The toughest question you can ask me presently would be, "which performance of Brando's is your favourite?" This might trigger a weekend of brooding on my part. Which role? Which movie? When was the first time he stood out and grabbed the audiences' attention? Is it the role that won him the awards? Two Oscar winning roles? Or is it one of the extended cameos he had been doing ever since he got the second Oscar?

I pondered and pondered for a long time. I can satisfy myself with this answer; it is the role that sticks in my mind till I have seen another film worth analysing. Right now, it is his role in Apocalypse Now, Col. Kurtz. He plays a deranged military guy holed up somewhere in Vietnam, completely isolated from civilisation, both in  the ambience and his mind. The film is based on Joseph Conrad's masterpiece, Heart of Darkness. This title should have been maintained for the film. It speaks so much about Col. Kurtz, and Brando is simply mesmerising in this Coppola directed film, which I think is in par with the latter's Godfather films.

Like most guys of my generation (late twenties, early thirties) I realised the prowess of Brandos acting skill during the adult stage. It was the groundbreaking tale of Don Vito Corleone that opened my eyes. I watched A Streetcar Named Desire, got hooked, and went on Brando-hunting. I am still hunting for his films, since so many of them not available in Malaysia.

Brando will forever, like Paul Newman, de Niro and Pacino, be linked with Method acting. While more than often he never even mentioned the word 'Method', his performance helped to introduce Stanislavskys fearfully realistic approach to acting to the generations of filmgoers who were fed with stagy performances up till then. It was shocking. When The Men and Streetcar came out, audiences were shocked. They have never seen such energy and passion. It was unbelievable. It was to change the Hollywood landscape and haunt Brando forever.

I will not go into detail about him. This you can find it in the excellent website run by a Mahesh Babu at http://brando.crosscity.com