Marlon Brandois widely considered one of Hollywood’s greatest ever actors, but if it weren’t for two directors his legend wouldn’t be nearly as celebrated as it is today. Brando’s movies with Elia Kazan and Francis Ford Coppola bookended the prime of his career, but they were also the projects in which he did his best work. What’s more, Coppola and Kazan directed the actor in four movies which are now generally thought of as some of the best ever made.
Four of Brando’s five collaborations with these two seminal filmmakers feature in Rotten Tomatoes’ list for the300 Best Movies of All Time, which is based on an aggregation of critic and audience ratings. Three of them also appear inIMDb’s Top 250 Movies, ranked by total votes. It’sthe actor’s work with Coppola that’s won the most acclaim, withThe GodfatherandApocalypse Nownear the very top of many greatest movie lists. Yet Kazan’s 1954 movieOn the Waterfrontalso has its fair share of admirers, who’d place it among the best films of all time.
Marlon Brando Worked With Coppola And Kazan On 4 Of The Best Movies Of All Time
Each Director Gave Him 2 Of The All-Time Great Movie Roles
In fact, bothOn the WaterfrontandThe Godfatherare ranked in the top 10 Best Movies of All Timeby Rotten Tomatoes according to critics’ and viewers’ scores.The Godfatheris number two on the list, only behindL.A. Confidential, and it takes the same position onIMDb’s Top Movies list, belowThe Shawshank Redemption. Many would concur with the view that Coppola’s 1972 crime film is the greatest single achievement in cinema history. His later war epicApocalypse Nowis further down the Rotten Tomatoes list at number 70, but it features at number 56 on IMDb.
The fourth movie starring Brando that’s often included in discussions about the best movies of all time isA Streetcar Named Desire, which was actually released before any of his other collaborations with Kazan or Coppola, in 1951. Kazan’s film adaptation ofStreetcaris number 245 on Rotten Tomatoes’ all-time list. It also appears at 754 on the all-time1,000 Greatest Films list by They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?, which aggregates historical best films lists by movie critics from around the world.
The 8 Movies That Defined Marlon Brando’s Career
With an actor like Marlon Brando, it’s difficult to pick what parts of his legendary filmography are the most iconic, but some do rise to the top.
Brando exploded onto the scene with his original Broadway performance as Stanley Kowalskiin AStreetcar Named Desire, which is what convinced Kazan to make him his leading man inViva Zapata!andOn the Waterfront.It didn’t take long before the actor’s extraordinary charisma and application of Stanislavski’s method made the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sit up and take notice.
On The Waterfront & The Godfather Won Brando His Best Actor Oscars
The Actor Won His Two Academy Awards 18 Years Apart
Marlon Brando was nominated for his first Academy Award for portraying Kowalski on screen, and then again for depicting the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata inViva Zapata!the following year. AfterBrando’s third consecutive Best Actor nomination, earned for playing Mark Antony in a Hollywood version ofJulius Caesar1954, it wasfourth time lucky a year later, when he won the Oscarfor portraying former prizefighter Terry Malloy inOn the Waterfront. The actor was essentially adapting the sensibility he’d brought to Stanley Kowalski three years earlier, but he managed to turn the roguish Malloy into an incredibly likable, sympathetic underdog.
How Much Marlon Brando Was Paid For The Godfather
Marlon Brando played one of cinema’s defining characters, Vito Corleone, in the 1972 movie The Godfather. But how much was he paid for the role?
It would be18 years before he’d win another Oscar, for playing the titular character, Vito Corleone, in Francis Ford Coppola’s screen adaptation ofThe Godfather. His performance was a dramatic transformation from the Brando Hollywood had been used to up to that point, and represented an incredible comeback from the position of indebted film industry outcast. Coppola had also had to fight hard to makeBrando his Godfather, against the will of Paramount Studios, who the actor never forgave for their lack of support.
Kazan & Coppola Knew How To Get The Best Out Of Brando As An Actor
They Were The Only Directors Who Found Him Easy To Work With
It’s clear that no one could get a performance out of Marlon Brando quite like the two directors to whom he owed the most in his career. Many other directors allegedly foundBrando difficult to work with, a claim Francis Ford Coppola responded tothree years ago. Coppola said far from being a problem to work with onThe GodfatherandApocalypse Now, the actor was “a kind of genius” who required minimal effort from his director during shooting.
“When he heard enough, he’d walk away.I knew he’d gotten it. It was obvious. And he would start to behave naturally.” - Elia Kazan on directing Marlon Brando
Elia Kazan corroborated this view in an extended interview with Jeff Young, published in Young’s bookKazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films. The director was amazed by how few notes he had to give Brando while they were shooting together, and how easily the actor could get into character. “When he heard enough, he’d walk away,” Kazan explained, referring to the feedback he gave between scene takes. “I knew he’d gotten it. It was obvious. And he would start to behave naturally.” Acting was something that came completely naturally toMarlon Brando. No one understood this fact better than his two favorite directors.
