What flim first had natural acting vs the overdramatic type seen in many old movies?

[astro]

What was the first modern flim with respect to the more “real life” style acting we seen in movies today vs the overdramatic, stage like acting seen in older movies?

[Loach]

Do you mean Method Acting or those it inspired or something that came after it? Although very effective I wouldn’t call Method Acting “real-life”. I think it was a gradual process. If you look at movies through the thirties and forties the stage like acting was getting less and less especially with some of the better actors. It took longer for the dialog to catch up in my opinion.

[Morbo]

Ebert claimed that Marlon Brando had a great deal to do with it:

Look at old movies on TV, and you will sense a difference in the acting before and after 1947. That was the year Brando first played on the Broadway stage Tennessee Williams’ macho, petulant Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

His performance broke through some kind of psychic barrier, freeing actors of his and later generations to tap emotions that most earlier actors were unable or willing to reveal. It was said that his style was fashioned by the famed acting teacher Stella Adler, but perhaps he possessed it all along, and Adler simply recognized and encouraged it. It took her only a week of coaching Brando, recalls the AP’s Bob Thomas, before she said that within a year he would be the best young actor in America.