Movie stars from three generations – Brando, De Niro, and Norton, plotting a high-tech heist in Montreal – provided this senior citizen filmgoer with an absorbing two hours of entertainment last weekend.
The film that featured these actors is called “The Score” and has received mixed notices from the critics. For me, however, this movie gets high marks, largely because it displays three such talented stars along the age spectrum.
To see Marlon Brando, now aged 78, on screen inevitably stirs memories of a storied career. In 1947 his performance as Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” took the American theater by storm, showing new acting possibilities to all aspirants to the stage.
Grant Keener, a friend who was present at the fifth performance of this play on Broadway, remembers vividly the power of Brando’s portrayal. “That night I felt challenged by a presence whose force I as a young male resented but reluctantly admired.” In particular he recalls the audience's gasp when Brando answered Jessica Tandy's line “A gentleman always clears his
dinner things” by cuffing his plate to the floor with “I cleared mine; want me to clear yours?”
When Brando turned to films, his roles in “The Godfather” and “Last Tango in Paris” made him part of cinematic history. The critic Richard Schickel says of Brando: “His shadow now touches every acting class in America, virtually every movie we see, every TV show we tune in.”
It adds to one’s interest in him that Brando has been long targeted by some writers as a magnificent failure. Schickel, for example, writes of “the greatness that might have been.” But this critic adds: “Brando may have resisted his role in history, may even have travestied it, but, in the end, he could not evade it.”
If a quotation attributed to him can be believed, Brando himself realizes the corrupting influence that the film capital of the world had over him. “The only
reason I’m in Hollywood,” he once said, “is that I don’t have the moral courage to refuse the money.”
When he first appears in “The Score,” he is shown wearing a bear-like coat that surrounds his huge girth. The man looks to be encased in fat like some latter-day Henry VIII or, more to the point, the aged Orson Welles. It was shocking to see Brando so far gone to obesity in his old age.
In this film he plays the part of Max, a criminal who does not do jobs himself but specializes in procuring master thieves for the task. In this instance, he persuades Nick, played by Robert De Niro, to steal a precious artifact from the custom house in Montreal. Nick eventually agrees despite a heretofore firm principle of never doing heists in his home city.
De Niro himself is a magnificent movie actor with a long history of success. Aged 58 as of this August 17th, De Niro has a fascinating face especially suited to characters who are up to no good. In this film he is conflicted because of his girlfriend’s willingness to settle down with him in marriage if he will give up his extra-legal activities.
The third star, Edward Norton, turns 32 on August 18th of this year. Though obviously inexperienced compared to the other two, Norton is quickly making a name for himself. A 1991 Yale graduate, he has already received two Academy Award nominations for his early roles. Some people consider him the best film actor of his generation.
My enjoyment of this film and numerous others leads me to ask the following questions.
Why do so few of my age peers attend current films? How is it that even the presence of stars like the three discussed here does not inspire more of us to go to movie theatres?
A Gallup poll taken last year confirms my suspicion that only a small minority of older people go to the movies any more. Surveying Americans over 65, Gallup found that 57 percent did not attend a single movie in the previous twelve months! By contrast, only 12 percent of those between ages 18 and 29 have not attended a movie in the past year.
It is not hard to suggest some reasons for this phenomenon. The dearth of neighborhood theaters is probably one. Long gone are those like the theater in Watertown Square universally known by local kids as “The Flea House.” Disabilities can make it even more difficult for many to reach a theater.
Also many elders, I suspect, consider current films as too complicated, not simple like the films of old. My resident 21-year-old often rags me about my failing to understand certain films that speak to her. And, yes, too much sex and violence for their own sake mar many Hollywood flicks.
But, again, the chance to see such performers as my age peer Marlon Brando, along with veteran actor Robert De Niro, and the up-and-coming Edward Norton, makes me want to be at the movies.
Richard Griffin