IS METHOD ACTING DEAD?

IS METHOD ACTING DEAD? I posted here that: “People think of great acting now as method acting—and Brando was as responsible as anybody for that change in thinking”; and I quoted here David Thompson’s entry on Cary Grant in A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM: “the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema.” David Thomson had a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (December 5-6) with the provocative title “The Death of Method Acting.” Thomson thinks that method acting reached its peak in The Godfather movies. He acknowledges that Sean Penn is still a method actor, but then praises Meryl Streep for her skill; Frank Langella, for his “lovely, hopeless intelligence”; George Clooney, for his “playing poker with the audience”; Johnny Depp, for his teasing approach; and John Malkovich (for being John Malkovich). He praises these actors as being like Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Bob Hope—“actors who never had any intention of letting us catch them personally.” For Thomson, “Acting is storytelling.” I think the word “storytelling” is important. The enormous achievements of method acting can lead us into forgetting that there are lots of ways of telling a story. Think of how narrow literature would be if every story had only the narrow world view of method acting.