The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando
by William J. Mann
by William J. Mann
I liked this biography a lot, even though in the end I think Brando's life defeated Mann's understanding, just as it did Brando's. He was a genius in one area: acting. Unlike another genius, Meryl Streep, he was contemptuous of acting's worth. This may have stemmed from the reasons offered by Mann: his upbringing by an alcoholic mother and a father who not only never understood his son (pardonable, as no one else ever did) but withheld his love. Or it might have been because he thought it was a damn silly way to make a living. My own conclusion after reading this book is that it had a great deal more to do with the decades in which Brando's career flourished. Mann argues that Brando made only a handful of "great" movies: Streetcar, On the Waterfront, The Godfather and just maybe Last Tango in Paris. Everything he made after 1973 was for purely mercenary reasons (Jor-El, anyone?), as were the films he made after Waterfront through Candy (for that turkey he was doing a favor for the friend/lover who directed it). But Mann does point out that Brando never gives a bad, or at least uninteresting, performance in anything he ever put on film. That's to his credit. Even when he was bored with a role --- Nathan Detroit, Kurtz, Napoleon --- he contributed something.
But Brando was far more interested in the social justice issues that boiled over in the 50s, 60s and early 70s --- opposition to the death penalty, the civil rights movement, the mistreatment of the indigenous peoples, Vietnam, etc. He missed the boat totally on feminism and gay rights. Throughout his life, Brando was sexually voracious. If he can be faulted for this trait, and he should be, he remained unprepared to deal with the after-effects of physical intimacy. As a result he fathered a lot of children. Mann makes the point over and over again that Brando wanted to be a good father. In the end, he lacked the self-restraint to discover what that meant. For two of his children (each by a different woman) this had tragic results. His son Christian shot and killed his sister Cheyanne's lover. Christian went to prison. When he emerged, he had little to do with Brando and died young. Cheyanne killed herself. Mann opens the book with a grief-stricken Brando at Christian's murder trial. He is Lear over Cordelia's body.
In the end his image was overwhelmed by the weight gain, the Sacheen Littlefeather contretemps, the collapse of his relationships and the plethora of second and third rate projects he attached himself to in the effort to support his families. Mann's compassion for Brando saves the book from degenerating into bathos, nor does he judge the actor for wasted opportunities. He carefully restores the greatness of his acting and mourns Brando's lifelong inability to be happy. It is a worthy biography. My suspicion is that Brando would have hated it for laying his private struggles bare to the gaze of a wide audience.
But Brando was far more interested in the social justice issues that boiled over in the 50s, 60s and early 70s --- opposition to the death penalty, the civil rights movement, the mistreatment of the indigenous peoples, Vietnam, etc. He missed the boat totally on feminism and gay rights. Throughout his life, Brando was sexually voracious. If he can be faulted for this trait, and he should be, he remained unprepared to deal with the after-effects of physical intimacy. As a result he fathered a lot of children. Mann makes the point over and over again that Brando wanted to be a good father. In the end, he lacked the self-restraint to discover what that meant. For two of his children (each by a different woman) this had tragic results. His son Christian shot and killed his sister Cheyanne's lover. Christian went to prison. When he emerged, he had little to do with Brando and died young. Cheyanne killed herself. Mann opens the book with a grief-stricken Brando at Christian's murder trial. He is Lear over Cordelia's body.
In the end his image was overwhelmed by the weight gain, the Sacheen Littlefeather contretemps, the collapse of his relationships and the plethora of second and third rate projects he attached himself to in the effort to support his families. Mann's compassion for Brando saves the book from degenerating into bathos, nor does he judge the actor for wasted opportunities. He carefully restores the greatness of his acting and mourns Brando's lifelong inability to be happy. It is a worthy biography. My suspicion is that Brando would have hated it for laying his private struggles bare to the gaze of a wide audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment