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CibbuanoMarlon Brando - A Guide to his Film Roles (Part 2 - the 1960s)
February 6th 2010 12:26
Today I'll be following on from part 1 of my guide to Brando's films of the 50s with this personal tour of his 60s films. Part 1 can be read here. The 1960s were a patchy and troubled time for Brando, he had begun to make his name known in the film industry as a bit of a troublemaker and was finding it increasingly harder to get work. This resulted in him gravitating towards some quite strange films... and whilst it's pretty safe to say that the 60s contain at least two or three of the worst films he ever made, there is also some hidden gold that deserves to be rediscovered by any fledgling Brando fans out there.
Rio (One-Eyed Jacks)
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) Directed by Marlon Brando
This complex western took a lot of trouble to make, mostly due to Brando's turn as first-time director. Stanley Kubrick was originally set to direct but got in an argument with Brando over casting, and so Brando decided to step into the director's chair to make the movie he envisioned. The result is a slightly overlong but ultimately interesting revenge western about grey morality. At times it takes a lazy pace but it also prefigures the spaghetti western and the radicalisation of the western genre, with Brando cutting an intriguingly ambiguous figure as a lank-haired anti-hero to Karl Malden's genial, traitorous villain. Rio was initially meant to be Billy the Kid, with One-Eyed Jacks based on the novel The Death of Henry Jones, but Brando wasn't really interested in playing a straight-up villain. Instead he made the film into an epic saga of characters disguising their true natures (hence the title - 'one-eyed jack' is a reference to people only showing one side and one eye), with his re-written version of the lead character now a black-clad, single-minded force of vengeance who must choose between love and revenge. Brando's inexperience as a director (the original cut ran at something like 5 hours) and the studio's resulting post-production edit of his film (making the film more upbeat) led to a crushing artistic disappointment for the actor. He would never direct again, nor would he would ever again invest his integrity in a film role so completely.
Fletcher Christian (Mutiny on the Bounty)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) Directed by Lewis Milestone
As it was now the 1960s it was suddenly okay for actors to portray historical figures with authentically long hair. Brando copped some backlash amongst the critics at the time for his plummy British accent but he's actually quite good in this large scale retelling of the famous incident. He resists the film's attempts to carve him into a standard Hollywood hero by resolutely playing Christian as a foppish dandy whose charm and class seems to prohibit him from getting his hands dirty in any whatsoever. Of course, events eventually conspire to force Christian's hand to action and Brando plunges the character into a realistically black fugue as a result. The ending of this version of Mutiny on the Bounty is nothing short of nonsense but Brando is fairly entertaining throughout and the film itself is quite a spectacular historical adventure. He loved the Tahitian location and people so much that he purchased a small island in the area, and built a private hotel there.
Harrison Carter McWhite (The Ugly American)
The Ugly American (1963) Directed by George Englund
Another one of Brando's 'message' films, this one deals with American foreign policy in a fictional South-East Asian country (ala Vietnam and Cambodia). Brando plays a U.S. Ambassador seeking to improve the lot of the Sarkhenese through the construction of a 'freedom' highway. The film is loosely based on a book of the same name, with the idea being that the imposition of American ideals on other countries can do just as much damage as the communist ideals the U.S. opposes. MacWhite is shown to be a misguided idealist who very much believes in what he's doing, a naive character who doesn't really learn until it's too late. It's a fairly flawed film, with too much sermonizing (both for and against) and lots of scenes with Brando projecting his inner turmoil over what this poor country is going through. Brando very much had a big hand in getting this film made, he personally chose Japanese actor Eiji Okada (in the only English-speaking role of his career) as his co-star, and Brando's sister Joceyln also co-stars as a nurse. Unfortunately, the film apparently deviates a fair bit from the very famous book it's based on, and as a result it's largely considered a failure.
Freddy Benson (Bedtime Story)
Bedtime Story (1964) Directed by Ralph Levy
Brando returns to comedy in a bold, poor-taste tale of rival conmen in the french riviera. He plays a small-time con-artist quietly discharged from the army after seducing one woman too many and finds himself let loose on Europe like a kid in a candy store. He wanders into the playground of a big-time operator portrayed by David Niven and soon the two are competing for the attentions of a rich tourist, embroiled in an escalating game of outlandish lies and schemes. Bedtime Story is a fairly amusing comedy that thankfully resists sugarcoating it's subject matter, but the weakest link is easily Brando. He doesn't seem able to take his role all that seriously, continuously trying to fight the smirk off his face because he's just too amused by it all. There's a few small moments where he manages to be quite funny but overall it's Niven who steals the show as the older, classier con artist. Freddy is a rather cocky character so he's not even really all that likeable, with Brando playing him as a crude lowlife who thinks a little too highly of himself. A large portion of the film sees Brando's character faking a debilitating mental condition that leaves him bound to a wheelchair... it's a far cry from his serious and critically acclaimed work in The Men, and it's interesting to see Brando play the same material for laughs. Bedtime Story isn't very well-known these days, it was remade more famously as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in the late 80s, which is easily as good if not better. Brando was fully aware of his shortcomings as a comic actor and he would rarely do an out-and-out comedy like this ever again, but he also later said that this was the only film he ever truly enjoyed making and that he found David Niven absolutely hilarious.
