OUa^'íK I^ttrl-S6^ kjöj^^c (ecí) : ^vie^cUva.TUfe KUm Masculinity in Crisis föethod Acting in Hollywood ski;; rvľŔGINIA WRIGHT WEXMAN m , The imagery of libidinal revolution and bodily transfiguration once again becomes a : figure for the perfected community. -Fredrlc lameson Masculinity is not something one is born with but something one gains.. .in American £■>, life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men. -Norman Mailer Marlon was a tortured man in the early days, and he was great on screen. -Sam Spiegel Utjan often-repeated story. Sir Laurence Olivier, playing opposite Dustin Hoffman in the 1976 Marathon Mun, is said to have been astonished at the American actors lengthy and exhausting Met hod-Inspired preparation activities. Finally, Olivier decided to offer Hoffmann some advice. "Why don't you try acting?" he suggested. This story directs us to the Method's version of itself as so realistic that the term adiug cannot properly be applied toil. In fact, however, the Method is not different from acting-, it is simply a special style of acting. Method performances in such popular films from the 1950s as A Strrrlcnr Named Desire [ 1951) and Baby Doll (1956) today seem as artificial as any other historically dated performance technique. When advocates of the Method argue that this style is more "real" than "acted," they are In fact adapting a rhetor ic routinely applied to all acting styles in the realist tradition Changes in courtship conventions entail changes in the fashions of Hollywood performance styles, which can then lay claim to superior status by virtue of their putative ability to achieve greater realism than the style that preceded them. The movies' appropriation of Method acting during the 1950s was yet another strategy by which Hollywood could lay claim to a "realist effect" because of the style's emphasis on a close fit between actor and character and because Method techniques were peculiarly suited to delineate a new type of male romantic hero. 1 28 VIRGINIA WflIGHI WEXMAN Melhod acting and cinema Tlie special quality of Stanislavskian Melhod acting can be most readily understood by comparing it to the British tradition, the other school of perfoimanfce bestjuiown to American film- and theatergoers Where the British school focuses on external technique, emphasizing makeup, costume, and verbal dexterity, the Method relies on understatement and what it calls "inner truth."* cultivating an aura of mood and emotion derived from the actor's own persona rather than stressing the interpretation of the language In the written script. The British system encourages audiences to appreciate the actor's craft from an intellectual distance. The Method, by contrast, seeks to maximize the audience's Identification with the performer. Inspired by realist playwrights like Chekhov and Ibsen. Stanislavsky developed his own interpretation of realism at the Moscow Art Theatre His concept focused on the psychology of the actor rather than on the social milieu of the character. This he termed "living the part." In An Ailor Prepares he wrote. "Always and forever, when you are on the stage, you must play yourself" 1167) The audience identifies with Stanislavskian actors in part because these performers ignore the audience, even going so far. at times, as turning their backs lo the front of the stage' instead of interacting with the spectators, actors merge their own psyches with those of the characters they play. Through what Stanislavsky termed 'affective memory" the actors recreate their roles in relation to aspects of their own personal histories.' By emphasizing the subtle processes associated with the performer/character's Inner lite, such actors position themselves as creative forces who collaborate with the playwright. As Timothy Wiles has observed. "Stanislavsky was the first to sense... that what is essentially 'real' about theatrical realism lies as much In the reality of the performance itself as in the true-to-life quality of the play's details" (14). In this sense Stanislavsky's method foregrounds the actor In the same way that the nineteenth-century concept of the virtuoso foregrounded the musical performer. Like virtuosos. Stanislavsky's actors emphasize the difficulty of performance. The painful struggle that such actors subject themselves to In order to reach burled feelings is often manifest In the tortured quality identified with Method style. As some critics have observed, such a performance strategy is analogous In many ways to the experience of psychoanalysis—not least because ol its emphasis on releasing the •power of the unconscious. The fundamental objective of our psycho-technique." Stanislavsky wrote, "is to put us in a creative state in which our subconscious will function naturally" (266). This approach gave Stanislavsky's system affinities to modernism as much as to realism, for. like the stieam-of-consciousness prose