On the Waterfront

On the Waterfront (1954) is Kazan's ultimate masterpiece, and he is, as I from my most utterly subjective self see it, the greatest filmmaker of all times.

Waterfront has some curious legacy, among the films it has either inspired or influenced since its release. For instance, both Rocky and Raging Bull (considered by many to be opposite conceptions of the boxing movie genre) are born and bred Waterfront children. It is funny, but in a way the Caprian Rocky is even more Kazanesque than the Scorsese film.

My favorite moments are all those blink-and-miss ones that prove Brando's very greatness. Like the sudden nervous tic on Terry's face when Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) is putting some money in his shirt pocket for having helped to murder one of the dock workers. Look at the rictus! (By the way, Pacino borrowed that for Dog Day Afternoon and turned it into a masterful gimmick.) Or when he is on the roof talking to the detective about that important fight he lost, and he is doing the moves, and he says: "My own..." He doesn't say "brother", but even the guy from the commission seems to guess. Waterfront is thoroughly filled with all those minute touches of sheer genius because Kazan himself admired Brando as much as we do.

Terry Malloy is arguably the best role in the history of film-making. Brando's unsurpassed ability to convey the deepest of feelings through the tiniest of gestures found in Kazan's mise en scène its ideal showcase. That was subtlety at so profound a level and high a standard, that it is almost embarrassing to call it acting. In a way, there is no acting at all in the part.

From Kazan to Ray

For all its schematism and now seemingly formulaic plot line, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), the most famous output of the careers of both outsider filmmaker Nicholas Ray and protégé, awkward and eccentric actor James Dean, remains a triumph of pure cinematic enlightenment.

Dean was the talk of the town in Hollywood circa 1954-55. He had only just finished starring in Kazan's East of Eden when got involved with the long-postponed Rebel Without a Cause project. This originally had Brando in the lead even before Brando played in the stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Kazan himself.

Ray had worked with Kazan and was no less impressed with him than Dean was with Brando. Rebel Without a Cause is said to be modeled under Kazan's On The Waterfront. Also, there are evident traces of Brando's performances in Streetcar and The Wild One in the character development of Rebel.

By the way, I wish to credit actor Corey Allen. A renowned UCLA graduate who would retire from acting too early to ever make it in the movies like his Rebel mates Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo and Dennis Hopper, his portrayal of Buzz Gunderson, Dean's ill-fated rival, is actually of note. Allen resembles Brando, hence matching the Brandoesque mannerisms displayed by the star. In the "chicky run" scene -- one of the best set pieces of filmdom -- , his line "You gotta do something, don't ya" echoes The Wild One's most memorable one: "Whadda ya got". Buzz is as confused a kid as Johnny Strabler and, for that matter, as innocent a victim as Jim Stark. And this equality was what Rebel intended to point out.

Brando and Kazan change the face of an Art form

When I discovered A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), it was a shocking revelation, a religious experience. Had I never been able to watch Streetcar, arguably Cinema wouldn't be so important to me. The master Elia Kazan wrote a poem on film, just one out of an incredible albeit brief body of work, which includes such titles as Viva Zapata! (1952), East of Eden (1955) and America, America (1963).

The Tennessee Williams play was already a legend when Hollywood decided to capitalise on its Broadway success. Kazan and the entire original cast were hired by Warner Bros., with the notable exception of Jessica Tandy, who happened to be the female lead. However, Kazan defied the system and refused to replace Marlon Brando; so, it was either Tandy or Brando. Vivien Leigh was signed to star as the one household name amongst the bunch of Method actors. Tandy was out. Brando was definitely in, though. And Film history would never be the same.

It doesn't matter that the Academy awarded Humphrey Bogart's career instead of Brando's Stanley Kowalski in the 1952 ceremony, because we all know who truly deserved the highest honors that night. Streetcar features the first modern acting ever realised. In this regard alone, Brando is an artist of the same stature as Flaubert or Picasso. So is Kazan, of course!

12 September 2005

Femininity and masculinity in the roles of Marlon Brando

Dad (Karl Malden) and the Kid (Brando): One-Eyed Jacks

Like a Freudian Picasso who could use his own body as a canvas in which the strokes would be only red and green colors, the Brando that swaggers in A Streetcar Named Desire is not just the Michelangelo-like sculptured physique and the Beethoven-kind of bursts of rage; but also an artist so incredibly innovative that he is able to create from the black and white screen into the Tennessee Williams' and Elia Kazan's poetic scenary the most multidimensional of all moments: a human life.

From 1951 on, many were the traits in Brando's style and persona which made a more or less conscious impression: the rebellious attitude, the enigmatic mumbling, the Byronic romanticism, the iconoclastic approach to acting, the link between sexuality and individuality. Sexual allure is precisely what defined, if not Brando's technique, his stardom; yet what can be found at the core of his absolute greatness, it is not his sex-appeal, but the ambiguity which rooted this: the inextricable confussion in the On the Waterfront antihero of male and female characteristics as never before nor after has blessed any actor of his class.

