This year has already seen several extraordinary feature-length documentaries, many of which were pulled from the popular arts. Actually some excellent examples focused on the music world, with LAMBERT & STAMP and AMY attracting a great deal of acclaim (and quite a bit early Oscar-buzz). This new release delves into another art, the art (and it really is one) of acting, by giving us a peek at a true legend of stage and screen. Often actors become a touchstone, a symbol for the decade in which they garnered their greatest triumphs. In the 1950’s, the two actors who truly exploded onto the scene were James Dean and Marlon Brando. While Dean was a bright, shooting star snuffed out by tragedy after just three films, Brando rode a bumpy rocket, with highs and lows, into the next century. Biographies have filled the bookshelves through the years, but what did he think of his life and work? Film maker Stevan Riley was granted unlimited access to artifacts controlled by the late actor’s estate, literally bags and boxes full of audio recordings, hundreds of reels and cassettes. Combining those with rare home movies and videos, Riley delivers a unique profile with LISTEN TO ME MARLON.
From its opening moments, Riley establishes an almost dream-like state, as if we’re drifting through Marlon’s memories. First is a taste of his eccentric side (the first of many) as he explains how his head has been “scanned” in order to produce an immortal digital version of himself, he refers to it as the future of acting (hey, he was on to something!). With those words, his floating white image pops up on a screen at his now deserted Malibu estate, a pixellated halo surrounding his head making it seem like a talking comet (perhaps from Krypton, since it recalls his role as Jor-El). The camera weaves through the haunted empty beach home as we’re jolted to the violent family scandal that engulfed Marlon during his later years. Then we’re back to the beginning, far away from “la-la land”, landing in the now empty heartland home in Omaha, Nebraska where Marlon endured a fractured childhood with a broken, boozing mother and a bullying father. Riley then treats us to a mini-history of the Actors Studio, with an emphasis on his teacher/mentor Irene Adler (highlighted by great footage of a TV interview she did with Bob Crane, of all people!). He speaks of his Broadway breakthrough in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and his fear that people would think that he really was the brutal Stanley. Of course Hollywood would take notice. Via the screen test footage and publicity stills we can understand the impact he made, this brooding, young celluloid god brushing past the established, now middle-aged leading men like Gable and Cooper. Most surprising we see an ebullient, grinning Brando leaping to the stage to accept his ON THE WATERFRONT Best Actor Oscar from screen icon Bette Davis (it would be quite a different story 18 years later). There’s the artistic clashes with director Lewis milestone on MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY and much later with Frances Ford Coppola on APOCALYPSE NOW (this after Coppola jump-started his stagnant film career by bucking the studio and casting him as THE GODFATHER). We can hear the embarrassment in his voice as Brando decries his jobs in silly films like A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG and CANDY.
But perhaps more compelling than his career, we get an intimate glimpse at Brando’s life and loves. There’s his passion for social causes, marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 60’s, and speaking out for Native Americans in the 1970’s on TV with Dick Cavett. Happily Brando didn’t avoid the tube like most major stars, we hear him on NBC’s “Today Show” and see him with his father on Edward R Murrow’s “Person to Person”. And, of course there’s that other passion, and Marlon indulged that as he played the field during those early days of stardom. The film’s funniest moments may be the footage of him flirting shamelessly, his mischievous eyes twinkling, with a couple of female interviewers during a press junket (could anyone resist his charms?). Unfortunately he had a tough time settling down, as his wives take him to court (one even takes a swing at him). But there’s the joy he receives from his many children…and ultimately the heartbreak, as murder and suicide destroys his treasured siblings.
This is a most unconventional biography, nothing like a TV news magazine piece, or an hour of A&E’s cable TV bios. Brando makes a very compelling narrator, even as we hear his self-hypnosis tapes (listening to yourself trying to put you under…fa-reaky!). Before the later scandals, Riley gives us a wonderful look at his playful side, particularly in some home movie footage of him clowning with Montgomery Clift and Kevin McCarthy! Plus there’s behind the scenes color film on the set of WATERFRONT! This is a haunting, mesmerizing journey through the mind of an acting icon whose influence continues to this day. For film fans LISTEN TO ME MARLON is more than worth a listen and a look.
4 Out of 5
LISTEN TO ME MARLON opens everywhere and screens exclusively in St. Louis at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinemas
