It all began with such promise. Physically beautiful, explosively charismatic, Brando's early stage work, brought to the screen with "A Streetcar Named Desire," and his performance in "On the Waterfront" are mesmerizing. British legend John Gielgud was so impressed with Brando's performance as Marc Antony in "Julius Caesar" that he offered him a full season of repertory in London.
Sadly, it never happened. Instead, Brando threw his talent away on material that was awful ("The Young Lions"), dreadful ("The Countess From Hong Kong") and prurient ("Last Tango in Paris"). Along the way Brando bumbled through a series of ill-advised marriages, fathered children he was emotionally ill-equipped to raise, and embraced the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement and the plight of Pacific Islanders with lunatic sincerity.
"The Godfather" resurrected Brando's career, in no small part because of the supporting work of a generation of actors Brando helped create. Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall viewed their costar as a god, the man who remade acting and actors in his own brooding image. Brando's performance as Don Corleone was transcendent, as was his Col. Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now." But his odd behavior and outright laziness convinced even his most devoted acolytes that what lay behind the Method actor's genius was not method but madness.
Kanfer argues persuasively that it was mental illness rather than character flaws that bedeviled Brando. The product of a miserably dysfunctional Omaha, Neb., family, Brando was a hostile youth, "burning insects, slashing tires" and killing birds. A man of limited intelligence but enormous sensitivity and emotional need, Brando was ill-suited for the rough-and-tumble of celebrity and show business. Indeed, Kanfer makes a strong case that Brando's decamping to an island in the South Seas was more an attempt to forswear his profession than a search for Nirvana.
In the end, the most Kanfer can decipher is that Brando thought long and hard about Brando, yet not even Brando could solve the mystery of his own talent. And because he could not understand it or summon it at will, or always know where and how to use it, Brando distrusted and abused it.
They have a name for great actors who can summon their craft with technical expertise without destroying themselves or those around them. The term is "British." If only Brando had taken Gielgud up on his offer, the world of acting might have been more complete.
