Reviewed by:

• The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler
• David Krasner

Isaac Butler’s engaging book aims to examine Method Acting as a significant cultural event during the twentieth century. According to Butler, the Method challenged previously accepted norms and techniques of performing, defining the Method “as a transformative, revolutionary, modernist art movement” that “brought forth a new way of conceiving of the human experience, one that changed how we look at the world, and at ourselves” (xx). Tracing the development of the Method from its birth at the Moscow Art Theatre, Butler spends the first quarter of the book on Stanislavsky and his epigones (Vakhtangov, Michael Chekhov, Boleslavsky, Vera Soloviova, Maria Ouspenskaya, Sulerzhitsky)—the founders of the System that became the fixture of this new acting style. Butler emphasizes two key components of the Stanislavsky System: the actor’s personal life experience, creating a state of “I am” (ya yesm) the character in performance, and perezhivanie (living through or experiencing the role viscerally), all of which coalesce through the required exercises that train the actor in relaxation, concentration, imagination, naivete, bits (later mis-translated as beats), sense and affective memory, the supertask (translated as super-objective), magic if, and the given circumstances of the play.

Butler then takes the reader across the Atlantic, as Stanislavsky’s ideas took root in America, first in the American Lab Theatre in the 1920s and later in the Group Theatre in the ’30s. In the latter, Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford formed the style of American Method acting, versions of which were then promulgated by Strasberg as well as two other Group members, Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner. Butler traverses the well-known feuds between Strasberg and Adler, as well as highlighting [End Page 409] other important instructors (especially Bobby Lewis). One of the book’s strength is not in acting, but script analysis. Butler’s description of Clifford Odets’s dialogue, for instance, is spot-on: Odets’s voice, Butler says, “is slang-drunk, slinging street elocutions with such density and fire that they become poetry. It’s the sound of New York in the 1930s, the sound of polyglot immigrant tongues wrapping their rhythms around an English language that is stretching to accommodate them,” fostering a voice that “is urban, Jewish, neurotic, furious, explosive, and full of yearning” (182). Butler goes on to analyze several films that represent Method acting, notably Rod Steiger in Marty and The Pawnbroker, with precision and insightful commentary.

Elia Kazan emerges in the book as the director who carried the baton and guided the great Method actors Montgomery Cliff, James Dean, and, of course the standard bearer, Marlon Brando. Rather than being ordinarily quotidian in performance, Brando, Butler opines, “was so good because he was an actor, because he was able to both imagine himself in the given circumstances and bring a piece of himself to it” (218). The author covers the well-trodden ground of the Method versus the British (Brando versus Olivier), and the criticism of the Actors Studio as promoting self-indulgence and that it failed to produce plays (it was not originally intended to be a place of production, but rather a safe place for actors to train and improve). Butler also insightfully articulates the shift in Method emphasis from the inner process of bringing the role into the self, to morphing into Method actors like Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Robert De Niro, who transformed their bodies into the character, literally losing or gaining weight and going through rigorous physical training to become the characters.

Despite its lively prose and engaging narrative, the book has several shortcomings. The author claims to delve into the zeitgeist of cultural history, yet avoids two key mid-twentieth-century events running concurrently with the rise of the Method: Freudian psychoanalysis and jazz improvisation, both of which influenced the Method directly. Bran-do, for example, wanted to be a jazz drummer, and although the book mentions that Strasberg “read Freud” (135), it fails to analyze how these two ideas impacted...

审核人：

• 方法：二十世纪如何学会行动艾萨克·巴特勒
• 大卫克拉斯纳

艾萨克·巴特勒这本引人入胜的书旨在将方法表演作为 20 世纪的一项重要文化事件进行考察。根据巴特勒的说法，“方法”挑战了先前公认的表演规范和技术，将“方法”定义为“一场变革性、革命性的现代主义艺术运动”，“带来了一种新的人类体验构想方式，一种改变了我们看待事物的方式世界和我们自己”（xx）。巴特勒追溯了该方法在莫斯科艺术剧院诞生的过程，在本书的第一季度讲述了斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基和他的追随者（瓦赫坦戈夫、迈克尔契诃夫、博列斯拉夫斯基、维拉索洛维奥娃、玛丽亚 Ouspenskaya、苏勒日茨基）——系统的创始人这成为了这种新的表演风格的固定装置。巴特勒强调了斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基体系的两个关键组成部分：ya yesm ) 表演中的角色，以及perezhivanie（通过内心生活或体验角色），所有这些都通过训练演员放松、专注、想象力、天真、比特（后来被误译为节拍）所需的练习结合在一起，感觉和情感记忆，超级任务（翻译为超级目标），魔术如果，以及戏剧的给定情况。

巴特勒随后带领读者穿越大西洋，斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基的思想在美国扎根，首先是在 1920 年代的美国实验室剧院，后来在 30 年代的集团剧院。在后者中，Harold Clurman、Lee Strasberg 和 Cheryl Crawford 形成了 American Method 表演风格，其版本随后由 Strasberg 以及其他两个集团成员 Stella Adler 和 Sanford Meisner 颁布。巴特勒遍历了斯特拉斯伯格和阿德勒之间众所周知的不和，并强调了[完第 409 页]其他重要的导师（尤其是鲍比·刘易斯）。这本书的强项之一不在于表演，而在于剧本分析。例如，巴特勒对克利福德·奥德茨对话的描述恰到好处：巴特勒说，奥德茨的声音“充满了俚语，以如此密集和火爆的街头演说，以至于它们变成了诗歌。这是 1930 年代纽约的声音，多语种移民的语言将他们的节奏包裹在一种正在伸展以适应他们的英语中，”培养出一种“城市的、犹太的、神经质的、愤怒的、爆炸性的、充满活力的声音”向往”（182）。巴特勒接着分析了几部代表方法表演的电影，尤其是《马蒂》和《典当商》中的罗德·施泰格，并进行了精确而富有洞察力的评论。

Elia Kazan 作为导演出现在书中，他指导了伟大的 Method 演员蒙哥马利克里夫、詹姆斯迪恩，当然还有旗手马龙白兰度。巴特勒认为，白兰度的表现并非平淡无奇，而是“如此出色，因为他是一名演员，因为他既能在给定的环境中想象自己，又能将自己的一部分带入其中”（218）。作者涵盖了 Method vs British（Brando vs Olivier）的老生常谈，以及批评 Actors Studio 提倡自我放纵和未能制作戏剧（它最初不是一个地方生产，而是演员训练和改进的安全场所）。巴特勒还深刻地阐述了方法强调的转变，从将角色带入​​自我的内在过程，转变为像达斯汀霍夫曼、丹尼尔戴刘易斯和罗伯特德尼罗这样的方法演员，他们将自己的身体变成了角色，实际上失去了或增加体重并通过严格的体能训练成为角色。

尽管它的散文生动，叙述引人入胜，但这本书也有几个缺点。作者声称要深入研究文化史的时代精神，但避免了与方法兴起同时发生的两个关键的 20 世纪中叶事件：弗洛伊德精神分析和爵士乐即兴创作，这两者都直接影响了方法。例如，布兰多想成为一名爵士鼓手，尽管书中提到斯特拉斯伯格“读过弗洛伊德”（135），但它未能分析这两个想法如何影响......