Greatest Ensemble Acting Performances in Film History (under revision)

Thanks for the reminder.

There's a fine line between compellingly flawed and plain bad or flawed acting. It has everything to do with conviction. If the actors really believe in what they're portraying it will usually work. The worse the technicality or realism of the acting, the more conviction needed to pull it off (see Dennis Hopper's performance in Blue Velvet for a supreme example of that) In a film like Vertigo, when the characters are losing themselves so completely in the throes of obsession, in the midst of actions and a love so inherently follied, the overheated melodrama becomes compelling, and in this case downright miraculous--if the acting were any other way (more technically precise) it wouldn't have worked--in other words, the Vertigo as we know it could not be made today (because today actors have to be formally perfect, especially in an A-list movie). There are probably more scholarly ways to label and explain what I am about to go over but you could say that there are two general types of acting: "theatrical" and "method". "Theatrical" is seen in most films prior to 1965 or so. By the mid-60's Marlon Brando had forever changed the hyperrealism and depth of which actors plunged themselves into their roles via "method-acting", though this started as far back as the 40's and some have argued that it began as early as Orson Welles in Citizen Kane or even James Stewart in Mr Smith Goes To Washington--but it really exploded at a whole new level of unhinged realism with Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (the film of which is a perfect example of both "theatrical" and "method" on display simultaneously and in startling contrast to each other, with Brando deep in his method and the other actors/actresses almost seeming like they're in a separate film) and also later on with On The Waterfront. I feel it is important in ones appreciation of the history of film and in experiencing the emotions of earlier films to be able to connect emotionally with each style. "Theatrical" is more unabashedly romantic and staged while "method" could be said to be more hyperrealistic and 'colloquial'. In Vertigo they're just letting go in full-fledged theatrical melodrama, but part of what makes the finale so incredible is that, out of nowhere Stewarts character explodes into reality in a sudden shift to method acting, as if he's been suspended in a psychological vertigo the whole film, and now for the first time he is completely bare, all of his suppressed emotions right there in front of us. And what makes it frightening is that it doesn't even seem like "acting". This is Stewart himself,, finally unleashed from his heretofore romantic obsession, his lost gaze, his hypnosis. The whole film can actually be seen as a gradual lesson in acting from fully theatrical in the beginning, through Stewart slowly but surely becoming more consumed by his character, all the way through to the end when he completely loses it and is no longer "acting". He is on screen for the first time, frighteningly, tragically vulnerable. The workability of the acting in Vertigo is rather miraculous: the very premise, the way Hitchcock directs, it's emotional symmetry, the situations and the actors' conviction are what make it work--each aspect an irremovable part to the compellingly "flawed" whole.

It's kind of like Robert Wyatts' Rock Bottom (and in more ways than just this): there's no way the stranger, idiosynchratic vocals of Rock Bottom could've been delivered by anyone else and they also wouldn't have worked on any other album in any other way. In any other context they are "flawed", badly sung, but in Rock Bottom they are amazingly emotional and miraculous for the very reason they are so "flawed" and idiosynchratic. It's similar to what makes Vertigo so special.

It's all about conviction.