A GENIUS METHOD: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF MARLON BRANDO
Work long enough as an actor and you see generations embrace you differently. To some, Marlon Brando was the fiery presence who lit up ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘On the Waterfront’.
To others, he was the greatest of all cinematic crime lords in ‘The Godfather’, a doyen of European Arthouse cinema in ‘Last Tango in Paris’ and a terrifying study in madness in ‘Apocalypse Now’, while younger audiences identified him as Jor-El, the father of Superman. What all these roles highlight is the versatility of an actor who, for 40 years, was a magnetic presence on the screen and no less a volcanic one off it. This talk accompanies a selected retrospective of Brando’s achievements, discussing how he helped change the very art of screen acting, resuscitated his wayward career time and again, and remained an enigmatic and sometimes troubled presence upon the cinematic landscape.
Ian Haydn Smith is a writer and editor. He is the author of ‘The Short Story of Film’, ‘Well Documented’, ‘Selling the Movie: The History of Film Posters’, ‘The Chronology of Film’, ‘Cult Writers’ and ‘The Short Story of Photography’. He has previously given talks at Chichester Film Festival on Lindsay Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Kristen Scott Thomas, Theo Angelopoulos and the cinemas of China, Italy and Iran.
100m (inc 10m Q&A)
