In The Eye of the Beholder

What makes greatness in acting? There are any number of lists out there, some fan-made, some critical, some created by 'legitimate' organizations like AFI or BFI, listing the '100 Greatest Actors of All-Time'.  A number often top the list: Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and, more recently, Johnny Depp.  There seems to be little disagreement that those actors are indeed great, though their order of greatness is, like any other 'Top' list, open for debate.  And what about the ones put down lower on that same list, or the ones not there at all? Is Peter O'Toole, for instance, really a greater actor than Humphrey Bogart? Is Cary Grant a lesser performer than Gregory Peck?

We tend to think of the 'Method Men' of the 1950s onwards as being somehow greater than the actors of the classical Hollywood era, or their classical counterparts of the stage.  Marlon Brando is 'authentic' in 'A Streetcar Named Desire' in a way that Humphrey Bogart simply is not.  But, consider how authentic 'Streetcar' really is.  It is, after all, a Tennessee Williams play.  Brando's performance is wrenching and raw, but I defy you to name one person of your acquaintance who remotely resembles Stanley Kowalski (and if you can, you might want to run as far away as possible).  Brando is not being realistic, he's being hyper-realistic, externalizing raw emotion and power.  But his performance is as inauthentic as you can get outside of a sociopath.

So authenticity is a bit of dubious category to discuss great acting.  So what is? Here follows my personal criteria, open for debate as always, but it at least gets at some definition of what it takes to be labelled 'great'.

Naturally, I have my own preferences and my own attitudes.  Certain actors who are labelled 'great' leave me scratching my head, or walking out of the theatre.  I am consistently underwhelmed by performers like Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Jude Law, and Russell Crowe, all of whom have been severally called the 'greatest actors of their generation'.  Heath Ledger seems to me to be one of those actors who might have been, but will never be.  Nannina, I know, reacts badly to Jack Nicholson, whom I consider to be in the realm of the greats.  Personal preference shall probably always play a role when we try to agree what actors are great, good, mediocre and poor.  But I think we can be brought to agree on at least a few things.  

Disclaimer: obviously, I'm talking about all male actors here.  Female actors deserve their own article and I don't have the energy to combine the two. 

   1.  Charisma

Probably the most important factor.  A great actor is one who demands audience attention.  If he is on screen, the audience's eyes must be drawn to him.  Most remarkable is when two charismatic actors share the screen--see Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine duke it out for two hours in 'Sleuth'.  A great actor can also point up the lesser qualities of his co-stars, as his charisma dwarfs otherwise good actors.  A charismatic actor can make a bad guy charming and attractive (Alan Rickman in 'Die Hard'), so much so that we all feel some little sadness at his final, inevitable death.  Charisma is probably undefinable, often subjective, but seems a necessary factor and does not merely relate to physical attractiveness.  You can find an actor charismatic without ever finding him attractive, and it is his charisma (not his abs) that draws you, and the camera, to him.  

2.  Breadth of Character

The ability to portray diverse, contradictory characters seems a necessity for an actor to be truly considered great.  This does not mean that the actor's persona must, therefore, vanish beneath a veneer of characterization.  Most great actors become known for being themselves.  I do not think it goes against an actor to bring his star persona to the screen.  Cary Grant was always Cary Grant, to be sure, but he was also a comedian, a lover, even (nearly) a villain.  The star persona can sometimes be a millstone and prevent the actor from appearing as a true other, a character outside himself.  But his ability to play that persona, and to counteract it, as Henry Fonda did in 'Once Upon a Time in the West' or Grant attempted to do in 'Suspicion', can in itself be called greatness.  Too often we dismiss actors for playing themselves.  What they are really playing is a star persona, a larger-than-life figure of the imagination.  That takes ability.  It can also lead to greatness.     

3. Vocalization

Forgive me for this, but it is my strong belief that a great actor must have a great voice.  Whether the refined, classically trained intonations of a Gielgud, or the nasal, everyman-ness of a Brando or Nicholson, much of the strength of an actor lies in his ability to articulate his lines.  Some actors, like Brando or Dean, founded their acting style in not being understood, making mumbling an act of art.  This style of performance, founded in the Method, works perfectly for certain roles: it would never do for The Wild One to speak Shakespeare.  But it can also limit an actor.  To continue to use Brando as an example, his performance as Marc Antony in 'Julius Caesar' has been derided (rightly, I think) as a case of two acting styles meeting and failing to mesh.  Stanley Kowalski does not belong in ancient Rome and Shakespeare's language does not sit easily on Brando's tongue.  You can't mumble out 'Friends, Romans' and create the desired effect.  His voice feels wildly out of place, particularly surrounded by actors like James Mason and John Gielgud, whose refined voices and classical backgrounds slip perfectly into place in a Shakespeare drama.    

4. Ability

This is what it all comes down to.  A great actor, simply put, can really act.  He can make you feel his character's desperation, humanity; he can find beauty in the ugliest of characters, nuance in the most perfect.  And this does not merely go for drama.  Comedians are consistently undervalued in the list of great actors, but every actor has admitted that tragedy is much easier than comedy.  Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Cary Grant, Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd: all deserve their places in the pantheon.  We tend to award dramatic performances, but how difficult was it for Chaplin to make us laugh at a man eating his shoe? Or for Keaton to find physical humor in a house falling down? Some of Cary Grant's best performances are so good because they do not dwell on the dark side, but give us the joy of seeing a handsome man making a fool of himself, of him making us laugh.  So ability does not merely fall into the realm of tortured characters self-destructing, but also in joyful characters managing against all odds to turn their pathos to humor.  

So here I have shown my colours.  I could give you my personal list of great actors, but in truth they are too numerous and, I feel, impossible to rank.  I cannot in good conscience put Brando or Dean at the top of a list that must include Olivier and Redgrave, and how can one compare? At the very least I can say that, while we must always disagree about this or that performer, we can emphatically agree that there are the great ones out there, who consistently give us moments and movies to argue about, analyze, and enjoy.  Perhaps ultimately greatness is in the eye of the beholder.