Brilliant Brando Bio and a Thousand Nights at the Movies

There’s an old story about James Stewart, the late, great American actor. A fellow walked up to him once on a movie set and said, “You were in a picture once. You were in a room. You said a poem about fireflies.” The man paused. “That was good.”

And that little incident gave Stewart the opportunity to tell us why people love the movies: “What you’re doing is … you’re giving people little, tiny pieces of time that they never forget.”

We all have those pieces of time in our heads. And though we can keep everything preserved at home now on DVD and BluRay, it’s never really enough, is it? It’s nice to have something tangible – a book perhaps – to help us hold onto and appreciate those fleeting images on the screen.

There’s a new biography of Marlon Brando and a compendium of commentaries on a thousand films – with Brando as Don Vito Corleone on the cover – and both these fine books are feasts for film fans.

Somebody (Knopf, $26.95) is a splendid and highly readable biography by Stefan Kanfer. Thorough without the curse of being academic, Somebody (as in “I couldda been . . . “),gives us insight and anecdotes that will enrich your next trip through On the Waterfront, Last Tango in Paris or Apocalypse Now. Brando was a hugely talented actor whose style is still controversial, nearly 60 years after his film debut. We might start a fist-fight arguing if he was the best screen actor ever.

This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2008.