Kevin Jackson
Not Just a Pretty Face
Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work
By Susan L Mizruchi
W W Norton 469pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
The alarm bell goes off in the middle of the subtitle: Brando’s ‘thought’? Who the heck is interested in Brando as a thinker? Few would question his right to be considered the most influential English-language actor of the 20th century, and many would concede that – neck and neck with Olivier? – he may well have been the greatest. To cite a few triumphs: One-Eyed Jacks, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, The Missouri Breaks. Yet even if Brando had been a mute inglorious Spinoza in his spare time, it would not have made a splinter of difference to his colossal gifts. Brando’s talent was akin to that of a great dancer, a great athlete, a great instrumental soloist, whose instrument was his entire body: he was fiercely intelligent, like a predatory animal, but not a systematic man of ideas. His was, if you like, a Shakespearean talent, rich in negative capability. And you don’t usually get that way by reading books.
One of the selling points of Susan Mizruchi’s biography is that it shows Brando did get that way, or at any rate part of that way, by reading books. As she says, she is ‘the first biographer to have reviewed Brando’s archives’, including his
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw