The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

You can watch Streetcar a dozen times and still pick up new nuances in Brando’s performance. His way with language is groundbreaking in its naturalism. He talks like a real person, throwing away lines and muddying his diction. The contrast with Vivien Leigh’s Blanche, who is a character of persona and affectation, could not be clearer. On Broadway, Blanche’s affectation was that of a classically trained English actress. In the film, Blanche’s affectation is that of the studio system actor of the 1930s and 1940s, but the fight remains the same: realism versus magic. Brando excels at one of the great challenges of acting: playing a loathsome and unintelligent character without judgment or irony. Stanley is clever—many abusers are—but he is none too smart. It would be easy to lampoon Stanley, and equally easy to try to make him sympathetic. Instead, Brando inhabits all aspects of him: the vulnerable little boy, the charming man’s man, and the terrifying brute. Few actors could pull off the moment with Stella (played by fellow Studio member Kim Hunter) when he tries to “enlighten” her on the Napoleonic Code with his mouth full of leftovers, or his protest that he is not an ape while he stands hunched over, his arms swaying and his jaw jutted out, exactly like an ape.