THE WILD ONE

Throughout his life, the depiction of Marlon Brando as someone who ‘suddenly explodes’ persisted, even when he was a schoolboy. A notable incident involved a young Brando pouring hair lacquer on the classroom floor and setting it on fire during the middle of a lesson. As an adult, he advocated for the rights of Native Americans (and in support of which he turned down an Oscar), gave speeches at Black Panther rallies (Tool Tip: The Black Panthers were a radical African-American party of the 1960s), and was one of the first climate activists. He had relationships with Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe—though it's easier to list whom he wasn’t involved with. As Brando himself once said, ‘I belong to all the women of the world.’ Billionaire Doris Duke recalled how he once invited her to a $2-a-night motel for an unforgettable night of passion. He was acquainted with Albert Einstein, called Michael Jackson his only friend, and could knock five teeth out of a paparazzo’s mouth with one punch! Even Lee Strasberg (Tooltip: Lee Strasberg (1901–82) was an American director, actor, and teacher, one of the pillars of modern theater as we know it.), who, along with Stella Adler (whom Brando valued much more), taught him the Stanislavski method, didn’t escape a beatdown from Brando—not at least if you believe Darwin Porter's book Brando Unzipped. In essence, it was a rather witty response to Stanislavski's famous ‘I don't believe it!’

German immigrant blood flowed through Brando’s veins, and his ancestor who came to America in the early 1700s was named Brandau. This heritage might be a coincidence, but it's interesting to note given his powerful performance as a German officer in The Young Lions (1958). However, his talent wasn't limited to only these roles, as was clear from his equally acclaimed portrayal of a passionate builder of the state of Israel on Broadway. And he didn't simply inhabit roles—he remained in character long after. According to those close to him, after filming Sayonara in Japan, he made his women behave like geishas, and after The Young Lions, he seemed to adopt some of the characteristics of Hitler. Francis Ford Coppola recalled coming to offer Brando the role of Vito Corleone in The Godfather. Right there, Brando improvised what would become the character's distinctive manner of speaking, distinguished by a protruding jaw. He then maintained that same tone while interacting with people after that.

‘Be comfortable. That’s my motto up where I come from,’ he declares as Stanley Kowalski in Elia Kazan's film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), the Broadway role that made Kirk Douglas want to kick himself for not playing. In a sense, this statement can be considered Brando’s acting method. As noted previously, he fully immersed himself in each role, aiming for the utmost naturalness. Thus, the success of the performance depended largely on the quality of the role itself rather than on his performance alone (with approximately one-third of the productions in his relatively limited career being deemed mediocre).

In this sense, an episode from the filming of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) is telling. Famously, Brando, since the 1950s, did not study his roles but relied on cue cards, rationalizing his laziness with a weighty theoretical basis that was only slightly in the spirit of phenomenology: that such immersion supposedly lent his performance a naturalness and allowed him to find his own emotion rather than an imposed one. It was an excuse very much in the spirit of Arkady Severny, the famous Russian singer, who would say these words at his concerts: ‘As always, they unexpectedly slipped me a new text—oh my God, and the song's about us!’ Brando was clearly aiming for the same effect of immediacy from his acting to have the right to exclaim: ‘Hey, the role's about us!’

Certainly, as he grew older (for example, during the filming of The Island of Dr. Moreau, Brando was over seventy), he especially didn't bother learning any dialogues and worked, so to speak, by ear. During a take, his earpiece unexpectedly tuned into the local police radio, and without a shadow of a doubt, Brando began broadcasting a text about some robbery. Once again he reaffirmed his motto, ‘Be comfortable. That’s my motto up where I come from.’

Brando’s acting triumphs can easily be divided into two chronological stages. He was the undisputed king of the 1950s and was exponentially more successful in the ’70s. In the ’60s, he used the momentum of past triumphs to a greater extent. There's nothing to say about the ’80s and ’90s. He acted both little and poorly—he was nominated several times for a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor.

