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It was June 1952, in the middle of the first phase of the Cold War, and the United States had two open fronts against communism: one in distant Korea and another within the country, the infamous McCarthyite witch hunt.
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It might seem like a small thing in comparison, but the American cultural landscape – and the British one, inevitably – is still was able to shudder at the confirmation of a rumor that had been circulating for some months: Marlon Brando would play the role of Mark Antony in the adaptation of the Julius Caesar of Shakespeare that Joseph L. Mankiewicz was about to direct.
Indeed, flanked by English actors with perfect declamation, such as John Gielguld and James Mason, there was going to be this brand new Hollywood star who was nicknamed the “Mumbler” and the “Neanderthal Man.”
His incarnation of the brutal Larry Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, by Elia Kazan, adaptation of the play by Tennessee Williams. Brando had already played a paraplegic army veteran with zealous realism in his understated film debut with Fred Zinnemann, Men. But it was his second film that had catapulted him to fame and the popular imaginationclad in a torn T-shirt and roaring his wife’s name in the humid New Orleans night: “Stella!”
Frame of A Streetcar Named Desire with Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando.FilmAffinity
A work of creation
Precisely, a real Stella, his acting teacher at the famous Actors Studio, Stella Adler, had provided Brando with the key guidance to develop your enormous interpretive talent, with the maxim of fleeing from the typical imposture of acting work: “Don’t act! Behave!”. And this natural behavior of the character, as if it were a real person, implied a halting diction – sometimes almost inaudible, other times slurred – while I improvised lines and especially gestures that could incorporate any unexpected element of the staging.
Marlon Brando in 1950.Wikimedia Commons
Although Brando was a graduate of the Actors Studio, He did not consider himself a method actor, and strictly speaking he was not. The so-called “method” had been created by another of the pillars of that school, Lee Strasberg, based on obsolete ideas from the influential Konstantin Stanislavski. According to Strasberg, when interpreting emotions, the actor had to probe even painfully the “affective memory” of his own experiences vital. On the other hand, Adler taught more modern approaches, learned directly from the great Russian professor. In this sense, he had taught Brando that he should build each character based on the libretto or script and bring him to life, not by evoking emotions from his past, but with the power of your imagination.
Brando’s third film was Long live Zapata!a new collaboration with Kazan, another of the founders of the Actors Studio and fundamental figure in the actor’s professional beginnings. After these disgraced, marginal and rebellious characters, whom he had brought to life with a naturalistic performance, putting himself in the shoes of a Roman patrician within Julius Caesar It seemed like a difficult challenge to overcome. However, to the surprise of doomsayers and parodists, Brando came out of the trance more than graceful. He gave an impeccable classical performanceto the admiration – and concern, in some cases – of his distinguished co-stars, as well as most of the public and critics.
But it didn’t take long for the actor to change the toga for the leather jacket to provide a new entry in cinematographic iconography: the biker Johnny Strabler from Wild. I think so an image as memorable as it is outdated of the fear of youth culture on the part of the American middle class of the fifties.
Success and legacy
Finally, Brando’s consecration came with The law of silencea useless apology for the denunciation and at the same time a masterful film that put an end to his collaborations with Kazan.
The entire expressive repertoire of his previous works was poured into the creation of the finished boxer Terry Malloy. This vulnerable, babbling being, physically and psychologically beaten, faced with the power of the port mafia and his own brother, emerges as the unlikely hero of a true contemporary tragedy. The result received general acclaim and a shower of awards.including a Best Actor Oscar for Brando, the first and the only one he deigned to receive personally at the Film Academy gala. Almost two decades later, would refuse to pick up the seconddeserved for his interpretation of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather.
In this famous scene of The law of silence, Marlon Brando’s character tries to talk and interest the character played by Eva Marie Saint while playing with a glove that has fallen from her coat (at minute 1.40). This way of acting while she is simultaneously aware of the glove provokes a new level of naturalness and, at the same time, tension in the scene.
Between the two awards there were nearly twenty films and Brando’s progressive disenchantment with the work of an actor. At the same time, both his interest in social causes and his eccentricities increased, which practically led him to be a cursed name in Hollywood. His triumphant return in The Godfather It also served to highlight his legacy among the representatives of a new generation of followers of the acting philosophy derived from Stanislavski: Al Pacino was a disciple of Strasberg, while Diane Keaton, James Caan and Robert Duvall were followers of Sanford Meisner, another of the great American followers of the Russian master.
For his part, the person in charge of playing the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather II, Robert DeNiro, had studied with Stella Adler, like Brando. She is perhaps his most obvious successor. In fact, DeNiro has taken the preparation, immersion and transformation practices for his roles much further than his predecessor, in a career that deserves its own profile.
A century after his birth, Brando’s shadow is already projected over several generations of actors who have flaunted their his commitment to the heights of interpretation with sacrifices and results that have ranged between the sublime and the ridiculous. We can thus go through names like Meryl Streep, Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Johnny Depp, Nicole Kidman, Edward Norton, Joaquin Phoenix and Jared Leto, to name a few and each one places them at some point on that spectrum at times. . Given the excesses, perhaps it is worth remembering the words of the twilight Brando in his memoirs:
“I have never had the itch to be an actor. I took acting seriously because it was my job; I almost always worked hard at it, but it was simply a way to make a living.”
What is certain is that, while earning a living, Marlon Brando became a a reference of interpretive excellence which continues to be fully valid.
Jesús Jimenez-VareaProfessor in the area of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, Sevilla University
This article was originally published in The Conversation. read the original.