Thursday, January 25, 2007

Marlon Brando - Now I Get it!

A few months ago I was sitting with our youth group here at church watching The Simpsons episode in which Marge stars in a community theatre musical version of Streetcar Named Desire. This episode is one of the greats in Simpsons history and it got me to realize that I had never seen the movie.

Well, I'd forgotten all of that, and I'd forgotten to update the Netflix queue so my husband and I were mighty surprised to have Marlon Brando show up last week. Luckily, I had my weekly bout of insomnia on schedule and stayed up late to watch it. Thank you, Netflix for including the classics in your inventory.

I learned three important things from the watching of this movie
1) Vivien Leigh's make-up was dreadful and the sets were laughable and this film was still better than most I've seen that were made in the last 5 years.
2) Sexual mores have changed to such a degree as to make part of this movie indecipherable, and it was still better...(see #1)
3) Marlon Brando was... wow.
Whoa.
Dude.
I had no idea.

I've been working on what I was going to say about him ever since I saw the movie, and then the erudite and better-educated-in-this-than-I Stanley Crouch reviewed a new Marlon Brando DVD set on Slate.

So. Go to http://www.slate.com/id/2158225/ and read for yourself. Because after a week, "Whoa. Dude," is still the best I got. Many thanks to Stanley Crouch and whoever plops that Brando collection at my doorstep gets into heaven, no questions asked.

(As to my sudden breach of Protestant ethics and theology, it's just to get you to read my next post... Fartin Luther.)

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