Abstract
The chapter surveys a history of ways in which film actors quickly countered the loss of ‘aura’ that Walter Benjamin associated with cinema. De Niro learned from these predecessors, from growing up in the age of television, and from an extremely diverse range of cultural and intellectual influences. His particular formation as an actor draws on the fine art and intermedial worlds inhabited by his parents in New York, his exposure to different media forms, and his early experiences of acting under the tutelage of Stella Adler and then in a series of low-budget films. The chapter concludes by studying his script annotations for his first major successes, Mean Streets (1973) and The Godfather, Part II (1974).
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Notes
- 1.
Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Pons: Part Two of Poor Relations, trans. Herbert J. Hunt (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), pp. 131–132.
- 2.
Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969), pp. 9–10.
- 3.
Benjamin, p. 10.
- 4.
Benjamin, p. 10.
- 5.
Susan Sontag, ‘Film and Theatre’, The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1966), p. 31.
- 6.
Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 56.
- 7.
Auslander, p. 13.
- 8.
Auslander, p. 12.
- 9.
Francis Ford Coppola, Live Cinema and Its Techniques (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017), p. 25.
- 10.
John Ellis, ‘The Performance on Television of Sincerely Felt Emotion’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 625 (2009), p. 104.
- 11.
Benjamin, p. 11.
- 12.
Quoted in Shawn Levy, Robert De Niro: A Life (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2014), p. 314.
- 13.
Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Remarks on the Actor’ quoted in R. Knopf (ed.), Theater and Film: A Comparative Anthology (New York: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 325.
- 14.
Kracauer, p. 325.
- 15.
Kracauer, pp. 325–326.
- 16.
Benjamin, p. 11.
- 17.
Quoted in Bert Cardullo et al. (ed.), Playing to the Camera: Film Actors Discuss Their Craft (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 281–282.
- 18.
Vicky Lowe, ‘Acting with Feeling: Robert Donat, the “Emotion Chart” and The Citadel (1938)’, Film History: An International Journal, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2007), p. 75.
- 19.
Lowe, p. 75.
- 20.
Lowe, p. 80.
- 21.
Quoted in Jeffrey Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in 1930s Britain (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), p. 229.
- 22.
Donat, quoted in Cardullo, p. 92.
- 23.
Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art’, p. 11.
- 24.
Benjamin, p. 11.
- 25.
Donat quoted in Lowe, p. 73.
- 26.
Jeff Daniels quoted in Cardullo, p. 257.
- 27.
Michael Redgrave, quoted in Cardullo, 100.
- 28.
Ibid., p. 104.
- 29.
Albert Finney, quoted in Cardullo, p. 112.
- 30.
Finney, quoted in Cardullo, p. 112.
- 31.
Daniel Belgrad, The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 40.
- 32.
Frederick A. Horowitz, ‘What Josef Albers Taught at Black Mountain College, and What Black Mountain College Taught Albers’, Journal of Black Mountain College Studies, Vol. 11 (2011), http://www.blackmountainstudiesjournal.org/volume1/1-9-frederick-a-horowitz/ [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
- 33.
Josef Albers quoted in Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers: To Open Eyes (London: Phaidon Press, 2006), p. 178.
- 34.
Quoted in Horowitz and Danilowitz, p. 199.
- 35.
Walter Gropius and Arthur S. Wensinger (ed.), The Theater of the Bauhaus: Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Farkas Molnár (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971), pp. 81–82.
- 36.
Gropius and Wensinger, p. 10.
- 37.
Andreas Conrad, ‘Wie Robert De Niro per Anhalter durch die DDR reiste’, Die Tagesspiegel, 11 February 2007, https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/wie-robert-de-niro-per-anhalter-durch-die-ddr-reiste/809516.html [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
- 38.
Gropius and Wensinger, p. 14.
- 39.
J. J. Murphy, Rewriting Indie Cinema: Improvisation, Psychodrama, and the Screenplay (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), p. 12.
- 40.
Murphy, p. 12.
- 41.
Murphy, p. 12.
- 42.
