This is an amazing clip. I’d never seen it before. I’d always thought that Brando had faked his French in “Last Tango,” but clearly he was actually fluent. In fact, he seems more articulate in French than in English. I’m not sure what the occasion was, but it was clearly done in the sixties. Judging from the clothing they’re wearing, and the woman’s hairstyle, and the quality of the film, I’d say the clip was shot in the mid-sixties.
Seeing the great Method exemplar like this, before he turned into a Malomar devouring whale, makes you nostalgic for the early Brando, when he was still putting his eccentricities to good use. If you read Truman Capote’s character essay, “The Duke in His Domain,” however, you get a sense of a certain inevitability about Brando’s morphing into an amalgam of Orson Welles and Howard Hughes. The Hollywood movie star mantle always seemed to chafe, even during the early years when his career was still taking off.
Both De Niro and Pacino have called him the greatest film actor who ever lived, and when he wasn’t squandering his talents on cinematic garbage it’s hard to disagree. Even in this brief clip, without half trying, he exudes something magnetic. Even when he’s completely still, he seems to be doing something.
