Marlon brando

Introduction – the “Rebel Males”, a new generation arises

In the 1950s, a new generation of actors came to the movie screen. A whole new generation of teenagers and young adults could identify with these male rebels, who were rebelling on the screen as well as in their real lives. They showed their audience a new provocative lifestyle, breaking with hypocritical traditions and moral values. These young men were much more than just movie stars. They were models, idols and sex symbols.

Montgomery Clift, James Dean and Marlon Brando can certainly be considered as the three greatest actors of the 1950s. They did not only influence and change American film and acting style, but also the American Culture in general. They were the proof that there was a way out of the traditional oppressing lifestyle, and that the new generation wanted and needed some change. With their quicksilver intensity and unconventional eroticism they seemed to herald a revolution in acting style as well as in sensibility.

They (meaning themselves in real life as well as the characters they presented on the screen) incorporated the confusion, anger, uncertainty and alienation their generation had to deal with. How can one be sincere in an insincere society? How can one find one’s true self in a world obsessed with conformity?

From the Traditional Male to the Post War Rebel Male –

From the traditional to a younger audience

In the 1930 and 1940s movie world, the male stars were always potent, strong, straight, and masculine figures. They never showed any weakness. Ordinary men of that time might have wanted to be like them in their dreams. The audience of that time was very uniform.

In the 1950s, this image was not relevant any more.
The times of a uniform audience were gone. The new actors were not afraid of roles, which made them look weak, foolish, slow-witted, or sexually insecure. They marked the end of heroes of the old Hollywood star system. Authenticity was more important than stardom, the former hero had to make room for the anti-hero, rebelling against the older star image.

The “Rebel Males” and their movies clashed with numerous authority figures, as the new actors played ‘realistic’, contemporary characters who were often outlaw figures or aggressively iconoclastic.

As television was a real threat to Hollywood, the film industry now exploited their relative freedom to show ‘adult’ and ‘controversial’ topics such as: alcoholism, drug abuse, anti-Semitism, sex, racial inequality, etc. on the big screen.

Marlon Brando – Background information: significant dates, events, and persons of his life and his career

Marlon Brando was born April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska. He was the youngest of three children born to Dorothy and Marlon Brando. His two older sisters were Jocelyn and Frances.

His rebellious character soon became obvious in his real life.

He was expelled from high school during his junior year for smoking. This was not the last time he was kicked out of an institution. He was expelled from a military academy again for smoking.

Shortly after that, he got into the insecticide business (like his dad). He would not stay for a long time.

His career started in 1943, when he joined his sister Jocelyn in NYC. He joined the “Actors Studio”. Stella Adler became his teacher, and more important: he met Elia Kazan, with whom he would work successfully together several times.

In 1944, he had his professional acting debut on Broadway in “I remember Mama”.

In 1947, he became an overnight sensation in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar named Desire” at the Ethel Barrymore theatre. 1949 was a disorienting period of his life. He left the play and traveled across Europe.

In 1950, Brando made his first movie The Men, directed by Fred Zinnemann.

During the summer of 1950 Warner Bros. concluded a deal with Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando to prepare a movie version of A Streetcar named Desire. When it came out in 1951, the world got to know Marlon Brando. His performance was even more intense than before, and he also got his first Oscar nomination.

1954 was a very successful year. Marlon Brando is The Wild One, and won the Oscar (Best Actor) for Elia Kazan’s film On the Waterfront.

Since 1966, he lived on his own island in the Pacific Ocean.

In 1972 he wins his second Oscar for The Godfather. Once a rebel, always a rebel, he refused the Award. He accused the film industry to exploit the Native Americans.

Marlon Brando was married several times, and had numerous affairs. One of his sons was arrested for murder in 1990. One of his daughters committed suicide in 1995.

Filmography (Selection):

The Men – Director: Fred Zinnemann; Released: 1950

A Streetcar Named Desire – Director: Elia Kazan; Released: 1951

Screenplay: Tennessee Williams

Viva Zapata – Director: Elia Kazan; Released: 1953

Julius Ceasar – Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz; Released: 1953

The Wild One – Director: Laslo Benedek; Released: 1954

On the Waterfront – Director: Elia Kazan; Released: 1954

Desiree - Director: Henry Coster; Released: 1954

Guys and Dolls – Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz; Released: 1955

The Fugitive Kind – Director: Sidney Lumet; Released: 1960

Screenplay: Tennessee Williams

The Godfather – Director: Francis Ford Coppola; Released: 1971

Last Tango in Paris – Director: Bernardo Bertolucci; Released: 1972

Apocalypse Now – Director: Francis Coppola; Released: 1979

Etc.

The Wild One and the rebel Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando, the most celebrated American actor of the 1950s and one of its most powerful sex symbols, was from the beginning uncompromisingly independent. Brando’s rebel is anti-bourgeois, anti-adult, ready to take on the world. There is no law, and nothing can turn him back. He wore dirty blue jeans, insulted people, rewrote his character lines, picked his nose in public, and said critical things about powerful people. Short: he heroically incorporated the anti-hero.

The The Wild One featured one of Brando’s most famous rebel figures, Johnny, the leader of a motorcycle gang. The ‘Black Rebels’ commandeer the shops of a Mid-western town, break into buildings, terrorize a young female hostage and eventually, so accidentally, kill an old man. Even though the film was intended to be a display of violence without any social explanations and a gang made to seem inexplicably irresponsible, Brando gives Johnny a graceful resistance that contradicts the movie’s general tone. He is physically tough (underlined by the leather jacket, the cap, the black shades and the blue jeans), but inside very insecure. When Johnny is asked what he is rebelling against, he just answers: “Whaddya got?” This can actually be considered the key message of the movie. A main concern of the movie is society’s fear of the outsider, a figure of the fringes of polite society. Brando’s character epitomized an entire subculture that was fast spreading in America at that time – the gang. Johnny inspired many young men in search of a role model, including Dylan, Presley, and Dean.

Comments about Marlon Brando

Fred Zinnemann: “It’s not easy to reach him…But he stuck me as a man of extreme and exiting talent.”

Jack Nicholson: “He gave us our freedom.”

Elia Kazan: Brando “challenges the whole system of politeness and good nature and good ethics and everything else.”

“He’s uncertain about himself and he’s passionate, both at the same time.”

“Marlon had everything. Not only was he, at one time, the most beautiful man in films, both in face and body, but he had all the essential talents. He had emotion of a terrifying and awesome intensity. […] With Brando the director was always hoping for a miracle and he often got it.”

Brando about acting: “An actor must interpret life and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet… To grasp the full significance of life is the actor’s duty, to interpret it his problem, and to express it his dedication.”

Sources:

McCann, G. (1991). Rebel Males: Clift, Brando and Dean. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Schickel, R. (1991). Brando: A Life in our Times. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International.