Word: brando
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Before there was Pacino, or De Niro, or Nicholson-before there were James Dean and Marlon Brando even -there was Montgomery Clift. Bursting onto the screen in Red River and The Search (both 1948), Clift set the standard for a whole generation of actors. He was intense and hypnotically alive. His lines seemed to come not from the script but from the gut, and he seemed dangerously unpredictable, like a high-tension wire torn from its moorings. For the better part of a decade, Clift was the star producers sought first. But then, in the longest suicide in Hollywood history...
Cliffs only rival was Brando, who also symbolized the outsider in those pre-hippie, pre-beatnik days. When the two of them were making The Young Lions, Brando, who was playing a Nazi officer, had the idea that in his death scene he should roll dramatically down a hill and land with his arms outstretched like Christ's. "He does that, I'll walk off the picture," Monty fumed, afraid that Brando would steal the movie. In the printed scene, Brando is simply shot in the head by Dean Martin. Later, however, during Monty's dark days...
This is work that not many stars other than Eastwood and Reynolds are currently doing. Wayne, Stewart and Fonda, last survivors of the generation of giants, have become old men despite our most imaginative efforts not to acknowledge that dismaying fact. Brando broods and thickens in the middle on his South Seas Elba, a character actor in search of characters he can knock off in a month's shooting time. Newman is good wine, aging nicely but often bottled strangely, so that it is hard to identify his essence. Redford is adorable, but when they enriched that handsome hunk...
...Waterfront. You've heard all those "I cudda been a contenduh" imitations over the years, so you might as well take in the real thing. Marlon Brando predictably dominates this tale of corruption on the docks of Hoboken; his amoral, streetwise Terry Malone will always be mentioned in the same breath with his Stanley Kowalski and Don Vita. The portrayal of Brando's relationship with Eva Marie-Saint's paragon of prudery rankles a bit, sugary in a few embarrassing moments. Yet Elia Kazan's otherwise slick direction salvages the plot, wisely allowing Brando to showcase his still developing talents...
When Marlon Brando starred in On the Waterfront (1954), the morning shape-ups of New York dock workers were pretty much as the movie portrayed them-noisy, brawling scenes of men fighting for the jobs available. No longer. Now longshoremen "badge in" at 7:30 a.m. at local hiring halls by inserting a plastic card into an IBM computer and lounge around for a while. By 9 a.m. the unlucky ones have gone to work; the others can go home to watch TV or moonlight on a second job-and still collect full base pay ($64 per day). That undemanding...