of Virginia Woolf and lames loyce. the style of Stanislavskian actors is designed to allow glimpses of their characters' unconscious inner conflicts. The specific techniques used In Method performance—improvisation, relaxation, the cultivation of psychologically meaningful pauses, and the use of emotionally charged objects—are designed to reveal psychic conflict. The first three of these techniques create characters who appear to be speaking as If from a psychoanalyst's couch. The use of objects is a device used in all realist performance. In his book on Hollywood cinema Gilles Deleuze comments on the significance of this technique for the creation of what he calls the action image: "|T|he emotional handling of an object, an act of emotion in relation to the object, can have more effect than a ctose-up in the action image. It simultaneously brings together. METHOD ACTING IN HOtlVWOOO 129 .- i a strange way. the unconscious of the actor, the personal guilt of thedirector. the hysteria * the image" (159). Method actors are specifically trained to use objects as a means of »aling feelings that have been repressed by the character's conscious mind. In the words f Stanislavsky. "Only your subconscious can tell you why |a| particular ob|ect [comes| into le foreground of your mind" (292). .Although Stanislavsky's theories were developed for the f heater, they are readily adaptable tfilmperformanos.'Tlie absence of a live audience gives an obvious advantage to actors who specifically trained to ignore spectators. Further. Stanislavsky's preoccupation with tessing inner conflict rather than cultivating external effects is well suited to the cinema's _of close-ups. Long lakes allow for the expression of subtle changes in the character's slings. The Method actor's concentration on the emotional texture of individual scenes ^pieces" or "units") Is also readily adaptable to the moviemaking process, where individual ;nes are shot separately and there Is always ample time to prepare each one. Finally, the lethod actor's reliance on emotional freshness rather than on outward technical mastery lay in some ways be better served by a recorded medium than by the theater, where a role ight have to be repeated more or less verbatim every night over a penod of many months. ĚFjIm can preserve the best, the freshest, of a varied series of performances of a single scene. ■ Despite its adaptability to film, however. Stanislavsky's Method failed to influence movie ^performance styles significantly until it was taken up by Hollywood in the 1950s. In the $SSR film directors were wedded to a cinematic formalism that stressed the primacy of the jirectors editing function and thus had little interest in this new acting style. The Moscow krt Theatre is my deadly enemy." Eisenstein wrote. 'It is the exact antithesis of all I am Ing to do. They string theiremotlons together to give a continuous illusion of reality. I take ^photographs of reality and then cut them up so as to produce emotions" (Wollen 65). In his classic study of clnematlcperformance, Film Ailing V.l. Pudovkin attempted without success to negotiate a rapprochement between Stanislavskian technique and the reliance >h editing that stood at the center of Soviet filmmaking4 His earlier Film Technique had advocated the Eisensteinian concept of actors as physical types ("typage") and had reported mi the famous "Kuleshov effect." wherein the same close-up of an actor was read by different ludiences as expressing widely divergent emotions depending on whether It was followed shot of a child playing, a bowl of soup, or a dead woman 1168).' Both typage and the íuleshoveffect implicitly denigrated the contributions that Method-trained performerscouId ||make to the creation of complex and individuated filmic characters. Kuleshov himself advocated a modified version of the older Delsarle method of perfor-onance in which emotions were conveyed through broad, conventionalized gestures. Such an [approach, which communicated strong, simple emotions quickly, was much more in keeping iiwith the aesthetics of Soviet montage than was Stanislavskian acting technique. Kuleshov .'■specifically dismisses the expressive potential of Stanislavsky's Method when he states. )ne must construct the work of film actors so that It comprises the sum of organized ivement. with reliving" held toa minimum" (100). In Film fitting, however. Pudovkin denies fjthe Kuleshov experiment's implicit valorization of the power of editing over the artistry ■.of acting. He speaks of "the pseudo-theory of the montage (edited) Image (a theory for which .ho single individual Is responsible). This theory deduces, from the (act that an impression ;of acting can be composed mechanically by sticking pieces together, the illegitimate /assumption that separate pieces, not connected inwardly within the actor, will necessarily give ;an optimum result" (273). 