Robert Crain (Morituri)
Morituri (1965) Directed by Bernhard Wicki
This was the last black and white film Brando made, and aside from a few mentions of rape and Jewishness it feels fairly dated too. Brando plays a WW2-era German for the second and last time, once again employing a spot-on German accent and doing his best serious routine. His character is a German traitor waiting out the war in India who gets blackmailed into working for the British as a spy onboard a German ship. The resulting film is a fairly run of the mill war thriller, with a non-German accented Yul Brynner playing the strangely heroic captain of the ship. Brando isn't really all that interesting in this, the movie looks cool and atmospheric but not all that much happens and Brando stays firmly in brooding, introspective mode for the bulk of the duration.
Sheriff Calder (The Chase)
The Chase (1966) Directed by Arthur Penn
A fairly decent and very 60s satire-drama about smalltown ignorance and lynchmob mentality getting the better of the law. Brando plays the resolute but worldweary sheriff who must do his best to protect a prisoner (a young Robert Redford) from self-righteously ugly townspeople hellbent on mutiny. In true Brando tradition, he takes one hell of a beating in order to symbolise the struggle of those who must uphold what's right. He's actually a lot better here than he was in his last few films, employing a suitably southern accent and demonstrating a sense of wryness and familiarity in the earlier scenes where the Sheriff patrols his constituents, and also boiling up at the unfairness of his situation with a sense of dignity befitting his profession. It's also worth noting that this is probably the point where Brando first starts showing signs of ageing, he looks heavier in this film than he does in any film before it and sports greying hair, but it also suits his character and doesn't distract in the way it does in some of his later movies where his weight balloons much more noticeably.
Matt Fletcher (The Appaloosa)
The Appaloosa (1966) Directed by Sidney J. Furie
This is a fairly B-grade western of no real pretensions and is hence fairly enjoyable in a pseudo-spaghetti western kind of way. Brando spends some of the film looking rather shabby and unkempt, liked a bearded hobo of the desert, before smartening himself up and embarking on his revenge quest to liberate his stolen horse from some dirty steenkin Mexican badguys. The head of these villains is played by John Saxon, an actor best described as a low rent cross between Burt Reynolds and Al Lettieri, and there's a few good scenes where he and Brando square off against each other - not the least of these is a bizarre arm-wrestling competition where the loser gets his hand pushed into the territory of a deadly scorpion! For most of the film Brando isn't really required to put too much effort in... during some of his revenge quest he goes undercover as a Mexican and employs an over-the-top Mexican accent, and it's about a million miles away from his more subtle work 14 years earlier in Viva Zapata, suggesting that he didn't really treat this role all that seriously.
Ogden Mears (A Countess From Hong Kong)
A Countess From Hong Kong (1967) Directed by Charles Chaplin
Even the disallusioned Brando couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with a screen legend like Charlie Chaplin. Here he appears in Chaplin's last film as a stuffy, well-to-do diplomat who shelters a stowaway (Sophia Loren) onboard on an ocean liner. Brando wasn't keen to do another comedy but the presence of Chaplin was the dealbreaker, though Brando would come to regret every minute of the film due to Chaplin's mean-spirited and generally disagreeable nature. The film itself is a lifeless and turgid farce... Brando plays a figure more than a little remniscent of Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, and seems less than happy to be on the screen. You can practically see him gritting his teeth just to get through it, and A Countess From Hong Kong probably remains his worst film simply due to the fact that it's hideously boring and completely without interest.
