you before? I know your face.”

He says. “Your Norma Desmond, used to be in silent pictures, use to be big.”

She raises her eyebrows as high as they can go and retorts, “I am big. It's the pictures that got small... They're dead.  They're finished. There was a time when this business had the eyes of the whole wide world.  But that wasn't good enough.  Oh, no. They wanted the ears of the world, too.  So they opened their big mouths, and out came talk, talk, talk…” In a way Norma is right. Although what she is saying might come from the resentment she has for the film industry. She goes on a little rant which joe finds very funny. We as people tend to discredit something if we can't have it or if other people are getting what we wanted. Example would be a part in a play. I don't get it so I tell all my friends how shitty the part was even if was the best part I ever came across. This is exactly what Norma is doing, because a few seconds later she reveals that she has been working on a script, with talking in it.

I myself wish to be an actor and the film is touching on something that I have thought about for a long time, being a star. Most who become stars say that the fame is not worth it, yet people over and over look to reach for stardom. The modern generation's new form of celebrity is the social media star. People, because of their good looks and aesthetically pleasing pictures become world famous. The talent of being pretty. The silent film star was the first product of stars. And that is exactly what they were, products. They became a product that would be put on movie billboards to get the crowds to come flocking. The reason that we today look at the acting from that time and it seems to be very showy was because the transition between stage and film had still not happened. Most of the actors and actress came straight off of broadway, so they were still performing for the stage on camera. Very few artist from the silent era lasted the transition from silent to talkies. It was a different type of acting. Once films had audio, they overcompensated with a lot less action, and lots of talking. Norma is one of the stars that never made it. The acting involved was completely different and she was stuck in the past.

Method acting took hold in the fifties and has lasted since. Originally brought over to America from Russia by Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky, acting became about a craft instead about just performing. That meant the actor for every show could go out and perform truthfully every night. This way the performance will be authentic and different every night, because the actor is actually living the part, versus playing a mechanical representation of the part. If the actors work becomes a subconscious event, where they can think about what happened in the news that morning, then they are not acting. If the actor is present on stage, then they are going to be listening and their performance will be in response to the other actors and how their scene partner behave. Sandy Meisner technique is all about listening. You repeat your lines over and over, each time attempting to solicit a reaction from your scene partner, and depending on their response and what your character wants, the actor will respond differently every time.