The iconic actor had four Westerns on his resume.
It’s an exceedingly difficult task to pick just four movies that best reflect the enormous talent, formidable versatility, and high-risk audacity of Marlon Brando, the legendary actor who was born April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska. But since this is a post for Cowboys & Indians, the mission is far from impossible, since Brando appeared in only four Westerns throughout his entire decades-long career. And they’re all available for rental or purchase on various platforms, if you want to celebrate Brando’s centennial.
Viva Zapata!
Supporting player Anthony Quinn was the only person who won an Oscar for this classic 1952 biopic directed by Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire), rewarding his relatively brief but memorably impactful portrayal of Mexican revolutionary Eufemio Zapata. But Brando was the one who dominated the movie, received a Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actor, and claimed the most rave reviews as the more famous Emiliano Zapata, Eufemio’s brother. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that “when this dynamic young performer is speaking his anger or his love for a fellow revolutionary, or when he is charging through the land at the head of his rebel-soldiers or walking bravely into the trap of his doom, there is power enough in his portrayal to cause the screen to throb. And throb it does, in particular, in the last tragic, heart-breaking scene, when the rebel leader is shot down, the victim or his own unfailing trust.”
One-Eyed Jacks
This Western never stood a chance back in 1961 when Brando, its star and director, generated considerable negative buzz by spending three years fussing over every camera angle and line reading. (Stanley Kubrick, the original director, left the project due to “artistic differences” with Brando.) Today, with its back story largely forgotten, film buffs tend to treasure this deceit-filled saga of two former partners in crime: One revenge-obsessed but still capable of redemption (Brando), the other hiding a savage nature behind a sheriff’s badge (Karl Malden). Taking a second look at One-Eyed Jacks in 2004 shortly after the actor’s death, Ken Ringle of The Washington Post wrote: “Brando is never less than mesmerizing in his on-screen journey from charming rogue to explosive avenger, and there is nothing in his career, not even Viva Zapata! or On the Waterfront, to match the savage power of his fight scenes or the cold fury of his resolve. Near the climax of the film, he sneers out one of the great lines beloved by all Brando impersonators: ‘Get up, you scum-suckin’ pig!’”
The Appaloosa
Brando gives a potently brooding performance in this 1966 drama directed by Sidney J. Furie (The Ipcress File, Lady Sings the Blues) as Matt Fletcher, a buffalo hunter who aims to use his magnificent Appaloosa stallion to start a horse-breeding farm. When his beloved steed is stolen by a Mexican bandit (John Saxon), he vows to recover his property — and, while he’s at it, free the young woman (Anjanette Comer) held prisoner by the bandit. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times noted: “Mr. Furie has frankly advanced the tale with large, panoramic expanses of colorful Western atmosphere, with stealthy and ominous confrontations in burnished interiors and at a pace that suggests creeping menace, enhanced by a sly, snake-rattle score. Somehow you find yourself tensing as Mr. Brando, cautious and slow, moves into the alien territory of his wickedly smiling nemesis, who is played by dark-eyed John Saxon with remarkably fearsome oiliness.”
The Missouri Breaks
Director Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde, Little Big Man) more or less let Brando run wild with all manner of affections — dressing in drag, adlibbing dialogue, employing quicksilver mood changes — in a performance that could be labeled Swift’s Premium and sold by the pound. Brando plays (and overplays) Robert E. Lee Clayton, a coldblooded “regulator” hired to end the frontier crime wave of a notorious cattle rustler (Jack Nicholson) and his gang. This aggressively quirky 1976 film, scripted by novelist/screenwriter Thomas McGuane (Rancho Deluxe, 92 in the Shade), was praised by Xan Brooks of The Guardian for showcasing “a mesmerizing turn from Marlon Brando… Improvising his lines from beneath a series of comedy hats, he embarks on a merry dance from burlesque to menace and back again, while the picture frantically plays catch-up behind him.”
