193 thoughts on “Marlon Brando Movies”

1. 1 STEVE Thanks for the tip off about the Brando documentary as I had not picked up that it would be shown on BBC 2 this Saturday but have now set my TV movie planner to record it. It is actually the full-length one that was given a 2015 cinematic release in the art houses and . it hauled in only about half a million dollars in the movie houses but it got some very good critical reviews. It is comprised of Brando’s own tape recording and home movies – all about himself of course! It lasts approx 1 hour 45 mins and the BBC showing of it will be followed by a rerun of On the Waterfront so there will be an entire Brando late evening on the Beeb 2 channel. Well spotted!

   2 Incidentally last night I watched a 1969 interview with Richard Harris (conducted during the making of Cromwell) and the interviewer put it to him that he had a reputation for not getting along with his co-stars and the examples cited were Harris’ reported quarrels with Mr Mumbles in the 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty, Chuck in Major Dundee and Kirk Douglas in Heroes of Telemark. Harris replied that he had since become friendly with Kirk and went on to say that his, Harris’, friends were mainly musicians and that the only other actor he really liked was Sean Connery. So it would appear that OUR two idols remained unloved by Harris during the remainder of his life. [Richard had once reportedly chummed about with Mitchum so I wonder if they had a falling out.]

   3 I see that a movie site called Cheat Sheet has produced a list of the 6 actors who it considers have been the most difficult to work with in modern times. They are in order of nuisance value:
   1/Daniel Day-Lewis
   2/Steven Seagal
   3/Bruce Willis
   4/Marlon Brando
   5/Alec Baldwin
   6/Christian Bale

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   1. I’ll try and catch the documentary on the night, if I miss it there are other ways to view it.

      Day-Lewis no.1 difficult to work with, didn’t suspect him of that. Christian Bale definitely. I remember that on set rant at that poor cameraman which was recorded and played out all over internet. I wasn’t a Bale fan before and was even less of a fan after. I did like him as Bruce Wayne / Batman. From what I’ve seen and read, new boy Chris Pratt is a nice person on and off screen and I suspect Jennifer Lawrence is a lot of fun too. I hate the moody ‘don’t look at me!” types.

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      1. STEVE

         I heard that lesser stars when they appear with Tom Cruise are not allowed to look him in the eye; and I read that even away from movies Willis was capable of severe tantrums.

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         1. Hey Bob….I have heard that Cruise has Ladditis when it comes to how he appears on screen…..as for Willis…..hopefully those days are well behind him…..I imagine his recent stay in HE movies has to have gotten rid of some of his entourage…..his wife….however seems pretty nice….I have even had a few Twitter exchanges with her.

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      2. Hey Steve….DDL is notorious for getting so into character and staying into character…that I can see others feeling uncomfortable about him….from my DDL page.

         Killed all his own food for Last Of The Mohicans
         Learned an entirely new language for The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
         Broke his own ribs for My Left Foot
         Lived as an 1870s gentleman for The Age of Innocence
         Went to prison for In The Name Of The Father
         Didn’t wash for The Crucible
         Became a professional-standard boxer for The Boxer
         Left his wife for The Ballad Of Jack And Rose

         Bale is a peach to work with….he just had that one bad day…..lol.

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         1. Bob, I’ve heard that about Cruise, not a nice trait.

            Bruce, thanks for the DDL info, did not know he was that crazy.

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            1. Hey Steve….Yep…..DDL is one intense actor….this behavior probably explains why his movies are few and years apart…heck it has already been 5 years since Lincoln…and he currently has no projects in development.

   2. Hey Bob….I assume that is the documentary that actually got released in theaters….and is a movie that I have been meaning to add to our Brando page. Double feature of Brando….I imagine you are a happy camper. Harris and Peter O’Toole got along pretty well. You can add Caine to the list of actors that Harris did not like. Interesting 6 from Cheat Sheet. Two of them are favorites of mine…(Willis and Brando). I have heard lots of bad Willis stories…but other than Bale’s rant on Terminator Salvation….I have heard most people like working with Bale. Thanks for sharing this information.

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      1. 1 It was the interviewer who mentioned Harris’ alleged quarrels with Mumbles, Kirk and Chuck and you will notice in that respect it was Harris who was the common denominator.

         2 Harris didn’t single out anyone for criticism but took “a plague on all your houses” attitude saying that with the exception of Connery he liked NO other actor as he felt actors were too self-centred and he therefore preferred the company of musicians. The interviewer suggested to him that he seemed to get into an unusual number of physical fights with all kinds of people and Harris retorted that that it was always others who started the fights.

         3 You may recall that I told you previously that it was reported in newspapers here that while in Ireland filming A Terrible Beauty [aka The Night Fighters] he and Mitchum tried to humiliate a young crippled bloke and his girlfriend in a Dublin bar and workmen in the bar told them to leave or they would end up in hospital and they wisely quickly got off side. If the press reports were accurate I still have no doubt that it was the young couple who tried to pick a fight with Mitchum and Harris !!

