Minor Project- Strasberg and De Niro

The second actor who I know to be a method actor and who used the Strasberg method who I have decided to research is 2 time academy award winner: Robert De Niro. De Niro for a time was considered to be the best actor in the world, in the 70s, 80s and early 90s, almost everything he was in received high praise and he too was often highly praised. It was during this time that he was in the performances I have decided to look at for this post: Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980) and Deer Hunter (1978). But before I get to analysing the king himself I would like first to give some background. De Niro was often teased growing up for his dream of being an actor until eventually he basically put his money where his mouth was and dropped out of school in Senior year to pursue the dream. He then joined Stella Adler's acting school where he tried under her and also under Lee Strasberg, it was during this time that De Niro learned 'The Method'  learned the intricacies of acting and getting into character. From here he did some small time uncredited roles and some short films before getting his big break in the 1973 film Mean Streets where he wowed audiences and critics alike and perhaps more importantly, formed a (what would be) long career of collaborations with director Martin Scorsese. Two of the previously mentioned films (Taxi Driver and Raging Bull) were with Martin Scorsese at the helm and without further introduction, I would like to start by talking about Taxi Driver.

This scene is nothing short of iconic, it has been quoted and parodied a million times over in various other medias, the performance from De Niro is spectacular throughout the film, but this is most evident in this scene when we see De Niro in full flow as Travis Bickle, to give context to the scene, Bickle has just bought his new guns and is planning his big shoot out of some pimps who he is looking to save a girl from. In this scene, Bickle is fantasising about being a hard man of sorts and how he could threaten them and intimidate them. The 'acting' in this scene is completely invisible, there is no signs at all that this isn't a hidden camera filming a real person, It perfectly encapsulates the manner in which people fantasise and pretend when no one is around, it is essentially the same as the air guitar we're all guilty of when no one is looking. The first way we see De Niro in the mid of Bickle is through his exaggerated but not over acted movements, the nods of his head, the pointing to himself and the crossing of his arms. These are all movements of someone who is playing something in there head as though it was a film. Let me elaborate on this, I'm not saying De Niro is over acting for the camera, Im saying Bickle is over acting for the camera he has created in his mind, the difference is that De Niro is acting as a man who is playing a scene of his own for his own fantasies. Then theres the monologue itself, it feels a little strange to call a monologue as even though it is only one person talking to themselves, it does feel more like we're witnessing just one side of a dialogue. Anyway, the dialogue, the delivery is spot on for the desired effect, he speaks slightly under his breath as though he doesn't want anyone to hear and know that he is playing out his role play like a child. This is until Bickle get lost in his own act and picks up the volume and intensity for his famous "you talking to me". The other really intense thing in this scene is De Niro's eyes, all throughout he locks eye contact with what we assume is himself in his reflection and he is somewhat scowling, this to me shows genuine emotion written across his face which again serves to highlight that De Niro is in character. However, despite all of that, the biggest sign of Strasbergian acting through this whole scene is that the entire thing is completely improv. The original script simply called for Bickle to look at himself in the mirror, De Niro simply went into the mind of the character and pulled the entire scene and all of the lines completely from the world he had created for Bickle, it is this fact alone that makes this my favourite acting performance ever because of the depth of the character and the fact that De Niro was capable of sustaining Bickle without the fabricated world of the script.

The second film in De Niro's filmography I wanted to look at was Deer Hunter, in particular I wish to look at the "This is this scene", in this scene Michael gets angry at Stan (played by Jim Cavazale) for wanting to borrow his boots for seemingly another time is a long list of times. The two argue before eventually Michael reaches his peak and grabs a bullet and waves it at Stan saying the line that "this is this", a line which really makes little sense both in and out of context. This is this is essentially a nothing line that has no meaning. That is until the performance gives it meaning. The way he waves the bullet, coupled with his harsh and commanding tone show us as the audience that Michael really is finished with Stan and his requests and he wont take it anymore. The strange thing about this is that if a man was waving a bullet and shouting at someone it would be easy to take this as a veiled threat that they will shoot them. This is by no means the case, the performance is much more subtle and nuanced and instead of being a threat it is more a reminder that Michael is in charge within the social constructs of the characters and the film. In this scene we see great agitation from De Niro, he's grimacing and his mannerisms give every indication of his agitation but nothing in the scene shows why, the script, the cinematography, the narrative, none of them, not one of these tells us why the character is so psychologically distressed at his friends request, The way De Niro plays the character suggests some kind of prior experience that has some lasting mental hold over the character but none is explained in the film. The signs given can be interpreted in many ways due to their ambiguity in comparison to normal behaviour, however, the plethora of ways this can be interpreted all lead back to a fractured psyche within the character. The fact that this is the case shows a strong and well developed character that De Niro has expertly crafted and inhabited. All of these behavioural abnormalities can be traced back to a damaged mind that is idiosyncratic, individualistic but most importantly off all, realistic

In preparation for the role of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, De Niro famously but on a lot of weight and subsequently lost it during production in order to play the older, larger, LaMotta before then going back over and portraying the professional boxer side of Jake's life. One thing that is less known about this performance and perhaps is more impressive is that to get into character De Niro spent time with the real Jake LaMotta and in that time was trained by him to box to a professional standard. As if this wasn't enough for him to engage with the character, De Niro then took on and won a few bouts of relatively high level boxing. Interestingly, he didn't like the film and didn't think much of the performance, the reason? It hit him too close to home, upon seeing the violent behaviour of himself towards his brother and his wife he was overwhelmed with emotion and asked his wife if that was how it was, she replied "you were worse". LaMotta conceded eventually that the portrayal was excellent and for him it was like reliving his memories, regardless of the pain it caused. With regards to the performance, from a method stand point, it would not have been the standard character building process for De Niro as he had a real person to model himself on, he didn't have to make a world for a character and create a personality, instead he had to adopt these things from a man who already had all of these things, this was probably more difficult for him as there is much less freedom to explore potential personalities and traits, the performance would live or die by its authenticity. As De Niro won an oscar for his performance, I think we can assume he did a good job. But how can we see evidence of De Niro being in the head of his character in the above clip. The most obvious sign of this is the somewhat flamboyant hand movements, these at face value appear to be a fulfilling of a thoughtless stereotype of Italians and particularly Italian-americans, however, by all accounts, this is not and over the top caricature but rather a genuine representation, you see, Jake LaMotta was apparently someone who was very expressive with his hands in this manner and De Niro must have picked this up when building his character of La Motta, thus meaning when De Niro assumed the role of being La Motta, his new subconscious reverted to these gestures because that is what Jake would do. The second way we see him really living in the role is his short temper, now obviously he is scripted to do certain things and show emotion in the scene but you really get the feeling that it is genuine anger on show as he flips the table, the main way this emotion manifests its self within the performance is through his De Niro's line delivery, the 0 to 100 hundred in the blink of an eye approach to his volume really serves to highlight his anger but also serves to act as a means of asserting his dominance in the situation and to try and subdue his wife to submitting to his wants. The other thing I would like to quickly point out as well is how De Niro carries himself, its a very unique style of movement, he's almost hunched forward but yet he also pushes his chest forward. This shape really accentuates his muscle and also makes him cut an imposing figure despite his small build. This gives his a pit bull like air that screams that he would fight anyone and doesn't know his limits. This from what I can tell is a perfect way to describe LaMotta at this point in his life, careless, strong and aggressive, this is all masterfully expressed simply in how De Niro walks across a room, this is evidence yet again that De Niro is living the character because subtle details like this are done as second nature and these for me are the details that sell a character to an audience.