Love him or hate him or both, to very loosely paraphrase Mae West, when the late great Marlon was good he was out of this world good and when he was bad… ugggggggh. What are your votes for BEST and WORST moments in the extensive Brando Filmography?
My votes:
BEST
Godfather: the scene in the garden with Michael, both the deleted portion (
Michael: But Pop, won’t they see that as a sign of weakness?
Don C: It is a sign of weakness.
and the included portion:
Don C: Senator Corleone… sumpthin…
or
His incredible performance as American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell (opposite James Earl Jones as Alex Haley) in Roots: the Next Generation- I still don’t know if the bit with the aerosol can was scripted or mostly improv.
**WORST[/B[
Perhaps the pointless waste of mega-talent Don Juan DeMarco (a psychiatrist encourages the delusions of a guy with a sword because they’re romantic?), or the “Pig” scene in Last Tango- they both have their demerit, but I’ll always remember the nadir as Torquemada opposite Tom Selleck’s King Magnum of Aragon in the “What the f*ck was that?” megaflop Christopher Columbus.
No offense to the dead, but I’ve never been that impressed with any of Brando’s performances. Influenced a generation of actors, sure, became completely absorbed in the roles he created, maybe, but the results I’ve seen just don’t do much for me. And he was already a caricature by the time I became familiar with his work.
Still, the worst has to be The Island of Dr. Moreau. That performance, if not that entire movie, is the first thing I always think of whenever anyone uses the phrase “too horrible but you just can’t look away.” Mumbling, wearing a mu-mu, with a thermos on his head which his identically-dressed dwarf keeps filling with ice… profoundly disturbing.
Well, I gotta go with Streetcar as his best–revolutionary at the time and still riveting today. Like an exposed raw nerve, he’s a predator, a hood, and a man much smarter than he appears–ruthless, fearless, yet undeniably vulnerable. All his co-stars won Oscars but he deserved it most of all.
As for worst, I’ve always found his Spencer Christian hilariously bad, and I think the real turning point, where he became more and more about affectation and less about character immersion (though his performance in Teahouse may be his most embarrassing in his pre-whale years).
I’ve always thought in the three major film versions of Mutiny on the Bounty, I thought Fletcher (be it Clark Gable, Brando or Mel Gibson) was outshone by Bligh (Charles Laughton, Trevor Howard or Anthony Hopkins), but then I have a low patience for mutineers.
Best: On the Waterfront. A great movie in many other respects, too. The atmospheric setting, so well-done, the heroic priest of Karl Malden, the social commentary, Eva Marie-Saint, that Bernstein score…
Worst: Apocalypse Now. I liked the rest of it pretty much, when I could figure out what was going on, but we were supposed to be SO IMPRESSED that we were seeing BRANDO!! onscreen again and what we got was this mumbling black-shirted sweating dude who completely derailed what passed for the plot. And we were supposed to be mesmerized because it was BRANDO!!!