Maj. Weldon Penderton (Reflections in a Golden Eye)
Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) Directed by John Huston
This is one of the stranger and more risky dramas to come out of the radical 60s. Liz Taylor plays the rather loose and frustrated army wife of an army professor (Brando) on a military base. A young private (Robert Forster, in his film debut) has a voyeuristic obsession with Taylor's character, but is also unaware that he is the secret object of desire of Brando's character, a closeted and self-loathing homosexual, which places the three characters in a rather twisted and ultimately doomed love triangle. Brando's willingness to play an obviously gay character like Weldon shows just how ahead of his time he truly was, and proved that he was still leagues ahead of his contemporaries. He affects an authentic-sounding southern accent and takes on a dour disposition for most of the film, cracking his exterior in a few riveting key scenes to reveal the depth of confusion and pain underneath... the most memorable of these would have to be the infamous horse-whipping scene, featuring a flood of raw emotion on Brando's part that is only matched by his later Oscar-nominated work in Last Tango in Paris. The film isn't the masterpiece some fans claim it to be, but it stands the test of time as a highly interesting porthole into the changing attitudes of the era and remains a must-see film due to the level of commitment offered by both the cast and the director. This film marks the beginning of Brando's return to glory... a five year stretch of inspired performances (with one or two glaring exceptions) that would culminate in his second Oscar win.
Grindl (Candy)
Candy (1968) Directed by Christian Marquand
There's just something grotesquely hynoptic about the very idea of Marlon Brando playing an Indian Guru proficient in the art of the Kama Sutra. It might've been the worst role he ever played if he wasn't so obviously aware of how ridiculous it all is. As he's patently in on the joke it simply remains bizarre and mildly amusing. The film itself is very much a product of it's time, a 60s sex comedy that plays as a pastiche on 60s pop culture, but aside from the various celebrity cameos it's a fairly dull and dated affair that manages to wear out it's welcome very quickly. Brando's thick Indian accent, boot-polish skin and unruly black wig would've been offensive if his character wasn't so obviously a charlatan... he rides around in a makeshift Guru-den in the back of a truck and spouts all manner of half-arsed spiritual nonsense in order to get the lead character to have sex with him multiple times. The scene is mildly amusing at first but it goes on for far too long (like the movie itself). Brando agreed to appear in the film as a favour to the director, who he was friends with.
The Chauffeur (The Night of the Following Day)
The Night of the Following Day (1968) Directed by Hubert Cornfield
A rather pointless and vaguely arty thriller that seems to think it's clever, this one features Brando as part of a gang who kidnap the daughter of a diplomat and hold her to ransom. His character is the one in the gang who has pangs of conscience when things start to go a bit awry, though most of the film sees him having to contend with his drug-addicted girlfriend. Brando looks surprisingly fit and young here in comparison to his roles in Reflections in a Golden Eye and The Chase, and this is pretty much the last film in which he looks lean and in-shape... from here on in it would a steady decline towards morbid obesity. A lot of Brando's angry scenes in this film call to mind his work as young rebellious characters in The Wild One and The Fugitive Kind, though it's pretty clear that he only did this film for the money. The Night of the Following Day is every bit as dumb as it's title, and Brando spends most of the film looking snazzy and Eurotrash in a black skivvy and a blond Andy Warhol wig. When he discovered that the film was a real piece of crap he started making things difficult for the director, including refusing to smile for the film's final scene (the director ended up having to use a still shot instead). It's a stupid ending that doesn't make any sense anyway, so Brando was right to act so disaparagingly.
Sir William Walker (Burn!)
Burn! (1969) Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
Also known as Quiemada. This is probably my absolute favourite Brando role, and is also a criminally underrated film. Brando plays Sir William Walker, a 18th century British spy and professional rabble-rouser. He is sent to the Portuguese-held Caribbean island of Queimada by the British to foment revolution, and is later financially-motivated to return ten years later to put down the subsequent slave-led revolution. Brando plays Sir William as a dashing master-spy and all-round cad, employing the same foppish accent he used in Mutiny on the Bounty and carrying a sophisticated implication of depravity that comes to the fore when the character eventually falls on hard times due to alcoholism and gambling problems. Brando is a delight throughout, shining whenever Sir William manipulates his prey and displaying an alarmingly believable sense of ammorality. Burn! also happens to be a very interesting film with a strong, uncompromised vision of filibusting and the political agendas involved. At this point Brando was increasingly finding himself offered less work in Hollywood, which led to him working with European directors such as Pontecorvo (most famous for The Battle of Algiers). Brando and Pontecorvo had increasingly volatile disagreements throughout the making of Burn!... Brando was upset by the director's ill treatment of the extras (played by local islanders) and the two men took to threatening each other with weapons (Brando had a rather large knife, Pontecorvo started carrying a gun). Despite this, Brando never lost respect for Pontecorvo's talent and often cited this film as amongst the best he ever made.
Stayed tuned for Part 3 - the 1970s and 1980s.
Special thanks to www.doctormacro.info for some of the photos!
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