Brando

[poliphilo]

I have complicated feelings about Brando.

Method acting is just another way of being mannered. It's certainly not naturalistic. Brando is one of those actors who never allows you to forget that they're acting. In his own style he's as hammy as Olivier. O for God's sake stop mumbling and get on with it. 

It's also a form of willy-waving.  Look at me, I'm suffering for my art. This thing I'm doing is really important.

Yes, acting is important- but not like that. Brando gave highly paid actors a license to be dicks.  When Dustin Hoffman throws a hissy fit, it's basically Brando's fault.

Yet he despised acting.  I think he despised himself as well- or,  if not himself exactly, then the legend he'd become.  He enacted this self hatred on screen. In later years you hired him at your peril, never  knowing  if he was going to play pretty or crap all over your project from a great height.

For those who call him the greatest actor in the history of the movies I have two words: James Stewart.

I have two more words: Toshiro Mifune.

And how about Marcello Mastroianni, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy?  I could sit here all evening and name actors I prefer to Brando.

"Say Johnny; what are you rebelling against?"

"Whatta'ya got?"

RIP

Comments

[balirus.livejournal.com]

Isn't it strange how death seems to add hyperbole to one's resume? Brando, he was the most bestest actor ever! Reagan, he was the most bestest President ever! Stalin, he was the most bestest Commie ever!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yeah. We feel we have to be extra nice about the recently dead.

Is it because we're afraid of them?

Jimmy and Toshiro

[(Anonymous)]

I'm Briana's(Joyfulgirl's)Mom and just want to add my "Here! !Here!" to your comments on Brando and Jimmy Stewart and Toshiro Mifune(soooo under appreciated!)as well as the others you mentioned. Jimmy was in a class by himself, and I can think of several others preferable to Brando, as well (Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones (for his voice alone!!), Johnny Depp, Tommy Lee Jones, Peter O'Toole and on and on.....).

I enjoy your comments and your encouragement of Briana's writing.

Re: Jimmy and Toshiro

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Brando ushered in an era of American acting (it's lasted 50 years now) in which "power" is everything. While I admire individual performances by methody actors like De Niro, Pacino, Nicholson et al, I find the cumulative weight of them depressing. What about elegance, what about style, what about a sense of humour?

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Robert Mitchum told a tale where Dustin Hoffman stayed up all night in the rain because his character did.

To which Lawrence Olivier replied "My boy, if you learned how to act you wouldn't have to stay up all night in the rain".

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Precisely.

Mitchum is another name I'd put on my list ahead of Brando. He's a great screen actor- under-rated because he made it look so easy.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I've only ever seen him in 'Night of the Hunter' but I have never forgotten it. He deserves immortality even if he had only ever done that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

O yes. Night of the Hunter is a wonderful film. Charles Laughton was a great director- and he only ever got to go behind the camera that one time. It's terribly sad.