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Reply to "RIP, VIP - Chapter 2 (3/5/04++)"

I was always intrigued with his fey Fletcher Christian. And of course his demonic stint in Apocalypse. Even more bizarre was a very late career bit in a re-re-make of The Island of Dr. Moreau -I think I have the title slightly wrong. But he played the title role- a mad scientist with a strange affliction caused by his own experiments- all 300lbs of Brando costumed in a lot of drappery, with a big floppy hat and a veil, his visible flesh made to look very ashy. Really creepy/pathetic. No self-obsessed, narcissitic Holywood actor would ever have done a role like that. That was what was so contradictory about him, he was so introspective. I can't think of another actor on that level, maybe it was a generational thing, Bogey kind of opened the door to some of it (check out his bit part as the desperado Duke Mantee in Petrified Forest), Montgomery Clift really did it (see him in A Place in The Sun opposite Liz Taylor and Shelly Winters, or Red River opposite Duke Wayne). Steve McQueen had a bit of that brooding, close-mouthed style. And for someone really underpraised, Sal Mineo. To his credit Brando really was very anti-establishment, as they used to say. With Brando gone there is only Albert Finney left who can totally destroy a movie camera with rivetting charisma (see especially Under the Volcano where he is a total rocket blast-off of an alcoholic bent on drinking himself to death).
Last edited by seven
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