MoMA documentation for ‘An Exhibition of Recent Acquisitions,’ Held February 14 through March 18, 1945, MoMA, https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_master-checklist_325455.pdf [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
- 43.
Levy, p. 41.
- 44.
James Naremore, Acting in the Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 267.
- 45.
Simon Russell Beale, ‘Without Memory or Desire: Acting Shakespeare’, Ernest Jones Lecture organised by the Scientific Committee of the British Psychoanalytical Society, 21 June 2009. The British Psychoanalytical Society Archives, London, UK.
- 46.
Levy, p. 75.
- 47.
Levy, p. 76.
- 48.
Auslander, p. 33.
- 49.
Marco Abel, ‘Becoming-Violent, Becoming-DeNiro’, in Violent Affect: Literature, Cinema, and Critique After Representation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), p. 137.
- 50.
Hans Hofmann in Tina Dickey and Helmut Friedel, Hans Hofmann: Wunder Des Rhythmus und Schönheit Des Raumes (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1998), p. 9.
- 51.
See for example Levy, Robert De Niro, pp. 48–54; R. Colin Tait, ‘Robert De Niro’s Raging Bull: The History of a Performance and a Performance of History’, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2011), p. 28.
- 52.
Abel, p. 148.
- 53.
Levy, p. 77.
- 54.
The Last Tycoon (1976), 11 August 1975, Script Copy 20, with extensive RDN notes, additional mimeo and RDN notes in pocket at front, Box 191 [RDN].
- 55.
Foster Hirsch, A Method to Their Madness: A History of the Actors Studio (New York: Norton, 1984), p. 39.
- 56.
Abel, p. 149.
- 57.
Hirsch, p. 206.
- 58.
Peter Brant and Ingrid Sischy, ‘A Walk and a Talk with Robert De Niro’, Interview, Vol. 23, No. 11 (1993), p. 92.
- 59.
Brant and Sischy, p. 92.
- 60.
Jason Guerrasio, ‘What it means to be “Method”’, Tribeca Film Institute, 19 December 2014, https://www.tfiny.org/blog/detail/what_it_means_to_be_method [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
- 61.
Lesley Stern, The Scorsese Connection (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 210.
- 62.
Stern, p. 52.
- 63.
Kracauer, p. 325.
- 64.
Lawrence Grobel, ‘Playboy Interview: Robert De Niro’, Playboy, Vol. 36, No. 1 (January 1989), p. 86.
- 65.
Brian De Palma, interviewed in De Palma, Color Digital (HD), Directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow (USA, Empire Ward Pictures, 2016).
- 66.
Michael Joshua Rowin, ‘Free Radical’, Reverse Shot, 3 November 2006, http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/906/hi_mom_depalma [Accessed: 31 May 2020].
- 67.
Oral history interview with John Held, Jr., 2017 September 28–October 3. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-john-held-jr-17514 [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
- 68.
Louis Black, ‘Down We Go: Revisiting Renaissance man Robert Thom’s prolific and hellish Hollywood visions’, The Austin Chronicle, 10 August 2007, https://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2007-08-10/517929/ [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
- 69.
Roger Ebert, ‘Reviews: Bang the Drum Slowly’, Roger Ebert, 26 August 1973, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bang-the-drum-slowly-1973 [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
- 70.
David Denby, ‘Review: Bang the Drum Slowly by John Hancock’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 2 (1973), p. 50.
- 71.
Quoted in Fred Schruers, ‘De Niro’ (interview), Rolling Stone, 25 August 1988, https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/a-rare-talk-with-robert-de-niro-242940/ [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
- 72.
Quoted in Michael Henry Wilson, Scorsese on Scorsese (Cahiers Du Cinema) (Paris: Phaidon Press, 2011), p. 51.
- 73.
R. Colin Tait, ‘De Niro and Scorsese: Director-Actor Collaboration in Mean Streets (1973) and the Hollywood Renaissance’, in Yannis Tzioumakis and Peter Krämer (ed.), The Hollywood Renaissance: Revisiting American Cinema’s Most Celebrated Era (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), p. 205.
- 74.
Ibid., p. 218; emphasis in the original.
- 75.
Mean Streets (1973), Screenplay by Martin Scorsese, with RDN notes, Folder 93.10 [RDN].
- 76.
De Niro, ibid.
- 77.
Stephen Holden, ‘The Movies That Inspired Martin Scorsese’, The New York Times, 21 May 1993, https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/21/movies/the-movies-that-inspired-martin-scorsese.html [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
- 78.
Roger Ebert, ‘Reviews: Mean Streets’, 2 October 1973, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mean-streets-1973 [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
- 79.
Pauline Kael, ‘Mean Streets: Everyday Inferno’, Scraps From The Loft, 11 January 2018, https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2018/01/11/mean-streets-pauline-kael/ [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
- 80.
Kael, ‘Everyday Inferno’, The New Yorker, October 1973, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1973/10/08/everyday-inferno [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
- 81.
Grobel, pp. 81–82.
- 82.
Grobel, p. 82.
- 83.
The Godfather, Part II (1974), Shooting script, with RDN notes, lacks title page; contains ‘old script’ and ‘new script’ pages, with additional script pages and extensive RDN notes re character development, undated, Box 182 [RDN].
- 84.
Gropius and Wensinger, p. 14.
Bibliography
Abbreviations
RDN: Robert De Niro Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
Primary
Mean Streets (1973), Screenplay by Martin Scorsese, with RDN notes, Folder 93.10, RDN.
The Godfather, Part II (1974), Shooting script, with RDN notes, lacks title page; contains ‘old script’ and ‘new script’ pages, with additional script pages and extensive RDN notes re character development, undated, Box 182, RDN.
The Last Tycoon (1976), 11 August 1975, Script Copy 20, with extensive RDN notes, additional mimeo and RDN notes in pocket at front, Box 191, RDN.
Secondary
Abel, Marco. ‘Becoming-Violent, Becoming-DeNiro’, in Violent Affect: Literature, Cinema, and Critique After Representation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), pp. 133–181.
Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, 2nd ed., London: Routledge, 2008.
Beale, Simon Russell. ‘Without Memory or Desire: Acting Shakespeare’, Ernest Jones Lecture organised by the Scientific Committee of the British Psychoanalytical Society, 21 June 2009. The British Psychoanalytical Society Archives, London, UK.
Belgrad, Daniel. The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Benjamin, Walter. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Hannah Arendt (ed.), Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969).
Black, Louis. ‘Down We Go: Revisiting Renaissance Man Robert Thom’s Prolific and Hellish Hollywood Visions’, The Austin Chronicle, 10 August 2007, https://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2007-08-10/517929/ [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
Brant, Peter, Colleen Kelsey and Ingrid Sischy, ‘A Walk and a Talk with Robert De Niro’, Interview, 21 March 2012, https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/new-again-robert-de-niro [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
Cardullo, Bert et al. (ed.), Playing to the Camera: Film Actors Discuss Their Craft, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Conrad, Andreas. ‘Wie Robert De Niro per Anhalter durch die DDR reiste’, Die Tagesspiegel, 11 February 2007, https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/wie-robert-de-niro-per-anhalter-durch-die-ddr-reiste/809516.html [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
Coppola, Francis Ford. Live Cinema and Its Techniques, New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017.
de Balzac, Honore. Cousin Pons: Part Two of Poor Relations, trans. Herbert J. Hunt, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
Denby, David. ‘Review: Bang the Drum Slowly by John Hancock’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 2 (1973), pp. 49–52.
Dickey, Tina and Helmut Friedel. Hans Hofmann: Wunder Des Rhythmus und Schönheit Des Raumes [Catalogue for Exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Im Lenbachaus in Munich, from 23 April to 29 June 1997, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, from 12 September to 2 November 1997], New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1998.