130 VIRGINIA WRIGHT WEXMAN Pudovkln had begun his film career as an acior and conlinued to perform roles in his own films and thoseofolhers throughout his liie. Because ofhtsconoern willi actors, his work was sometimes labeled "theatrical" by other members of the Soviet film movement (Leyda 222). By advocating a collaboration between actor and director during the editing process Pudovkin's Film Ming attempts to retain the Soviet aesthetic of film as montage and at the same time rehabilitate the status of the actor as a center of creative expressivity rathei than a passive tool of the director. Through their pari icipation In editing. Pudovkin argues. . actors could overcome the fragmentation brought about by having their scenes cut up Into pieces and recreate their performances into a larger emotional unity. Tellingly, Pudovkin's single extended example of how this larger emotional unity could be created does not Involve. acting at all but instead focuses on the juxtaposition of music and image in Ihe climactic sequence of his 1933 film Demur. After describing the sequence, he concludes somewhat apologetically; >: Though the example wc have dealt with here docs not relate directly to the actor's work, it yet is important for him, for he is one of those who must understand particularly clearly the significance of the treatment of sound and imagelin the editing process], not in their primitive naturalistic association, but In a more profound—I should term it teúUílic— association enabling the creative worker in the cinema to portray any given event, not merely simply in direct representation, but in ils deepest degree of generalization (313-14). (Emphasis added! Despite Pudovkin's lavish praise of Stanislavsky and his repeated protests against the misapplication of the notion of typage to describe the characteristic Soviet approach to cinematic performance, ihe argument put forward in Film Ming cannol surmount the inconsistency that is apparent In the above passage, where "realism" is opposed to "naturalism" and signifies the Utopian social vision that lay at the heart of Russian formalist film theory's concept of dialectical montage editing. Stanislavskian realism, focused as it is on the inner feelings of the actor and the development of subtle emotional slates made possible by long takes, represents a radically different quality. Pudovkin's fundamental commilment to editing over acting Is evident when he writes. "I must confess that during my work 1 have admitted actors to creative collaboration only grudgingly and to a miserly extent" (354-551* ■-a: Hollywood's appropriation of Ihe method In Hollywood. Stanislavskian theory at first exercised a similarly negligible influence. Despite the immigration of members of the Moscow Art Theatre like Alia Nazimova, Richard Boleslavsky, and Maria Ouspenskaya during the 1920s and 1930s, the Hollywood studios' story-centered view of actors as script readeis precluded the intense actor involvement In the creation of character advocated by the Method.' The emergence of Stanlslavskian techniques as a major force in film performance was not to occur until historical conditions were propitious and the theories themselves had undergone considerable revision. -•■For Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre, as for the American Croup Theatre of the 1930s which modeled itself on Stanislavsky's theories, the Method approach had political METHOD ACTING IN HOllVWOOD 131 amplications. Both the Moscow Art Theatre and the Group focused on contemporary social roblems and used Improvisation to build an ensemble performance that challenged the Ider. hierarchically organized "star-centered'' theater. For example, a filmed rehearsal for a production of Tfcf TfinvSislf/s staged by Ihe Moscow Art Theatre Includes a sequence In which Stanislavsky asks his players. "Did you try to adjust to each other, to feel each other out?" *(Nash|. In the American Croup Theatre Ihe ensemble ideal extended to the playwright jas well; its mosi cha raci eristic productions, such as Wailing for Lc/iy and Ahměí ami Sing, were fôjrritten by Clifford Odets. one of the Group's own members. Odets's plays for the Croup ^were contemporary dramas of working-class frustration, conforming to Stanislavsky's ideal ipfan indigenous theater of social protest. The early political and group-centered orientation of Stanislavskian practice, however. 