I'm sorry, but Karl Malden was just so much better than Marlon Brando in this film, particularly in Malden's monologue. The fact that Malden was snubbed of an Oscar, while Brando's performance is often found in a handful of "Best Performances Ever" lists bewilders me.
shareI think Brando did great job acting. I have to admit Karl Malden is my favorite in this movie. He was incredible.
shareYou don't understand how much Brando changed the acting style at the time. He was completely original and influenced every generation that came after. If you don't think he was deserving of an Oscar for this role, you have to at least admit he should've won for A Streetcar Named Desire.
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I've been saying this for years, and until recently, I thought I was the only one who believed it. There are certain taboos in our culture, things you can't say anything bad about without earning the wrath of the baby boomer. One of them is The Beatles, the other is Brando.
Brando gives the strangest, most off-putting portrayal ever done by a talented actor, which, of course he is. But this role is a complete joke: not only does he LOOK like a clown through most of the film (combinations of facial distortions and bad make-up I suppose) but he often sounds like a clown as well. What kind of damned accent was that??? Listen carefully. It is NOT a "NYC" accent, not a Bronx accent and most definitively not a "Joisey" accent. It is a bizarre concoction that we are suppose to laud, because it is soooooo different, like his performance. Nonsense.
I see him, the actor, not the character, throughout the film, saying, "Hey! Look at me! I'm ACTING!"
And compared with Malden, who gives the best performance in the film, Brando's is paper thin and phony as a 3 dollar bill.
Bravo, Lee J. Cobb and even the oft obnoxious Steiger is spot on.
Thank you for this post. I feel better now. . . .
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gentlemen, you all undoubtedly appreciated film, but i think you are all smoking something :)
i thought malden was good, really good, but c'mon....brando's performance here is true acting...perfect..absolutely perfect...i won't belabor the obvious greatness of the cab scene b/w brando and steiger, but throughout the film brando was incredible..
i'm only (or already, whatever) 38 , my impressions of brando are watered down and diluted now to be sure but to see the master , young and great, well i just saw on the waterfront for the 1st time this past weekend and i gotta say, brando was the best.
it is better to have a gun and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it
The scene on the docks where he meets Edie and when he walks her home from the church are amazing.
~I see a little silhouette of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango.
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A couple of quick notes:
A.) I was born in 1986 so I wasn't even close to being around for the "Brando Revolution of Acting." All I can go off of when I see his movies is how I feel about them and how other people talk about his impact.
B.) It is TOTALLY true that there are taboos and critiquing Brando certainly falls in that category. So I know how oddly scary it can be to buck that "common knowledge."
With all of that said, I think it is hard to judge the performances of Brando (especially the older ones) unless you lived through them. Even as someone who didn't live through that era it is easy to see how he changed mainstream acting. As far as who had the better performance, that is totally opinion and can't really be argued. All I'll say is that, for me, there are view scenes I love more than the "I coulda been a contender" scene. Cliche, very, but I can't help it. To me, the most impressive thing about that scene has always been two big choices by Brando.
1.) How he didn't overact (or overreact) when his brother pulled the gun on him. I truly believe almost any other actor would wrestle the gun out of his hand and start yelling. Brando simply puts his hand on it, showing how disappointed he is in his older brother, totally setting the tone for that scene. Brando, the younger brother, has been changed by the events of this movie and is now the more mature one. Something he conveys with his actions.
2.) He never cries. Again, anytime there is a sad moment in a movie it's so easy for an actor to just turn on the water works and let the tears do the talking. To me, Brando's look of disappoint and the way he looks off camera as he says "I coulda been somebody" (as if he is imaging it in the moment) says more about how the way he feels than tears ever could.
I know I am only pointing to one scene in the movie as my defense, but I believe that that scene is an undisputed classic for a reason and really shows off how Brando changed the way mainstream actors approached dramatic scenes.
Sorry for the length and potential pretentiousness.
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I know. Love The Beatles though.
It's like if you said anything negative about Brando you would be cast out out of humanity forever. Sometimes I feel that people are afraid to speak the truth about THIS RIDICULOUS MUMBLER out of fear. For an actor who did not conform to peer pressure. He sure had put a lot of peer pressure to the human race.
First of all, I know that I'm responding to a comment made 3 years ago, about a film made over 60 years ago, but so be it.
I'm not that young, but am young enough to say that OTW and "Streetcar" were made before I was born. Sometimes, I look to poke holes in convention, and rebel against the idea that Brando may have been the greatest actor of all time, or the most influential. Essentially, it's all subjective, anyway. For me, this is a great film, and I think that all of Brando, Cobb, Malden and Steiger turn in extraordinary work. This film compelled me when I firsst saw it, and I'm now in the mood to re-view it. Most impressively, it feels epic with a running time of less than two hours.