In the 1950s, Brando built his career on a triangle of characters: the stereotypical biker in a leather jacket carrying a beer bottle in The Wild One, a rude former Pole and tram conductor also clutching a bottle in A Streetcar Named Desire, and a sentimental boxer raising pigeons in On the Waterfront, whose first question to a girl is if she loves beer. All three are united by sensitive animal prowess and a rough yet seemingly broken beauty. This was especially evident on screen with Vivien Leigh, who played Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. Leigh suffered from prolonged bouts of depression, and her fragile vulnerability seemed mirrored in Brando's powerful, sweaty beauty, imbuing her with a necessary frailty. This underlying tension in his physical allure made him attractive to all the self-destructive personalities of the twentieth century. For example, Edith Piaf, infatuated with Brando, watched this film twelve times.

Displaying vulnerable power became his signature move, resulting in frequent tears on the screen. Besides A Streetcar Named Desire, he sheds tears in the films The Wild One, Last Tango in Paris, The Godfather, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and others.

In terms of emotional breakdowns, it's noteworthy that Brando made his debut appearance as a cripple in The Men (1950) by Fred Zinnemann. Some scenes from this film seem to foreshadow the finale of Last Tango in Paris, where he lies contorted as if he’d fallen from a wheelchair. This film also sets up an important military theme for him: he began his film career with a military role and in his last great film, he plays a colonel. In reality, Brando was initially expelled from a military academy and later deemed unfit for army service due to a knee injury sustained while playing football.

In the 1950s, Brando also experimented with playing various historical heroes. In Viva Zapata! (1952), he plays a Mexican rebel with a bandolier slung across his chest, sporting absolutely remarkable mustaches. Here, he doesn't resemble himself but rather the ’70s star Burt Reynolds. (Tool Tip: Burt Reynolds (1936–2018) was an American actor with the appearance of a typical ‘manly man’.)

In 1953, Brando took on Shakespeare for the first time, embodying Mark Antony in Julius Caesar with his bold, intense gaze and ‘the ruby lips of silent mouths’. While filming, Brando was given a pseudo-Roman bust of himself.

In 1956, he appeared as Napoleon in the film Désirée, which was named after the emperor's first bride from Marseille before he married Josephine. Let's just say the role of the emperor didn't turn out to be too expressive for him, although, for example, the great Laurence Olivier highly appreciated him in this role, even once saying that ‘Genius plays genius’. Whatever the reception of the film was, the final scene is pivotal. Brando’s Napoleon steps onto the balcony against the backdrop of the sunset in a foreshadowing of that characteristic male surrender that will blossom again at the end of Last Tango in Paris. Elements of the future Last Tango in Paris can also be heard in Sayonara (1957), where Brando plays a military pilot, mourning the bodies of victims of suicide, confiding in another man's wife, and delivering a dramatic monologue about children.

Brando reached the pinnacle of his fame in the 1960s, somehow without any excessive creative efforts, and there are several explanations for this. First, Brando himself was no longer young, and the world was actively embracing a new generation of heroes, primarily from the world of rock and roll. Second, he had signed a contract for five films in advance, and being part of this kind of Hollywood conveyor belt didn't particularly inspire him. Finally, he was bitter because his directorial debut, One-Eyed Jacks (1961), the first cut of which had been over five hours long, had been unsuccessful. Most importantly, though, his mother died in 1954. From that moment on, Brando, by his own admission, did not particularly strive to impress anyone with his acting. Nevertheless, in 1966, Pauline Kael, a leading American film critic and an avid fan of Brando, wrote a programmatic article titled ‘Marlon Brando: An American Hero’ for The Atlantic.

At the very least, the ’60s provided an excellent opportunity for audiences to see Brando in a comedic role. However, he had begun appearing in comedies as early as the ’50s. One should pay attention to The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), in which he played a Japanese character (!), a flawlessly cringeworthy spectacle, as one would characterize it today.

In the 1960s, the cringe factor only grew stronger. In the comedy Bedtime Story (1964), he appeared on screen as an animated wolf, running around in white underwear and screaming ‘One, two, three!’ while pretending to be paralyzed. This detail can again be considered a parody of his own role in The Men (1950). In the erotic farce Candy (1967), the Oscar-winning actor portrayed a flying Indian sex guru. Finally, in A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), directed by Charlie Chaplin, he played an ambassador to Saudi Arabia who falls for Sophia Loren in sheer lemon pajamas. Ultimately, he danced the tango with her as if anticipating Bernardo Bertolucci's upcoming film, with Pauline Kael calling this Brando's worst role.

