Acting Naturally: The Magic in Great Performances

How can a movie performance be handled best? That’s the question film critic Thomson (A Biographical Dictionary of Film) asks in these essays about actors acting. First up is Carey Mulligan, on her considerable strengths and on what, with the exception of her performance in 2020’s Promising Young Woman, is her reluctance to ditch restraint and go all out. An essay on faces focuses on Louise Brooks’s performance in 1928’s Pandora’s Box. Thomson compares her face work to Buster Keaton’s. A chapter on casting leads to the observation that actors ruthlessly study everyone they meet, to mine their tics for future performance. Some names appear frequently—Streep, Brando, Dean, Hopkins—but Thomson’s scope is wide. Writing of Bernardo Bertolucci’s great directing in 1972’s Last Tango in Paris, the author speculates how different the movie would be if instead of Maria Schneider, the young 23-year-old Meryl Streep had played the role. The author believes that an actor’s performance changes depending on whom they play against, and he proves that point in this well-argued book.