'had eroded by the 1950s when Lee Strasberg promulgated his own version of the Method at the Actors Studio. As has frequently been noted. Strasbeig emphasized the individuated [psychoanalytic dimension of Stanislavsky's program by supplementing the Method's affective emory techniques with new exercises. The most famous of these required performers stage reenactments of "private moments" using material from their own lives. Although hese exercises enhanced the actor s ability to portray powerful emotional states. Strasberg's raining techniques also encouraged his sludents to substitute their own feelings for nose of the characters they played rather than to merge the two together as Stanislavsky äd envisioned.1 . i Under Strasberg. Method acting became more confessional than communal.9 Such (an emphasis on the actor in isolation undermined the ensemble-oriented aspect of Stanislavsky's system, producing actors like lames Dean, whose on-screen aura of alienation from those around him was enhanced by a solipsistic acting technique that could lead Tllm to step on the speeches of his fellow peiformeis willi line readings of his own lhat were 'often inaudible. At the Actors Studio Stanislavsky's conception of improvisation as a way to evelop a sense of community among actors was replaced hy an approach to improvisation 'that largely celebrated the neurosis of the individual performer.10 \k Because of their tendency to substitute their personal feelings for those of the characters Ihey were playing. Actors Studio performers were well suited to become Hollywood stars." ilh Hollywood, star types were defined through their participation in specially tailored films ^"star vehicles"! and through publicity surrounding their offscreen activities. Thus, the closer 'the fit between Ihe roles that actors could play and their "real" persona lilies, the more easily ■pfomotable they were as stars. In the case of performers from the Actors Studio, who were ■oriented toward submerging the characters they played Into their own psyches, this fit »was especially dose. In short, Lee Strasberg transformed a socialistic, egalitarian theory of 'acting into a celebrity-making machine Jí I MoviestarsspawnedbyStrasberg'sActorsStudiowereofanewtypewhich isolten labeled the rebel hero |l louston, Kaet. Morella and Epstein, Spoto. and Zaratsky). The three actors who epitomized the new rebel type associated with the Method were Marlon Brando, lames Dean, and Montgomery Clift. In fact, none of these stars was Iralned primarily at the Actors Studio. Clift never attended at all. Dean took only a few classes there, virtually abandoning ííhls training after the first time that Strasberg criticized him. Brando was trained primarily '|by Stella Adler, a former member of the Croup Theatre who had had a falling-out with Strasberg over his interpretation of Stanislavskys Ideas li By contrast, other equally talented actors of the 1950s with far closer lies lo ihe Studio, such as lulle Harris and Eli Wallach, did '■ 132 VIRGINIA WBlGHI WtXMAN not 111 Hollywoods Image of the male rebel heio and thus never achieved an appreciable degree of Hollywood success. In part because of the confusion generated by these popular associations of Method acting wlih stars not trained at the Actors Studio, the two major studies of film acting published to date, Richard Dyer's S Mrs and fames Naremore's Acting to iht CiMrwia, both question the distinctiveness of Method performance (Dyer 154, Naremore I97-98). However, whethei directly influenced by Strasberg or not. tlie new male stars all to some degree or «her adapted Method techniques to support their identification as rebels, transforming Stanislavsky's emphasis on relaxation into the 'Method slouch," his Interest in improvisation into libidinous temper tantrums, and his concept of inwardness into mumbling, tortured pauses and sloppy gioomlng Although these histrionic affectations quickly assumed the status of cliches, it is important to bear in mind that they icpresented a clear application of Stanislavsky's theories. Such stiategies decisively shaped the kinds of characters that these actors portrayed and the manner in which they portrayed them. I I / The cinematic Method text: On the Waterfront In the three films of the 1950s most often cited in connection with Method performance—On \he Wdiff/nwii 119541. Ed« of Men (1955). and RřM Witfttiul a dus* \ 1955)—the central conflict concerns '.he rebel hero's difficulty defining himself in relation to a father figure. This conflict is depicted in each film by means of climactic, highly charged scenes in which a young man attempts to assert a model of virility different from that of his elder. Such scenes call'forth the Method actor's ability to indulge in the kind of emotional outpouring traditionally associated with lemininebehavior, lames Dean'sanguishedcry in ReŕnlWiiíi«iiení as a "social problem film" with a love story that is iphcral to its central concerns.14 Such a conception of the film misses how essential the I've story Is to its articulation of the male hero Kazan's and Schulberg's enterprise in fact kes its vocabulary from a commercial language in which the love story sets the terms by which manhood Is understood and evaluated. The hero's name. Terry, immediately presents him as a figure of ambiguous gender sslbllittes. These possibilities ate articulated in relation to a class discourse that defines Sivo different modes of masculinity