Perhaps the most exciting Brando film of the ’60s was the adaptation of Carson McCullers’ novel Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), directed by John Huston and starring Elizabeth Taylor. Once again, Brando played a major in a snow-white undershirt, but here, his brokenness and sensitivity transitioned into an active stage of perversion. He talked to his reflection in the mirror, dreamed of naked comrades-in-arms, and stole silver spoons at parties. ‘Have you ever been thrown out onto the street by a naked woman?’ Taylor asked him in the appropriate attire as she lashed him with a whip. His character had already been broken in One-Eyed Jacks, though not by a woman, let alone a naked one.

The ’70s began for Brando with the beautiful English film The Nightcomers (1971), based on The Turn of the Screw, a famous novella by Henry James, an American novelist who had taken British citizenship. Here, in the role of a stableman in a master's coat, he seemed to have rehearsed all the erotic semi-coercive scenes that would be useful for Last Tango in Paris in advance. He also delivered corresponding pompous monologues such as, ‘When a man is born or dies, it hurts.’ Despite being one of Brando’s best films, it had poor box office success, and critics from the The New York Times declared that the era of Brando had ended.

During this time, Brando experienced a resurgence of his former glory and fame with Shakespearean themes. The formal pretext was the 1972 adaptation of Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola, which, largely thanks to Brando, turned into a production of Shakespearean power and integrity. The mafia don Vito Corleone became his King Lear and an eternal ticket to immortality. In the role of the ‘Godfather’, Brando reached the highest level of his trademark mumbling style, completely neglecting the basics of acting diction, which finally formed the foundation of the character.

Interestingly, Laurence Olivier, who lost the Oscar to Brando in the same year because of The Godfather, said that of all the Shakespearean classics, Lear was the simplest role, but that might have been because he initially passed up the role.

Strictly speaking, Brando lobbied only the novel's author for this role—the producers at Paramount Studios didn't want to cast him, warning that after a dozen commercial failures, Brando would not only ruin the production but also have an affair with one of the cast’s wives or whoever else was in proximity. Naturally, Brando himself did not read the book, but Puzo wrote the screenplay specifically for him and even sent him scraps of the novel.

In an examination of Brando’s career, if Don Corleone was his King Lear, then Paul from Last Tango in Paris became his Hamlet, descending into the second circle (and concurrently the Paris district) of hell for hedonists. When, at the beginning of the film, he walks across the Pont de Bir-Hakeim, a bridge in Paris (Tool Tip: Bir-Hakeim is a two-level bridge over the Seine on the border of the XV and XVI arrondissements (districts) of Paris, named after the battle in North Africa), his supports seem like a Dantean gloomy forest, but instead of Virgil, fate sends him a young devil without a name but with a substantial soft bosom.

In Last Tango, it's as if all Brando's interpretations and incarnations as an actor have converged. He cries on the floor, wearing the same white undershirt he wore twenty years ago as Stanley Kowalski—only now, the undershirt doesn't cling to firm muscles but hangs on him like a shroud. Here, Tahiti is mentioned (where he once got married and bought an island), and memories of manure refer to the role of a servant in The Nightcomers. The dialogue ‘Your loneliness knows neither pity nor condescension’ is almost a literal quote from the film On the Waterfront. Responses to the military theme of Brando’s films are also present: ‘Any form of crap,’ Paul asserts. Just before his death, he honors Jeanne (Maria Schneider) and Jeanne is, in turn, herself the daughter of a colonel.

The image of vulnerable power he cultivated on screen reached both a mythic status and simultaneous heresy in this film. Time magazine placed him on the cover wearing Paul's makeup (not for the first, and incidentally, nor the last time), and the court of Bologna accused him of disseminating pornography. After this film, Brando was very angry with Bertolucci. The refined but obscene scenes he was asked to perform (after all, in real life, Brando did much more outrageous things) were barely able to faze him. Instead, it seems that it was his trademark explosion of acting prowess that proved excessively powerful and wounded him deeply.

