Day 2: Julius Caesar (1953)

Charles 2017, Actor Spotlights, Classics, Reviews Leave a Comment

It’s Day 2 of our Spotlight on Marlon Brando and I have the pleasure of writing about Julius Caesar.  If you can’t tell from my score up there, I love this movie. And why not? It’s one of Shakespeare’s greatest and most famous plays (who here didn’t have to recite Mark Antony’s speech in high school??), directed by the Oscar winning Joseph L. Mankiewicz (of All About Eve fame), and starring some of the finest actors ever, including James Mason, Deborah Kerr, and, of course, Mr. Brando. With a pedigree like that, one would have to work especially hard to muck it up, but I suppose stranger things have happened. …

Day 1: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Kelley 2017, Actor Spotlights, Classics, Reviews Leave a Comment

On this day in history, screen legend Marlon Brando was born. The world didn’t know it then, but here was a man (/baby) who would shake up Hollywood to such an extent that the “rules” for what constituted a performance would never be the same. Brando didn’t care two figs about what was expected socially or professionally– he wore dirty jeans instead of then-fashionable high-waisted trousers, had three children with his housekeeper, bought a South Pacific island (?!)…the list goes on. In other words, he charted his own path, and steamrolled through the studio system like the bull-in-a-china-shop that he was. In later years, his hubris and laissez-faire attitude about his health and professional relationships would cause …