Ebert, Roger. ‘Reviews: Bang the Drum Slowly’, Roger Ebert, 26 August 1973, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bang-the-drum-slowly-1973 [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
Ebert, Roger. ‘Reviews: Mean Streets’, Roget Ebert, 2 October 1973, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mean-streets-1973 [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
Ellis, John. ‘The Performance on Television of Sincerely Felt Emotion’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 625, The End of Television? Its Impact on the World (so Far) (2009), pp. 103–115.
Grobel, Lawrence. ‘Playboy Interview: Robert De Niro’, Playboy, Vol. 36, No. 1 (1989), pp. 69–90, 326.
Gropius, Walter and Arthur S. Wensinger (ed.), The Theater of the Bauhaus: Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Farkas Molnár, Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971.
Guerrasio, Jason. ‘What It Means to be “Method”’, Tribeca Film Institute, 19 December 2014, https://www.tfiny.org/blog/detail/what_it_means_to_be_method [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
Hirsch, Foster. A Method to their Madness: A History of the Actors Studio, New York: Norton, 1984.
Holden, Stephen. ‘The Movies That Inspired Martin Scorsese’, The New York Times, 21 May 1993, https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/21/movies/the-movies-that-inspired-martin-scorsese.html [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
Horowitz, Frederick A. ‘What Josef Albers Taught at Black Mountain College, and What Black Mountain College Taught Albers’, Journal of Black Mountain College Studies, Vol. 11 (2011), http://www.blackmountainstudiesjournal.org/volume1/1-9-frederick-a-horowitz/ [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
Horowitz, Frederick A. and Brenda Danilowitz. Josef Albers: To Open Eyes, London: Phaidon Press, 2006.
Kael, Pauline. ‘Mean Streets: Everyday Inferno’, Scraps From The Loft, 11 January 2018, https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2018/01/11/mean-streets-pauline-kael/ [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
Kael, Pauline. ‘Everyday Inferno’, The New Yorker, October 1973, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1973/10/08/everyday-inferno [Accessed: 20 May 2020].
Knopf, R. (ed.), Theater and Film: A Comparative Anthology, New York: Yale University Press, 2005.
Levy, Shawn. De Niro: A Life, New York: Three Rivers, 2014.
Lowe, Vicky. ‘Acting with Feeling: Robert Donat, the “Emotion Chart” and The Citadel (1938)’, Film History: An International Journal, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2007), pp. 73–85.
MoMA documentation for ‘An Exhibition of Recent Acquisitions,’ Held February 14 Through March 18, 1945, MoMA, https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_master-checklist_325455.pdf [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
Murphy, J. J. Rewriting Indie Cinema: Improvisation, Psychodrama, and the Screenplay, New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
Naremore, James. Acting in the Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
‘Oral History Interview with John Jr.’, 2017 September 28–October 3. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-john-held-jr-17514 [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
Richards, Jeffrey. The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in 1930s Britain, London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010.
Rowin, Michael Joshua. ‘Free Radical’, Reverse Shot, 3 November 2006, http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/906/hi_mom_depalma [Accessed: 31 May 2020].
Schruers, Fred. ‘De Niro’ (interview), Rolling Stone, 25 August 1988, https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/a-rare-talk-with-robert-de-niro-242940/ [Accessed: 15 May 2020].
Sontag, Susan. ‘Film and Theatre’, The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1966), pp. 24–37.
Stern, Lesley. The Scorsese Connection, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Tait, R. Colin. ‘Robert De Niro’s Raging Bull: The History of a Performance and a Performance of History’, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2011), pp. 20–40.
Tait, R. Colin. ‘De Niro and Scorsese: Director-Actor Collaboration in Mean Streets (1973) and the Hollywood Renaissance’, in Yannis Tzioumakis and Peter Krämer (ed.), The Hollywood Renaissance: Revisiting American Cinema’s Most Celebrated Era (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 204–220.
Wilson, Michael Henry. Scorsese on Scorsese (Cahiers Du Cinema), Paris: Phaidon Press, 2011.
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Ganz, A., Price, S. (2020). Influences and Ideas of Performance. In: Robert De Niro at Work. Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47960-2_3
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