A Filmmaker's Guide to: How Do We Measure a Great Performance in Film?

Film is a fairly versatile subject when it comes to defining a great performance because a lot of it comes from and can be based on public opinion, subjectiveness and unanimous agreement. These three aspects of opinion, though very different, are normally rooted in some form of reason. Whilst the performance of Daisy Ridley in the new Star Wars trilogy is debated by many, the performance of Cate Blanchett in “The Aviator” and “I’m Not There” is pretty much unchallenged as examples of great performances on screen. The performances of Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood” and Al Pacino in “The Godfather” are unanimously known as some of the greatest performances of the 21st and 20th century respectively. The main question therefore is not whether these performances are actually good or great, because in all respects they definitely are. But the question is actually about how we can value a performance as great. Is it mainly because of the work of method actor Sir Daniel Day-Lewis? Is it the superior knowledge of one of the greatest Shakespearean Actors in all of history, Al Pacino? Or is it the modern day Katharine Hepburn-esque ideals of Cate Blanchett? The main thing to investigate is what makes a great performance ‘great’, why we rate them as such and what are the components and criteria that performances need to meet in order for them to be associated as such.

First of all, film has some great performances that we know of from the past. Actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable and Katharine Hepburn have honestly given us some performances deemed as ‘great’. Katharine Hepburn broke the conventions of female characters whilst Humphrey Bogart embodied what was more psychological and tormented about the characters and Clark Gable portrayed and perfected the all-American man through his performances in “Gone with the Wind” and “It Happened One Night”. When it comes down to it, Golden Age Cinema rates its better actors and performances on the move from Vaudeville to Movies. Vaudeville is overtly expressive and theatrical whereas, movies require more realism and naturalism in expression and action. Therefore, cinema of the Golden Age would want to rate its better performances on the amount of research, realism and naturalism of human emotion the actor can bring to the screen. This was obviously exemplified by Humphrey Bogart’s tortured and animated psychological performances, Katharine Hepburn’s adventurous feminine hero performances, Clark Gable’s All-American Man performances and later on, Marlon Brando’s method acting. This shows that historically, great performances are based on their ability to move cinema away from the Vaudevillian silent cinema and theatrical acting towards more realistic emotions of the human beings that are being portrayed. However, this changes from the Golden Age to the Modern Age as we develop more and more of the actors we considered to be some of the greatest in history such as: Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and Sir Daniel Day-Lewis.

After the Golden Age, cinema saw a surge in the method actors imitating the great Marlon Brando and Katharine Hepburn. During the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the three men we previously mentioned began their careers in the world of cinema and theatre. This was also met with some of the better directors we have known such as Stanley Kubrick, who would team up with the great acting leagues of Jack Nicholson to create the isolation horror, “The Shining” (1980) and then there’s Francis Ford Coppola who would go on to hire both Brando and Pacino in order to make his 1972 crime drama “The Godfather”. Acting became separated between British and American Cultures with British Actors being considered more talented than American ones for they came from theatre training. The fact that it was this very thing that the American Actors were trying to move away from during the Golden Age of Cinema means that this logic makes no sense whatsoever. However, the difference between Vaudeville and Shakespearean Acting needs to be taken into account as well.

When we rate great acting during the modern age, we need to look at how much work and effort, research and training is put into giving the audience a grand performance relative to our realities and the realities which we do not know about if we are not a part of the performance’s occupational or social circular.

When it comes to performances post-1990s, we really need to look at not just how hard the actor worked to portray the character, but how accurate the performance is in context according to the storyline, history, society portrayed in the film, culture and even the source material. Then, we need to look at how deep the performance is on an emotional and psychological level. These, being just the beginnings, are only some of the ways that most of the great performances up to our own day are valued. Of course, performances based on how ‘good’ or ‘great’ they are can be open to interpretation, but if we break it down then we should be able to see the levels on which we observe effective performances in our own day. In the past, it is easier to see because of the changes between the eras. From Vaudeville to Golden Age Cinema something had to change and the more modernised version would always be considered ‘better’ even though someone like Sir Charlie Chaplin was not only good at both but his discipline concerned perfecting the Vaudevillian medium even after the age was considered over. In the modern age, because we have not seen the future, it is difficult to compare it to anything after our own time. We can only look into the past and therefore, we become skewed to thinking that our era is better than theirs even though ‘they’ had the likes of Marlon Brando, the beginning of Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart and many more. Even though ‘they’ had the likes of rom-com legend Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Janet Leigh, Grace Kelly and more. What we therefore require to look at then is the criteria that makes a performance of our age great. In order to see this, we need to split the requirements into separate levels in order to observe how deep it gets.

The first level is entertainment. This is the surface seeing as it is of utmost importance initially for a film to be entertaining no matter what genre it is in. The second level is how the actor portrays the character to fit into this movie. The character fitting into the social, historical and cultural context is of prime importance if the film is to flow fluently. The third level is what we see of the talents of the actor - the research and work they have put into the performance and how this is portrayed on the screen. The fourth is the critical recognition this has gotten and finally, the fifth is the way in which we remember and recall this performance long after seeing the film. The fact that it should both fit into the film and stand out in the audience’s mind should give you a rough idea about how difficult it is to create such a memorable performance.

I think I’ve spoken on this subject enough though and now it’s time for me to ask you: what is your favourite film performance of all-time and why is it so?