Terrys developing sense of himself eventually leads him ffirm his male identity in relation to a middle-class mode of social organization different [rem the working-class values with which he has grown up. This mode involves a coinpan-jhate relation with a woman in the course of which the issues of gender confusion that he ■'struggling with are enacted. Initially Terry sees himself as part of a society that the film codes as one constituted in Terms of a residual discourse. This world is made up of competing constellations of male power held by localized groups of longshoremen and union officers who define their masculinity through the exclusion of women. Terry's primary loyalty is to the all-male gang of union officials by the corrupt boss lohnny Friendly (lee I. Cobb) and his dandified second-in-command, rry's brother Charlie the Gent (Rod Steiger). Terry's unquestioning participation in this male identified system begins to break down, however, when Friendly orders him lo set up the murder of loey Doyle, one of t he dockers who is about to violate the accepted Imergroup RSy&HlM by giving information to a federal commission that is investigating corruption in | Frieridty's union. Prodded by Father Barry (Karl Maiden) and by Edic Doyle (Eva Marie Saint), the sister of the man he has helped to kill, and despite Friendly"s effort to dissuade him by killing his brother. Charlie. Terry cooperates with the federal investigation He also falls in ove with Edie Terry decides toobey the impersonal law of the land rather than the lough-guy code of the docks, and he chooses the companionship of a potential marriage panner over that of his male cronies. His new roles, constituted in terms of the emerging discourses of bouigoois citizen and companionate husband require a radical change in his sense of himself as a man. Brando dramatizes this change by drawing on the classic techniques of Method performance: Improvisation, pauses, the use of objects, and relaxation. • Brando's improvisations are delivered in the context of a rigid structure of oppositional languages that define self-enclosed ar.d irreconcilable groups. The middle-class government officials speak in the most stilted manner, making statements that sound artificial and scripted, such as "You have the right to remain silent if that is what you choose todo." At ihe other extreme, the working-class dockers and union men speak more informally: yet, sensing their isolation trom the more official forms of bourgeois utterance used to intimidate them, they have developed an ethic of silence in relation to outsiders. As Kayo Dugan (Pat Henning) says. "Down on the docks, we've always been D and D." betraying even by this locution an argot that must be translated for the benefit of those who arc not initiates (Dugan must explain to Father Barry that D and D means "deaf and dumb") If the speech of the officials conveys itsell as an artificial script and that of the dockers as a muted vernacular code, the speech of the women in the film aspires to bea form of personal 134 VIRGINIA WRiGHI WĚXMAN expression thai will bridge the communication Impasse. Early In the Ulm Edie Doyle and her female neighbor make strenuous ellorts to "speak the truth' about the dockers' victimization and to encourage others to do so. To the men who surround (hem, however, (heir efforts appear naive and they are summarily silenced. The men aredetermined to keep their women mule—even if this involves sending them away. If meaningful communication is to occur, a more potent spokesperson is needed. This role is assumed by Terry Malloy. His special position is signaled by his manner of speaking. Brando's improvisations set his dialogue apart fiom that of the other characters.11 The unrehearsed quality of his speech is conspicuous to anyone watching the film in statements such as "Neveťs gonna be much loo much loo soon for me, Shorty." an utterance Impossible to imagine as scripted in the form in which Brando delivers it.,0 Similarly. Teiry's exchange Willi Edic duiing the much-praised scene in which he appropriates her glove coniains statemenls that Invite the spectator to construe the character's woids as beyond the scriptwriters control. When Edie tells him she is going to a college run by the Sisters of St. Anne, he asks. "Where's thai?" When she responds. "Tairytown." he says again. "Where's thai... uh... where's that?" When this question, too. is answered, he gees on. "What do you do there, iust... what...? Study?" Further, when Edle drops her glove. Brando mumbles. "Wail a second." suggesting a motivation having to do more with a command from an actor who has decided to depart from the script than with anything preplanned for the character of Terry. As these last examples suggest, Terry's moments of Improvised speech set him apart noi only from the other characters but from the screenplay as well. It Is worth noting that Budd Schulbeig's sciipt for On ihe Waterfront contains an extraordinary number of repeated phrases (for example—Father Barry: "Don't you see that? Now don't you see lhat?' Edie; "No wonder people call you a bum. No wonder."». In the taxicab scene, surely one of the best known in at) cinema. Terry himself speaks many of his lines twice ("Before we get to where. Charlie? Before we get to where?