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         1. Thanks for the clarification on Harris and his quarrels… I remember your bar story from A Terrible Beauty.

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2. “SUPERMAN RETURNS: THE BRANDO EFFECT

   “How did Bryan Singer bring back Jor-El?

   BY STEVE HEAD “I remember all of us were very excited about Marlon Brando being in Superman,” says Kevin Spacey (Lex Luthor) recalling the time he and his friends went to see the first Superman movie in 1978. “Everyone was excited about Brando being in that movie. We saw it on opening weekend and we just loved it.” Bring your heart rate down. It’s safe to read onward as the filmmakers explain how they brought back Brando. “Embracing the first film was the most important thing from the beginning,” says co-screenwriter Dan Harris. “The movie was not only our visual bible and reference, but everything that we remember as kids about Superman has come from that movie. We wanted to use what we loved about it.” The filmmakers felt one of the most effective ways to establish an ambiance that connected Superman Returns to Superman: The Movie would be to bring back Brando. “If we could get to hear Marlon Brando’s voice as Superman’s conscience it would be the best way to convey that Superman is looking for his place in the universe.

   To make this happen, their first step was to contact Mike Medavoy, the representative of the Brando estate. “We negotiated with him and they were very generous to allow us to use his voice and image,” says Singer. In the end, the material Singer selected consists of unused visual and voice elements from Superman: The Movie. While sifting through the material, Singer saw lots of Brando bloopers. “The Brando estate allowed for the use of a few bloopers in Singer’s documentary Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman. “There are a couple at the end during the rolling credits. It was just a little touch of those Brando bloopers.”

   It represents a final chance to witness the union of Eva Marie Saint and Marlon Brando. They do not physically meet onscreen, but, for fans of “On the Waterfront,” simply to see them together under the auspices of a single movie will be enough. “

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   1. Hey SUPERHERO FRANCHISES…thanks for sharing all of this information on Brando and the Superman movies…..sounds like that documentary would be a good one to check out. Good stuff.

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3. Thanks for your feedback and these are my additional thoughts about the matter:

   (1) Apparently Mr Mumbles was always improvising in that fashion. For example for the garden deathbed scene in The Godfather he wanted the child who shared the scene to be genuinely scared so he improvised in a way that created real fear in the young actor. Possibly the consequences of such improvisation were not always thought fully through. Entertainers CAN do weird things seeking perfection.

   Danes so tall and Arabs small
   They all say with a leer,
   We’re here because we’re queer
   Because we’re here because we’re queer.
   And thus it is with Kings and Queens
   And us artistic dear,
   We’re here because we’re queer
   Because we’re here because we’re queer.”
   {Brendan Behan Irish Playwright]

   (2) I feel that there are many more serious wrongdoings perpetrated today that are actually CONDONED but this is not the site for talking about them and my concern in this instance is with movies and about a journalist using a perceived unsavoury movie to smear an entire ideology Also ironically Jessica Chastain whom on this occasion it suited my newspaper’s purposes to praise is according to Wikipedia an ardent feminist and the same newspaper regularly mocks feminist opinions as a big piece of the flawed belief system that the paper perceives as part and parcel of Last Tango’s perverse people and influence.

   (3) As for “destroying every print” of Last Tango I had thought that in democracies we voice our criticism of a film or book we find distasteful and then leave adults free to make up their own minds if they wish to watch or read something. Ironically the newspaper also praised two totalitarian regimes that banned Last Tango back in 1973.I had thought that Captain America fought for the democratic way of life.

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   1. Thanks for the added info Bob. I was never a fan of Last Tango in Paris and have never bought it on DVD. I did like Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and have that on blu-ray. I think Bruce would prefer if we veer away from this controversial story. And talk about something more upbeat.

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      1. Strange as Bruce told me that I had made “some good points.” However as Fu Manchu would put it “The world shall hear from me no more on this subject.

         Best wishes BOB

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         1. But… but.. Bob it’s putting one of your favorite actors in an unfavorable light “don’t you care man?” 😉 If the Great Mumbler was still around he’d be shaking his head and mumbling incoherently at all the brouhaha.

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            1. 1 He’ll be back, as the saying goes. In fact the legend is sure to grow even further and indeed something always seems to come along to continue to keep the Great Ones in the limelight.

               2 I don’t know if your are familiar with the case of British entertainers Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross who on their BBC chat show some years ago played what was considered to be an exceptionally dirty trick on Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs who died last week. At the time the pair left lewd messages for Sachs which he took so seriously that it tormented him and caused his family considerable pain. The immediate consequence for Ross and Brand was a huge national outcry that forced Ross and Brand to apologise publicly and Brand to fall on his sword and resign from the chat show. Later Brand revealed that the next day he could write his own cheque, became an even bigger celebrity, and was pursued even more aggressively by adoring women. Last year the Leader of the Opposition sought his support during the British general election in the hope that it would suck in some of the youth vote for the Opposition. In short the scandal turned a relative nonentity into a national celebrity now apparently worth a fortune.

               3 Remember the Bible – “And the crowd said crowd said Give us Barabbas!”
               Anyway I’ll catch up with you again when I’ve had a look at those Marx boys.

