“On the Waterfront” (1954)
There are many, many surprising omissions from the recent BBC poll of the 100 Greatest American Films, but perhaps none is quite as flabbergasting as the absence of Elia Kazan‘s towering classic about union unrest and corrupted idealism on the Hoboken docklands. Not only did the film win 8 of its 12 Oscar nominations (including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Brando), it deals so precisely with the flipside of the coin toss that is the American Dream, that it feels like an inarguable inclusion in any such list. But then again, there is a broad streak of “un-Americanness” here — ironic, considering both Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg “named names” — as the film glorifies the common working man and the power of brotherhood, rather than the exceptionalist individualism that is the capitalist way. And Brando’s performance is the perfect encapsulation of that approach: his Terry Malloy is both unique and ordinary. The grace and sensitivity of this performance (including improvised embellishments like the moment he absently tries on Eva Marie Saint’s glove which is simply one of the most beautiful acting moments ever committed to celluloid) makes us feel for Malloy as a real person, yet Brando also hints at the oceanic depths that roil beneath. In fact, if Kazan’s film overall is a singular achievement in uniting elements of film noir filmmaking with an uncompromising social realism, it derives a huge amount of that energy from Brando’s sublime mix of stagecraft and spontaneity. This is not his showiest or most iconic role; it is simply his best.
“The Wild One” (1957)
A young Brando had screen-tested for the long-gestating film that eventually became “Rebel Without A Cause” back in 1947, but while he might have lost out on that one, he got his own 1950s rebellious young lead in “The Wild One,” the controversial biker-gang drama from director László Benedek and producer Stanley Kramer. Swaggering to a degree that he makes Stanley Kowalski look like a shrinking violet, Brando plays Johnny Strabler, the leader of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club, who invade the quiet town of Wrightsville, causing havoc with the locals, and instigating a romance between Johnny and Kathie (Mary Murphy), the daughter of the local police chief. The film was undeniably something of an exploitation picture, preying on real-life worries about the fears of motorcycle gangs, but the film’s pop culture impact went further than that: like ‘Rebel’ and “The Blackboard Jungle,” it helped to create the teenager as an identity (“What are you rebelling against?” Johnny is asked, to which he famously responds, “Whaddya got?”), it was banned in the UK for fourteen years over fears of copycats, and created an instant icon in Brando’s much-imitated sideburns and tilted cap. Much of this obscures that “The Wild One” isn’t, well, a particularly great film: heavy-handed, reactionary, tin-eared, lacking in flair, and with a rather anonymous supporting cast (though an early appearance from Lee Marvin is good value). And yet Brando’s so smoulderingly charismatic, so soulful, so quietly sad, that he carries the picture with him.
READ MORE: Watch: Marlon Brando’s Screen Test For ‘Rebel Without A Cause’
“Sayonara” (1957)
This list contains inarguably classic films with inarguably astounding Brando performances. It also contains less-than-classics with great Brando performances. But “Sayonara” might be the most problematic inclusion. It’s not a truly great film — however well-meaning its anti-racism sentiment for the time, it’s bought at the expense of a deeply reactionary and Orientalist view of the exotic subservience of Japanese womanhood, and it features Ricardo Montalban playing Japanese. And nor is the Oscar-nominated Brando flawless in the role of the Korean War-era Air Force Major who falls for a Japanese actress — his Southern accent is a slightly awkward affectation. Yet despite, or perhaps because of, its many issues, “Sayonara,” from director Joshua Logan (“South Pacific“) earns its slot here. It illuminates the reaches of his talents better, perhaps, than many of his more famous roles. His Major Gruver has no deep, menacing darkness — he does not have Terry Malloy’s brokenness, Stanley Kowalski’s rage or Colonel Kurtz’s madness. Gruver is among the simplest characters Brando ever played: a decent, patriotic flying ace whose ingrained and entirely representative prejudices are overcome by love — it’s Brando as an everyman, and it’s a truly beautiful, sensitive performance. Supported by great turns from Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki (who won the two Supporting Actor Oscars that year) — without the volcanic bluster or eat-the-room presence of some of his more famous turns, here we watch his Method applied on a much smaller scale and he delivers: a precise and thrillingly empathetic embodiment of a good man incrementally changing his mind.
“The Godfather” (1972)
The 1960s were not a good time for Brando (as one can tell from the absence of any movies from the decade on this list), with critically-derided flop after critically-derided flop. His star had faded to such an extent that when Francis Ford Coppola wanted to cast him in his adaptation of a Mafia-themed pulp novel called “The Godfather,” Paramount resisted, only letting it happen if the actor swapped his fee for a percentage, and agreed to pay for any overages resulting from his own behavior. It was a risk that decidedly paid off, with a performance that’s briefer than you remember, but that haunts not just the rest of Coppola’s hugely successful trilogy, but the crime movie in general. Playing a good fifteen years older than he really was, and famously embellished himself with cotton buds in his cheeks, Brando is Vito Corleone, the Don of a New York mob family, facing new competition and an uncertain passing-of-the-torch to his children. It’s a much-imitated, much-parodied performance (with the actor among those who riffed on it, as we’ll see), and for good reason: he’s a representative of an older, more simple world, one that Brando himself had helped to put away, and there’s a deep melancholy, particularly in the latter stages, at the way he visibly slips away, both content to be dying naturally with his family, and yet somehow disappointed to be out of the loop. It won the actor his second Oscar (and deservedly so).