Marlon Brando

There's a new biography of Brando just published; the review inThe New York Times quotes Brando himself on his art - "It's a bum's life."
His best work was done early culminating in "On the Waterfront", then there were ten years of duds (making enough money to pay his shrinks), then a magnificent comeback in "The Godfather".
"Why do great ones," mourns the reviewer, "so rarely have the capacity to handle their genius? Brando is not the first talent to invite the question - his contemporary Orson Welles preceeded him on the path of brilliant promise, wobbly mature work and self-sabotaging obesity."
Orson Welles never surpassed "Citizen Kane" in brilliance of filming technique; but it is a difficult film to like: it's as if the techniques overshadow the story so that you never get involved, there is no "willing suspension of disbelief."
I wonder if Orson Welles, achieving so much in the art of film-making in this, his first film, didn't have anything further to contribute in later work - he'd done it all. Yet there are some good films of his one of which is on TV tonight - "The Stranger". This is a thriller with a simple conception: an investigator is on the trail of a Nazi war criminal who has ingratiated himself into a small university town and is about to marry a young woman who believes him to be an all-American guy. It's fast moving, it has strong performances from Edward G. Robinson and Welles himself (the Nazi of course) , and it has brilliant touches in the script which, you feel, must be contributions from Welles (e.g. the paper chase scene). And you do get involved in the story with an end that is exciting and wonderfully staged.
I like this film more than most of Welles's. I like "On the Waterfront" better than most others of Brando's.
They'll both be remembered for their greatest work but, like "The Stranger", some of the lesser stuff is worth a look at too.