      2. Hey Steve you right….this is a subject for other platforms to discuss. Although I did just respond to one of Bob’s comments on the matter. Which now I am thinking I should have done more reading on the issue before commenting….but then again that is not something I really want to go to deep into.

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   2. Hey Bob. Well this breaking 40 plus years news is ….at the least…..making Brando and Tango known to younger people who were not aware of either of them before. My Brando traffic has picked up since that news broke.

      Do you know that when Alan Rickman was filming his famous fall in Die Hard they released him early so they could get a shocked look on his face? My point? He signed up to be the bad guy in an action packed movie….so he should have balanced the risks prior to accepting the role.

      Maria Schneider signed up for a very adult themed movie that had a script filled with sex and humiliating activities….seems she should have weighed the consequences as well. If there was an actually rape that would be different as all involved should be severely punished. As understand it currently that did not happen. The scene I remember it was Brando on the receiving end of some activities.

      I imagine versus burning all copies of that movie the people that own the movie rights are trying to figure out how to make the movie accessible for people to see the movie.

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      1. HI BRUCE

         Despite the reservations you expressed 5 minutes later I think that your 12.42 post is a very balanced one with which to conclude detailed comment on this matter as I always thought that the tradition that we have informally accepted in relation to this site is that we do not let a performer’s private life prejudice out perception of his/her contribution to cinema.

         “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”

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         1. Hey Bob…I agree…the subject has me trying to find my Cult Movies 2 book by Danny Peary. Last Tango In Paris is featured in that book with many interviews and thoughts from the filmmakers. But in the end…..this is a G rated movie site and some subjects are avoided.

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            1. HI BRUCE

               My central point was about movie banning/censorship which I feel should be open for discussion on intelligent movie sites such as this. However I agree with you about the G rating and am sorry that I got sucked into this particular aspect of matters and I will be more careful in future. Meanwhile .thanks for considering my views and for your own very useful comments.

               BOB

4. My previous post on this page refers.

   (1) The article says that Brando and Bertolucci got Oscars for their outrage. Neither did. Therefore all alleged ‘facts’ in the matter should be checked before automatic acceptance.

   (2) “Liberals” were not in power in the US or Britain in the 70s Last Tango punched well above its normal weight for an “art” film at the box office partly because of the coinciding of The Godfather but MAINLY because of hype generated by the hysterical hyperbolic reaction like the one that I’m now quoting. The movie “establishment” which at that time included people like John Wayne and Chuck Heston did what it has always done – made money.

   (3) Captain America and his fellow Twitterers are said to want “all copies of the film to be destroyed”. Total censorship rarely works with for example prohibition leading to the bootleggers and Capone and the banning of Last Tango when it was first released ultimately failing and generating even more revenues for the movie. Don’t close off your totals for this movie yet Bruce!

   (4) Whatever the failings of Hitchcock, Brando and Bertolucci and the latter’s overblown film it was all long ago and two of those people are now dead and I am sure there are many abuses of power going on in contemporary Hollywood. Moreover it’s a pity that whatever the truth of the allegations in the article all the rage now being fruitlessly vented by the author and those whom he admires on past happenings is not being channelled instead into more potentially constructive concerns about for example the horrific wars going on at the moment. I am sure that if Captain America HAD truly existed he would have wanted to deal with the bigger rather than the smaller ‘picture’.

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   1. Hey Bob….I thought of your when I read about the Last Tango In Paris “news” broke 40 years after it was made. Good points in your comment.

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5. 1 I’ve just today read a full page contemporary rant in a leading English newspaper here that castigates Last Tango in Paris as the “most shameful movie ever made” and seems to lay the blame for that on “Liberals” and Hollywood’s “Liberal Establishment which fawned over Brando’s disgusting performance” It goes on to cite Hitchcock as a Hollywood monster who preyed on his actresses and the article now seems to bracket Brando and director Bertolucci along with Hitch because the former two allegedly tricked co-star Maria Schneider into doing the movie’s seduction scenes which the author appears to suggest so disgusted and depressed her that for example she took to hard drugs, attempted suicide and became bisexual before she “died of cancer at the age of 58 in relative obscurity.”

   2 I don’t follow Twitter but apparently some of today’s Hollywood stars have taken to it in recent times to vent their rage about the alleged behaviour of Brando/Bertolucci and their almost half-century old movie that surely few people today could care about. “I feel sick” – Jessica Chastain. Brando and Bertolucci WERE “sick” – Evan Rachel Wood. “I feel rage.” – Captain America’s Chris Evans. These celebs and others are fully entitled to share the opinions of the article’s author but before accepting some of the sweeping statements at face value they may for the sake of balance wish to at least consider some of the points in my next post.

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   1. Bob, I read about that at Hollywood Reporter, it wasn’t nice what they did and I assume the girl was too frightened to complain at the time. Ironically that controversial scene was the most famous in the film and probably contributed to the films worldwide success, which in retrospect does leave a sour taste in the mouth.That sort of the thing can never happen now, or can it?

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