*; "There's a lot more to this lhan I thought. Charlie; I'm telling you. there's a lot more"; and. in one of the most famous lines of a]). "It was you, Charlie; it was you*). Such a use of language has a quality of obsessive return that presents the characters as part of an inflexible social and psychological milieu in which they feel trapped and helpless." When Brando improvises broken utterances against such a background, his clumsy syntax suggests a freewheeling actor's Intermittent attempts at revolt against a constraining structure that relies on shrilly defensive patterns of repetition to assert its authority. In place of Stanislavskys ideal of actors as tottaboralon in the process of creating a text, merging their psyches with the script that they are performing, On ffif Water/rout uses Stanislavskian improvisation to depict an actor who often appears to be tompetiitg with a text that sets itself against him by its adherence to rote patterns of repetition. The rebellion of Marlon Brando the stai against a traditional cinema of overly scripted performances can thus be read as an analogue to that of Teny Malloy ihe character against traditional patterns of masculine behavior. Both actor and character appear as Isolated figures, Terry In the context of the world depicted in the film and Brando in the context of the circumstances of its production. Each seeks to define his identity in opposition to rigid, empty systems of authority. The view that sees On ihe Wateifronl as a rationalization of Kazan and Schulberg's friendly testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee cannot account tor the fact that it plays down its "great moment" of informing. Terry's explosive testimony Is almost thrown away; Kazan even cuts away from it at a climactic moment to show 'Mr. Upstairs" MEIIIOO ACIING IN HOLLYWOOD 135 witching off his television set. The courtroom scene cannot become the site where the film's ssues are resolved because It focuses only on words; but On \ke Wale/fionl Is at least as concerned with images, which are part of a visual texture thai masks their psychological significance. The bleak black-and-white photography and gritty location shooting that give the film its distinctive visual feel identify it with a tradition of documentary realism But many of the images, especially those of Brando's face and the objects that he interacts ith. also convey the inward struggle that marks the character of Terry Malloy. Like Its words, the images of the films are gender identified Brando's performancemust define masculinity against a visual background that represents the male body as diminuiive and vulnerable. Boris Kaiifmann's bleak black-and-white photography overpowers the film's male groups with a supeihumanly scaled and menacinfi urban landscape: great loading decks, tall iron fences, vast desolate tracts of rubble, and buildings with endless colonnades. In the films first shot the figures of Johnny Friendly anc his group are dwarfed hy the looming shape of a docked freighter, and the whistle blast from another freighter obliterates Terry's first attempt to speak whal he knows lo Edie. The threatening quality of this landscape is emphasized by wide-angle shots in which people and things move backwards and forwards In the frame with disconcerting rapidity: a truck chasing Terry and Edie down an alley, lohnny Friendly's henchmen scurrying out of Ihe bai hen Father Barry momentarily distracts Terry's attention. Most ominously, this world overscaled structures and precipitous movement involves the threat of falling. We see loey Doyle fall off the roof of his apartment building and later watch a cargo of whiskey carton* ■■drop on Kayo Doogan. another would-be informer. As the film's primary representative of femininity, Edie thinks only of escaping iroin ihis environment back to the country where she goes to college or to Ihe older way of living represented In her fantasy of a farm. Terry. In turn, tries to escape through his pigeons, with which he Is more than once identified. He releases one of these pigeons into the air just before loey Doyle's fatal fall. The bird'sability to counteract the gravitational pull that ensures Joey's destruction is underscored by Friendly's bodyguard Tillio (Tami Mauriello), who compares loey to a bird who could sing, "but he couldn't fly." As if in response to this threatening visual context. Brando's Method techniques depict a character who is cautious and uncertain. The anguished pauses that mark his performance ŕ are dramatized by high-key lighting and by Leonard Bernstein's overwrought musical score At such moments the Rim's long close-ups of the character of Terry Malloy suggest a level of experience that is verbally inexpressible. Like the silences that occur on the psychoanalyst's couch, these pauses convey inner confusion and blockage. Terry cannot articulate what is going on inside of him because he does not consciously understand ii I« Brando also draws on a Method-Inspired use oi obiects to represent his character's repressed gender-related insecurities. As I have indicated, one of Brando's most celebrated scenes in this film involves his appropriation of a woman's glove. When Terry first meets Edie. he takes up a glove that she has accidentally dropped and refuses to return it to her. playing with it and eventually putting his hand into it as he engages her in conversation. As lames Naremore has noted, "Few virile male leads befoic him... would so effortlessly have slipped on a woman's glove" (Atuna in tíuOnma 194 i A further motif that bnngs out Terry's "feminine" side involves his pigeons. In a curious scene on the roof he tenderly holds a pigeon erroneously referred to as "she" by Edie. then clearly identified as a male by Tommy, the young Golden Warrior ("She's a he His name is Swifly"). Immediately following Tommys 136 VIRGINIA WBIGHtWEXMAN statement, however, the pigeon lays an egg in Terry's hand. This hermaphroditic creature, to which Terry refers approvingly on more than one occasion, can be taken as a rrlodet for Terry's own confused identity, which effects a complicated mediation between masculinity and femininity. In keeping with the Method's psychoanalytically oriented preoccupations, Brando also interacts with objects in such a way as to bring out psychologically coded meanings having to do with enclosure, which Freud identified with femininity, or thrusting and, penetration, which he identified as male.Terrys habit of chewing gum. which involves the bodysenciosing properties, has overtones of femininity. These overtones are further played upon when Terry offers gum to Edic to comfort her during the wedding scene. His gesture of exchange here contrasts to some of the film's instances of male bonding, which are marked by exchanges of cigarettes—objects with more phallic overtones. A cigarette Is exchanged between Father Barry (Karl Maiden) and one of the dockers as the priest is being hauled up out of the hold, for example Women may also be included in this ritual of male bonding: the snatches of dialogue we overhear among members of the wedding party indicate that, like the men, the tough-talking bride smokes, a further sign of her accommodation to a traditional male world. The film's major example of a male-coded object is the gun given to Terry by his older brother. Charlie. Despite the scenario implied by Charlie's decision to give him this giin. Terry cannot bring himself to use it to carry out the traditional role of the male who acts rather than speaks ''The gentleness with which Brando pushes this object away as Steiger begins to brandish it In front of him and the careless way that he holds if in the bar suggest the character's lack of traditional male authority. Terry soon abandons the gun and gives testimony at the hearing instead. When the hearing fails to clarify his sense of himself. Terry must find another strategy. At this point Brando engages with yet another object: loey Doyle's jacket. The feminine associations of enclosure inherent In this jacket are called forth when Father Barry makes a show of zipping it up after Terry's beating. Yet the Jacket Is nonetheless clearly identified as male. It thus constitutes an appropriate image for the androgynous persona that Terry ultimately adopts. In wearing loey's jacket. Terry affirms his commitment to a sexual identity that can encompass both masculine and feminine traits. Terry's ambivalent gender identity Increasingly centers on the representation of his body, and this representation is complicated by Brando's relaxed Method posture. In an essay enl it led 'Don't Look Now* Richard Dyer has explored the significance of the aura of hardness surrounding erotic representations of the male body. Thisaura is typically achieved by means of an emphasis on visible musculature and an association of the body with action, often through the use of an active, upright posture. By contrast. Brando's Method slouch depicts his body as limp rather than upright, and he plays the first love scenes with Eva Marie Saint in a passive position traditionally identified as feminine At the same time, however, his broken nose and the cut eyebrow that he affects for this role announce the character's association with t lie prototypical ly male world of boxing. The body image of the character that emerges has conflicting associations with both pugnacity and weakness. If the film is to rehabilitate his image asa romantic male