A Streetcar Named Desire, Elia Kazan (1951)
From his second feature film, A Streetcar Named Desire (A tram named Desire in French version), Brando gets a nomination for best actor at the Oscars. Adapted from the play by Tennessee Williams, the film, directed by Elia Kazan, was nominated 12 times at the 1952 gala and won four trophies, including three of the four acting awards. Brando is the only one not to get his hands on the statuette, but his interpretation left a lasting impression. “No performance has had more influence on modern cinematic acting styles than Brando’s work as the brutish, smelly, sexually charged hero Stanley Kowalski,” wrote the great critic Roger Ebert in a analysis.
On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan (1954)
Marlon Brando wins the first of his two Oscars with On the Waterfront (On the docks in French version), criminal drama where he plays Terry Malloy, a young delinquent from Hoboken, New Jersey, who frequents a gang of criminals controlling the activities of the port. One evening, Malloy finds himself complicit in the murder of a man who wanted to denounce these embezzlements. A heavy secret to bear while he is in love with Edie (Eva Marie Saint), sister of the victim. Many film lovers and historians always recall this line from Malloy: “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it. » Translation: “I could have had class, I could have been a champion. I could have been someone instead of a loser, which I am, let’s be real. »
The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola (1972)
For his role as mafia boss Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather (The Godfather in French version), Marlon Brando wins the second Oscar of his career and… refuses it. Absent from the ceremony, he delegates Sacheen Littlefeather, an actress of Apache and Yaqui origins. The latter reads a statement in which the actor justifies his action because of the poor representation of Native Americans in Hollywood. His performance in the film? “We must salute the performance of Marlon Brando who was able to create here an absolutely extraordinary character whose power, completely internalized, nevertheless shines through in each of his gestures, in each of his words,” writes our colleague (still active!) Jean- Pierre Tadros in The duty of April 8, 1972.
The Missouri Breaks, Arthur Penn (1976)
Brando’s forays into the western were rare. But his passage caught the attention of Bruno Dequen, editor-in-chief of the magazine 24 images. ” In Missouri Breaks, he plays, opposite an admiring Jack Nicholson, a hitman, but in such an outrageous way that his performance was widely criticized, he told us in an interview. He plays in a completely burlesque way in an environment that was that of the new Hollywood, where myths are deconstructed in a very serious way. However, Brando offers a kind of elusive, hallucinated character, who disguises himself and changes accent constantly, even within a sentence. » This corresponds perfectly to the definition of iconoclast that Mr. Dequen attaches to the actor.
The Island of Dr. Moreau, John Frankenheimer (1996)
Everything went wrong in the filming of The Island of Dr. Moreau (The island of Dr Moreau in French version), where science fiction and horror overlap. Brando plays the character of a former Nobel Prize winner retired to an island where he creates half-beast, half-human beings. And true to form, he makes a mess! His relationship with co-star Val Kilmer is notably frosty. A documentary on this failure, by David Gregory, was released in 2014. “The film starts well, but very quickly, things get out of hand,” Mr. Gregory confided at the time to The Press. The Beastmen are always filmed during the day, so the makeup and costumes are very visible. And there were ridiculous scenes of Brando with an ice bucket on his head or his face completely white. »