Marlon Brando didn't believe in acting, except in real life, and he took every opportunity, in interviews and his autobiography, to trash the profession. It's tempting to say this is why he was a great movie actor, but the story is more complicated. For much of the time he performed on screen like a person who didn't believe in acting, and threw a lot of his career away. But he also believed in acting more than he said he did, and perhaps more than he thought he did, and he occasionally worked very hard at it. The trick is that he could be really good in both modes, and it's hard to tell the difference in quality. On the Waterfront and Julius Caesar would be good instances of the believing Brando at work. Guys and Dolls and Last Tango in Paris would be examples of his producing remarkable performances while seeming to be thinking of something else. His lunatic Westerner in The Missouri Breaks, complete with an array of accents and an even wilder array of clothing, seems to belong the further reaches of anyone's idea of acting: beyond belief or disbelief.

LRB 19 July 2007 | PDF Download