One of the most noted venusian artists of his time, Roger Vadim benefited himself from his own singular feminine side. In the same way, Brando was the most convincing Fletcher Christian on the screen: flamboyant, mannered, cocky, petulant, too much delicate. Not too much, really. The little there is to know about Christian's womanizing means looks smooth as well, and his suggested game is perhaps a reflection of that of Brando's friend, the director of And God Created Woman.

It was another filmmaker friend of Brando, however, who exerted a huge influence on him and the development of his craft. After working together in Streetcar, Kazan and Brando went to make only two more movies, Viva Zapata! and On the Waterfront. This final collaboration contains what are probably the most elaborate and at the same time simple examples of the great actor's unique androginy. When the main character, Terry Malloy, is in the company of his comrades, the melancholic gaze of his eyes of wasted prize-fighter underlines the substantial difference between his conflicted inner self and the confidence that exude from the naturality of the others. He does not fit in this man's world, Kazan implicitly communicates through the camera angles and the light that make Malloy to show almost like a womanly vulnerability, both his weakness and his real strength in this harsh environment. Stanley Kowalski has become Blanche DuBois, but Waterfront, despite its documentary-like realism, has got an idealist heart; hence the triumph of good in the uplifting end.

Waterfront was that moment in cinema when the doors got opened; without it is impossible to conceive the emergence, if not of all Brando heirs, at least of some of the most sexually ambivalent and universally appealing: John Travolta, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp. Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that the gender dynamics which fueled Brando's psychological richness in characters can be ever matched.

10 things you want to know about the Method

1. The Actors Studio was founded by directors Elia Kazan and Robert Lewis, and producer Cheryl Crawford in October of 1947. Another former Group Theater member, Lee Strasberg was invited to join in 1949; by 1951, he was already its power.

Irene Selznick, Tennessee Williams, Elia Kazan on the set of "A Streetcar Named Desire". New York City, 1947

2. It was Stella Adler who taught Brando the Stanislavskian system of acting --never Strasberg, as it is all too frequently assumed. Founding member of the Group, Adler was trained by Konstantin Stanislavski himself, whom she visited in Moscow circa 1934.

3. Jimmy Dean only attended about just a couple of sessions at the Studio. However, Strasberg was proud of Dean's character job in the 1956 epic film Giant.

4. 'Method' was a term coined by Strasberg to rename the Russian 'System' for the American stage.

5. Brando hated Strasberg and vice versa. Al Pacino loved them both; always had. Pacino first became aware of the Studio when he saw Brando in the Kazan pictures as a teenager. Many years later, he was Strasberg's most excellent disciple, protégé and friend. Then, in 1972, Pacino had his breakthrough playing the cold-blooded son to Brando's Godfather.

6. Among the alumni who could not stand the rigor of Strasberg, besides Dean, there have been other more contemporary greats, such as Harvey Keitel, who does acknowledge Strasberg as one of his mentors.

Harvey Keitel and Zina Bethune in Martin Scorsese's Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967)

7. It seems that the only girl --the one student, with disregard of their gender, Pacino aside-- who ever actually enjoyed the guy was Marilyn. She was devoted to Strasberg's dissecting lessons and overall psychoanalytical take on anything. Marilyn was a real sweetheart.

Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe and Susan Strasberg

8. The soon to be called Method acting had its first time in the spotlight when the triumphant performance of Brando in the world debut of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire", directed by Kazan, hit the Ethel Barrymore theater on December 3, 1947. 'Stella!!!' (an almost unbearable screaming which is also the laconic emblem of a shocking new kind of artistic expression) was, along with a ripped T-shirt and the desperately inarticulate style of a caveman, the trademark of an instant phenomenon. True or false, Brando and the Actors Studio went up to be so immediately and profoundly associated, it can be said the Method is modeled after him.

Brando (Stanley Kowalski) and Jessica Tandy (Blanche DuBois)

9. The best-known action movie star to have ever been a member of the Studio was Steve McQueen. From The Great Escape (1963) to The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), McQueen has turned out to be presumably one of the most oddly underrated leading men of the era.

10. Around the time The Godfather: Part II was in production, Kazan was unavailable. So, Francis Coppola approached Strasberg for the role of the venerable and treacherous Hyman Roth, following Pacino's advice. It is a tribute to Strasberg's prowess that he nailed the part (seemingly) effortlessly, and made it his own for generations to come and sing the praises of the legendary guru in a top demonstration of his method.

Groundbreaking and 60

Panic in the Streets, the 6th feature-length film directed by Elia Kazan, was released on June 12, 1950. It remains a veritable, suspenseful thriller.