VERSE:
O'Sheel, Patrick
that he can kill them. Looked at one way, I suppose audiences far larger than those the Actor's Studio can Bronson is here still someone who merely turns out to be reach. It is a...
...Bronson even endorses Kersey's vigilantism...
...The Russian pioneer V. I. Pudovkin pointed out in the earliest days of the movies that it is a medium in There's been a long connivance, which the actor has always to rely on who he is, not The viscera concurring pretend to be someone else...
...In interviews overwhelming the mind's disbelief...
...was cast as he was in The Great Escape, but really there's nothing ironical in it...
...When this suspended in repose, undeniably the great, happens, someone like Paul Kersey emerges...
...Unlike the sort of person we are used to seeing Bronson play, Kersey is someone who literally goes out looking for GRACE trouble...
...night out, Kersey returns home and exultantly wields the weapon at his furniture until his frenzy bursts it...
...By this 00000000000000 action alone Kersey makes it clear he is not Majestyk, BOB CORDING who would be ashamed to give in to such gloating...
...Pudovkin was brought Inward to self-destruction to this insight by studying Stanislavski, whose "Method" Against the racial pang...
...Lee Strasburg's Actor's Studio, which Entreaties lushly romantic was founded on Method principles, has produced Mar- Spoke death's decencies lon Brando, Lee J. Cobb, James Dean, Montgomery Softly, to say there could be Clift, Rod Steiger and Al Lettieri...
...But in all fairness I ought to admit that Bronson THE GAMBLERS isn't complaining...
...acting has had a great influence on postwar American film actors too...
...But self which the Method would exploit more programthese aren't the same variety of bullies...
...And yet- imperfectly matchedYet his own stardom represents something much more The gamblers are true to the game, obvious and fundamental about film acting-something Lusting for one more round, blood that inhered in films before Pudovkin and that moves In the eye: So with me...
...Even the police help him...
...It is a literal and instinctive projection of that more than the bullies picking on him bargained for...
...You may kill through your success the very personality that made that success possible...
...No stretch of the imagination can make he will go on being a star...
...But once his own success him the underdog now...
...And sought the decisive stroke...
...Kersey is no rare bird, appears in majesty and powerlonger the man Bronson was but someone far less attrac- Haliaeetus leucocephalus leucocephalustive: the man Bronson has become...
...Majestyk demonstrates, Bronson fits right in with the Actor's Studio alumni...
...Looked at one way, I suppose audiences far larger than those the Actor's Studio can Bronson is here still someone who merely turns out to be reach...
...separates him from those origins-once he truly does Besides, Kersey enjoys himself too much to be lik- escape being that character who appeals to everyone in able...
...Such stardom of forsythia, Japanese maple, rhododendron is itself based upon a death wish, that wish to escape be- to their children, ing the person life has so completely endowed you to a bald eagle play, and there is always the danger that you may get breasts the wind over the local reservoir: your wish...
...Whatever satis- matically and eclectically...
...As Lettieri's co- An end to the washing of hands...
...Amid a Sunday's walk around the block The flaw is ultimately not in Paul Kersey's character, as parents impart the names though, so much as in Bronson's stardom...
...starring role in Mr...
...As long as a star like Bronson faction we took when Bronson gunned down Al Lettieri, can preserve in himself and his roles the rough innoit's not the same when his target is black and Puerto cence which got him on the screen in the first place, Rican teenagers...
...This is the PATRICK O'SHEEL great limitation of the sort of stardom Bronson has achieved...
...Like Thomas, the suburbs stand hearts stiff I was tempted to say earlier that it is ironical Bronson filling the holes of imagination with belief...
...He certainly doesn't miss doing serious drama, a kind of acting he found uncongenial when he I fought it off, death was first breaking in, and the acting he is doing is per- That reached over my children haps the only sort that true stardom ever permits Impatient with simple maiming anyway...
...Commonweal: 455...
...having clobbered a mugger with a blackjack his first COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...Director Michael Winner does one scene where, the world except him-he is lost...
...The acting of a man who must always play himself is necessaarily without irony, which 00090000000000 requires some distance from the character...
Vol. 100 • August 1974 • No. 19
