“He’s really got gravitas”: Edward Norton names the greatest actor of Hollywood’s Golden Age
Is it appropriate to be talking about Christmas movies in April? Well, not really, no, it’s weird and out of context, and we should be looking forward to the six weeks of decent weather we get, not reminiscing about mulled wine and Santa films.
However, we can make an exception just this once when it’s a film that features an actor even the great Edward Norton regards as his favourite of all time.
Norton himself has easily done enough to get on the list of the top actors around in the last 30 years. A four-time Academy Award nominee, he is often touted by critics as the best of his generation, and you can see why when you look at his list of performances. Everywhere you look, there are superb films: American History X, Fight Club, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Birdman (I’m not having this last one, but a lot of people and the Oscars disagree with me, so I’ll keep it in).
Norton has made a career of working with almost all of the best directors around (Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Wes Anderson) and seems able to completely morph into whichever character he plays in whichever genre, and there have been plenty. But he had, surprisingly, something of a fallow period after 20 years of pretty much unmitigated success, and in 2016, he had just done a voiceover role in Seth Rogen’s ludicrous yet popular adult animation Sausage Party when a part came up in a feel-good Will Smith movie called Collateral Beauty.
Released in December of that year, the fantasy drama was calculated to be a hit for the holiday season Stateside that would bring the crowds into cinemas and become a festive staple in the vein of Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life, as Smith’s advertising exec suffers a tragedy and writes letters to ‘love, time and death’ seeking answers to the universe’s big questions. Co-starring Kate Winslet, it was a moderate hit at the box office but didn’t fare too well with critics.
Norton was far from 100 per cent about whether or not to take the movie on, telling Carbondale Times: “When I first heard about the film, my gut reaction was a little snooty. I thought, ‘I don’t want to be in one of these studio holiday movies that they crank out.’ But when I read it I was quite moved. It tapped me into that thing where, for whatever reason, at the end of the year, we get reflective”.
Adding: “And I thought about (It’s a Wonderful Life star) Jimmy Stewart. Of all the actors from that era he’s my favorite. He does a thing where he’s terrific with the screwball banter, and he can dance across the confection of old Hollywood plot contrivances like a tap dancer. But when it turns around and drops into those key moments where it’s actually about something, he’s really got gravitas.”
It was Stewart’s ability to affect audiences that proved the motivator for Norton to take the role on, and indeed the legendary actor’s performance in Frank Capra’s 1946 movie is one for the ages, mixing incredibly dark themes of economic disaster and suicide with saccharine sweet messages of family and togetherness, and eventually redemption.
James Stewart was nominated for an Oscar five times in his long career, winning twice. Aside from his work on four movies with Alfred Hitchcock, including the seminal thrillers Vertigo and Rear Window, he could also do award-winning comedy and Westerns without missing a beat.