hero, these contradictions must be addressed. Like his pigeon Swllty. who sits on the highest perch and attacks all who try to displace him, Terry must establish his superiority to women and to other men. The masculine side cf Terry's persona begins to take precedence when he makes love to Edie. Here, in a sequence noteworthy for its erotitliation of female surrender to a forced MEIHOD ACTING IN HOUVWOOD 137 sexual encounter, Terry asserts the traditional male right to dominate women,v Brando's 'rendering of this scene, however, differs from the peiformance strategy followed by prior male ífjřštars in that he exhibits an explosive rage that is perceived as passionate rather than merely [.controlling; il is the antithesis of the repressed state earlier expressed In his tortured pauses. The character appears to have 'unblocked* himself through a brutally physical assertion of ^masculine privilege vis-a-vis women. Only after this dramatic assertion of male dominance ^is Terry willing to carry out the femininiiing role of speaking out at the hearing Even though Terry's violent encounter with Edie has satisfied him regarding the superior ^capabilities of his body in relation to those of a woman. Friendly's attempt to assault him at the hearing serves as a reminder that he must assert this superiority In relation to the male ,world as well Throughout the film his physique is contrasted with that of Friendly. Whereas Cobb's body is massiveand his gestures aggressive, Brando's body is flaccid and his gestures phindeclslve. Although Terry's movements are identifiably those of a former boxer, he demurs when Friendly tries to involve him in a playful sparring match near the beginning of the film \lthough he no longer identifies himself as part of an individualistic world of competitive ^rnale groups that define their dominance In terms of pure muscle. Terry must prove his mascu-, .inity by means of a test of physical prowess. He approaches this test as a bourgeois man ''who is ruled by the law. His new masculinity Is purely symbolic, exemplified by his ability rto stand up after being beaten and to thrust himself through the door of the leading dock. iThis action calls forth associations with a sexual act in which Terry's whole body is deployed . as a phallus, and it incorporates him into the visual environment that has previously posed -such a threat to the dominance of the male figure. His walk into the loading dock contrasts 'his body to Friendly's for the last time as the former union boss is dunked In the harbor by :Pop Doyle (lohn Hamilton) Ina comic Inversion of Friendly's original crime of throwing Doyle's 'son loey off the roof.10 Terry's stoic assertion of bodily supremacy speaks more eloquently to the dockers than jny words; but it does move them to words. Here the paitein of repeated utterances that has heretofore prevailed is appropriated In the service of a new commitment to intergroup communication. Now the repetitions are combined with variations that emphasize the relationship between Terry and the other dockers. "If Ternj don't work, we don't work... If ft-walks in. w walk in with him/This new sense of community, fragile and tentative, constitutes the film's ultimate resolution, a resolution centered on the battered but still identifiably male bodyofTerryMalloy. This chorie solidarity is made possible, both thematically and dramatically, by the strong vulnerability of the protagonist. Thematically. the resolution Is classic and archetypal; the scapegoat puiges and renews the society. But dramatically it is innovative, made possible by the particular ideological potency of the new man that Brando enacts. Brando's performance elaborates a model of male gender insecurity that recreates romance as a drama of male neurotldsm. The Stanislavskian techniques that he employs not only lend themselves to the expression of this motif but also invest his characterization with an unprecedented aura of verisimilitude Brando's act Ing in Oh ilir Water/nwi Is thus designed to persuade movie fans of the 1950s that Hollywood's newest love stories were not only pleasurable but also "realistic." In recent years the Influence of the Method on the creation of male star personas has been to some extent reformulated. In place of the anxiety-fraught romantic relationships suggested ■■■ 138 VIRGINIA WWGHT WEXMAN by the neurotic male Meihoil stars ol the littles, newct Method stars like Robert lie Niro. Dustin Hoffman, and At Pad no typically project a cold narcissism that suggests that they are beyond romance These actors represent tli** sell-absorption thai Lee Strasbcrg brought to Method performance not by revealing an anguished inner tocment as the stars of the fifties were inclined lo do but rather by prelecting a truculent incommunicativeriess that pointedly excludes the audience. Many of the most successful films made by these actors, such as Baging Bull (1980). Tie C«>d