In the western The Missouri Breaks (1976) by Arthur Penn, his name appears in the credits against an idyllic backdrop of dandelions. Similar to his previous collaboration with Penn, The Chase (1965), he plays a lawman, albeit a very strange one, the kind who pulls corpses out of coffins, kisses horses, saying, ‘You have the eyes of Salome and the lips of Cleopatra’, and is passionate about ornithology.

Here, he stars alongside Jack Nicholson, whom he jokingly calls his lover. There is a sense that Nicholson, who was then at the peak of his form, outshines his senior colleague (or lover, God knows). Still, perhaps it's because Brando simply has nothing special to do here—except perhaps for kissing a white horse (on which, by the way, he had already ridden in Viva Zapata! and Reflections in a Golden Eye).

If in Last Tango he twisted himself inside out, in Apocalypse Now (1979), on the contrary, he inflated from within (both literally, not fitting into the frame, and metaphorically, illuminating it with his enormous shaven head) and uttered measured words in the manner of a devilish Buddha. His Colonel Kurtz is like Paul from Last Tango, trying to become Don Corleone. ‘My son will never understand who I tried to be,’ says the colonel, and this image essentially serves as a key to his adjacent roles: the dying Paul remembers his children in the finale of Tango, and a curse is cast upon all of Vito Corleone's children.

After Apocalypse Now (1979), Brando officially announced his retirement from acting. While technically a deception, as he continued to act, Colonel Walter Kurtz in this film truly became his final role. It was not merely about the quality of subsequent scripts and films—Brando seemed to stop evoking the spirit of being an actor altogether. However, some films from this period are still worth watching, such as The Formula (1980). This is the first role where Brando irreversibly departs from his reputation as a sex symbol and instead embodies a couch potato, complete with glasses, a bathrobe, a hearing aid, and a balding pate covered by a combover. Watching his comedic Nazi villain, it's hard to believe that just a year ago, this man had played Colonel Kurtz, preaching about horror and moral terror.

At the end of the 1980s, Brando appeared in the film A Dry White Season (1989), which is about justice in South Africa. He played a noble but disillusioned lawyer, a completely faded old man in a tweed jacket chewing lavender-scented lozenges and walking with a cane.

The question begs to be asked: what prompts us to regard Brando as a great actor to this day? Ultimately, as Kirk Douglas pointed out, Brando did actors a disservice and shattered many destinies because he was unique and had a style impossible to imitate. He didn't establish any school of acting. Instead, he left only crowds of mediocre replicators behind.

From the torrent of accolades directed at him over the course of a long and storied career, two old but timeless plaudits stand out, the first being Truman Capote's essay ‘The Duke in His Domain’, written for The New Yorker, written in cool, precise prose portraying Brando as an undeniable genius, albeit not a very bright one. The subject himself was furious about the text, although Capote didn't reveal any remarkable insights. For truly insightful revelations, one might prefer Darwin Porter's book Brando Unzipped, a read that might leave you relieved that Brando didn't live to see its publication.

The second seminal text on Brando is Pauline Kael's essay ‘Marlon Brando: An American Hero’, written for The Atlantic. Kael emphasizes and praises the image of the renegade hero, which lies at the core of our everyday experience (with ‘everydayness’ being a key term here). Kael explains Brando’s greatness through the absence of established acting norms and his ability to play on internal contradictions. Each of his characters embodies not the great American dream but rather the great American sorrow, which elevates him above all else. According to Kael, every character Brando plays appears so natural and intimately connected with the audience that it achieves a new dimension in acting. She writes, ‘He is entirely devoid of pretension. He purifies the character, endowing it with emotional integrity.’ His animalistic instinct combined with refined technique allowed him to reach a level of perfection where the familiar dialogue ‘Be comfortable’ turns into an incantation, and the notorious muttering becomes the Enochian language of angels.

In a book of interviews by Romain Gary, the French writer and contemporary of Brando, is a phrase: ‘There is masculine strength, and there is masculine unsavoriness, with its millennia of possession, vanity, and fear of losing.’ If anyone has embodied all of these, willingly or unwillingly, on screen, it is undoubtedly Marlon Brando—and we are still under the spell of those millennia.