To your Beatles analogy, I'm a gigantic Beatles fan as well, but that doesn't mean that you're wrong. To me, Bob Dylan is way overrated, although I understand how influential he was. I can appreciate his influence and many of his lyrics, but just don't did his music. To some extent, the great, vaunted Billie Holiday doesn't work for me that well, although Ella, Sara Vaughan an so many other blues/jazz singers do. great art should work on the visceral level.
That's the thing. Even if you're supposed to revel in everything Brando, art appreciation is not really an intellectual process. The performance(s) still have to work. One can appreciate, say, how Picasso was innovative, but if you don't like his paintings, you can't force it. (Just an example - not a review)
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Well, at least you know you're bewildered. Because you are. And it's one of those things that if you can't see it, no one can help you. First off, it's not a competition. Malden is not trying to win against Brando or vice versa. My guess is, judging by your favorite part being Malden's monologue, is that you're an audience member who needs bombast, histrionics and pyrotechnics to appreciate an actor's work. And certainly, the role of Terry Malloy is short on these qualities. If anything, Brando finds his most powerful moments in Terry's tenderest scenes. By now, the scene where Terry puts his hand inside Edie's glove has almost become a cliche but there is a reason. It is so subtle, and so telling, a means of holding her hand without holding it, of keeping her there without forcing her. The beauty of Brando's work is specifically that he does not have a fiery monologue that you can point to and say "Ah, this is great acting." Over the entire movie he communicates who Terry is with his body. It's almost a dance, the shrugs, the halting beginnings of sentences, not knowing what to do with his hands, the gentle caress of the gun as he pushes it away. That, just that moment, when Terry dismantles Charlie's very real, very dangerous threat with his own love and hurt. It's an astonishing moment. I don't think any other actor, on their own, would have made that choice. The only thing I can suggest is to watch it again. The masterpiece is not in the shouting. It's in the feeling.
And I doubt that Karl Malden was "snubbed". He does exemplary work but so does Rod Steiger. I'm less a fan of Lee J. Cobb's work in this movie but he, Steiger and Malden were all nominated for the award. I doubt that helped any of their chances.
Never thought of the hand in the glove thing. Thank you for that insight, just another impressive decision by Brando that really shows what a powerhouse performance this is. Thanks again.
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And to be fair, I should say you're entitled to your opinion. That's what's great about art. Just because you don't like something that other people do, however, does not make that thing 'overrated'. Though, I also understand that tendency. One I never get is THE SEARCHERS. Like Brando's performance in WATERFRONT, it's often cited as one of the best ever and I always feel like it borders on bad, especially the mind-numbing sub-plot of the young guy and the girl; the only thing worse than their dialogue is their acting. So, I get your emotion. But say, for me, when I was a young man I saw ON THE WATERFRONT having never heard anything about it or much about Brando at all. And he blew me away. And it's still one of the most significant experiences of art I've ever had and it was mainly him.
shareWhat people tend to forget, looking back, is context. You need to look at the Beatles in the context of what music was like in the 1960s and what they did that was new and different.
Brando is the same thing. You have to look at Brando in the context of the 1950s.
When someone breaks new ground, it is unavoidable that there will be hundreds of copycats. Then that "new ground" becomes just common and normal.
Look at Star Wars. It's easy to look back and laugh at the cheesy special effects now, but at the time the movie came out, those effects were ground breaking.
Yeah, Brando was the first to act genuine, rather than the theatrical melodramatic style that was around all the time prior. I actually think he was a little too 'self-aware'. He acted like Leo DiCaprio.. just trying to make a splash and get people to look at how good he is. He wasn't that great, but for back then, he was unique, and that was as good as it got.
shareI agree. The way some people talk about Brando's performance in this film, you would think he did something extraordinary here. His "method acting" may have been a revelation back in 1951, in A Streetcar Named Desire, when compared to the theaterical over-the-top acting style of his costar Vivien Leigh. But here? I didn't see anything remarkable about his performance in this particular movie. In fact, the movie itself was just plain boring and hard to sit through.
shareKarl got his Oscar in StreetCar where Brando didnt but should have as well, Brando never overrated himself, Hollywood did...He questioned his acting n thats what made him someone to watch. He was Beautiful n commanding on screen and he never got his Dad's support that was troubling for him . Watch on youtube Marlon wit his dad during interview, his dad was a mess!
sharewatch it again and again they were equal, everyone was fabulous in this timeless piece...if you have never seen Karl Malden in Baby Doll, this was his SOLO shinning hour!
also Marlon Brando n Liz Taylor in Reflections of a Golden Eye is a Masterpiece and has gone unseen or unheard of by most, even in books written about all of Marlon Brando's films, most do not list it, the book is excellent too (Carson (woman) McCullen and the movie follows it to a T. and maybe the reason it is dismissed back in 1967 it is about adultery and homomsexuality. Check it out!