Reading internet comments can be a real eye opener. Some are intelligent and some are downright scary. Opinions can range from those of a genuine expert to people who think the earth is flat, that airplanes emit special tracking chemicals, or that modern medicine is a conspiracy. It’s pretty clear that the experts opinion is a learning experience while the others are a true waste of time.

With that caution in mind, I have found YouTube and IMDb to be real treasures when it comes to comments regarding movies, acting, film-making, and the work that is required to bring a story to the silver screen. Note: Yes, I know YouTube’s comments can be a waste at times, but I am limiting this to film history.

On these sites you can find insightful comments from those who have worked around the stage, the musical world, and in every corner of the entertainment industry. You might not hear any A-list actors chiming in, but you will find those who have done the hard “behind the scenes” work.
I find however, that many commenters hedge a yearning nostalgia for the olden days of film-making. They firmly believe that the actors of today are unequal to those who practiced their trade in Hollywood’s earliest days.

Is this true? Was everything better back then? I agree that it is easy to be mesmerized by the actors and actresses of old, their glamorous lifestyles, and the California sunshine that served as an incubator for the studio “dream factories.” As a relative newcomer to appreciating movies, I set to find out—all from the perspective of an average person of course!

With a few guidebooks from Amazon and resources such as Karina Longworth’s excellent podcast on Old Hollywood, it was an easy step back into film history. Although someone who just wants to watch a movie might not wish to go into so much detail, I wanted to in order to learn about the context in which the old films were made, a background about the actors’ lives, the choreography, etc.

I quickly recognized that the thespians of old had undeniable talents and gifts. Silent era actors such as Clara Bow and John Garfield could reflect their feelings with just their eyes and body language. I bet modern emoji creators are envious of how much raw emotion these actors could reflect without saying a single word.

Bow and Garfield were not alone in the tumultuous decade of the 1920s. There we also find the great Gloria Swanson whose career highpoint would come, surprisingly, years later in the 1950 masterpiece Sunset Boulevard.

Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, and Cary Grant step out in the 1930s. Not long after we see Katherine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, and Bette Davis come to the fore. Davis was, of course, a force of nature in her own right who took incredible career risks by often playing a vampish, dangerous, and disliked woman. She knew her talent however, and used it well.

The MGM studio claimed during this time to have more stars on its payroll than there were in the heavens—and this was not far from the truth. Singing, dancing, and acting were things that most every one of these actors could do and do pretty darn well.

In the 1950’s however, Marlon Brando changed movie acting forever. A product of Method Acting, in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront he displayed an intensity and rawness that had never before been seen in Hollywood.

Also, in the 1950’s, we see Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor do some remarkably strong work. The 1960’s find Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, and Faye Dunaway turning in outstanding performances.

You can see where this is going—in film history one generation seems to effortlessly elide into another. It is never an “either/or” when it comes to talent, to new performances, and to new interpretations of old stories.

I would argue that the talent of today is every bit as good, if not better in many ways, than it was during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Today’s actors, are no longer tied to the Studio System that required them to do multiple films every year. They can now spend much more time preparing for a role and bringing the right physicality, accents, and mood to it.

Today, an actor cannot simply be himself/herself, but must completely transform into the role. In other words, the star is no longer just the person but rather must be the role they incorporate.

Daniel Day Lewis, for example, has so deeply submersed himself in his roles that it is impossible to tell that he is even acting. On the screen we don’t think of him playing Abraham Lincoln, but rather being Abraham Lincoln. Can you imagine an old-time actor working this hard on the accents alone?

On the female side, Naomi Watts gave a master class in acting in Mulholland Drive. So wide was her range in this film that you can be forgiven for not always recognizing that it is the same actress—she really was that good.

Actors like Lewis, Watts, and of course Merrill Streep are equal to history’s greats because they internalize the role so deeply that we no longer notice them as actors, but rather as the embodiment, in a single person, of the story and situation.

Comparisons across the years are often unfair because of the context of the age. So while we acknowledge the greatness of the Garbos, Gables, and Garlands, we should recognize what is better today.

The first is that technology has helped immensely in film-making. Modern lighting, sound mixing, set construction, and costumes give today’s director advantages that were unthinkable eighty years ago. In turn, this gives the actors greater latitude in how they play a scene.