The saviour or destroyer of screen acting? Exploring the cult of Marlon Brando
It would be nonsensical to say that Marlon Brando isn’t one of the greatest actors to ever grace the silver screen, and glancing through cinema history in the decades that followed his arrival onto the scene, a very strong argument can be made that he’s the single most influential.
There was acting before Brando, and there was acting after Brando, something that can’t be denied. His adoption of the method and naturalistic style was revolutionary at a time when screen acting wasn’t entirely dissimilar from the stage in that performances were intentionally pitched broader in an effort to appeal to the first and last rows of the audience.
However, the downside of Brando’s ascension was that it suddenly became the only way any aspiring thespian wanted to work, which stagnated the art form in a way. Again, it’s impossible to argue with those who mastered the craft, so when Robert De Niro says there’s nobody who could ever hope to exist in the same orbit, it would be churlish to laugh it off when he’s an all-timer of the business himself.
Similarly, Jack Nicholson wasn’t just a Brando devotee but a friend and neighbour, so when somebody with three Academy Awards for acting calls him “the patron saint of our profession“, it’s hard to argue. However, that sort of hagiography being bestowed upon one man has cast such a shadow over the profession that the negative impacts have largely gone unheralded.
As far back as the 1960s, John Wayne blasted the current crop of rising stars for failing to adopt any sense of individuality in favour of attempting to emulate Brando. He wasn’t exactly fond of the method, but it’s a sentiment that continues to ring true. Ask 100 actors today who the best to ever do it are, and not only will 99 of them say Brando, but a hefty percentage of that number will have either intentionally or subconsciously channelled him in one way or another.
Kirk Douglas was another world-renowned actor who called out the downsides of the Brando effect, with his raw displays of emotion devolving into ham when wielded by a lesser talent. Think of today’s most noted purveyors of the method, and it presents two diametrically opposed talents who display the best and worst of what The Godfather legend brought to the table.
In one corner, there’s Christian Bale, the transformative and chameleonic figure who regularly puts his body through hell in the name of authenticity, becoming known as one of his generation’s finest as a result. In the other corner lurks Jared Leto, who embraces the method so much that he’s essentially become something approximating a cross between a caricature and a living meme, with the Brando effect reducing him into a regular source of mockery and scorn.
Speaking of memes, Nicolas Cage has been celebrated among his peers for being one of the very few – if not the only – actors to try anything new or put their own unique spin on the profession in the entire post-Brando era. Given that it’s been 70 years since On the Waterfront heralded the dawn of a new era, that just goes to show how all-encompassing and potentially detrimental his influence has become.
There’s no doubt that even though that couldn’t have possibly been his intention, Brando changed the face of acting forever to a degree that’s unheard of before or since. It hasn’t been all sunshine and roses, though, with far too many of his successors resolutely uninterested in even trying to escape from his looming shadow in favour of standing directly under it and doing their best to live up to the ideals he laid down and then completely disregarded in his later years.
