In 1980, nine years after The Godfather but within a year of Apocalypse
Now, Marlon Brando played oil tycoon Adam Steiffel in The Formula. In his
autobiography, in retrospect, Brando calls The Formula "a stinker,"
although when he accepted the role his hope was to support the movie’s statement
against the dominion of international oil. While Brando does not elaborate his
"stinker" assessment, possibly he was disappointed with the confusing story line
of the final product. Surely I was. Once the setting shifts to Europe, the thriller plot
turns silly with pointless murders.
Brando appears in a total of three scenes, all on the West Coast, none
in Europe, two of which he shares with the movie’s protagonist, an LAPD investigator,
played by George C. Scott. Brando’s performance is characteristically remarkable (at
the very least, see how he manipulates his lower lip) with nothing stinky about it.
Moreover, it is something of a watershed in his career in that he used the role to further
his quest for spontaneity.
The illusion of spontaneity is crucial to Marlon Brando’s concept
of acting. While he has been accused of being unable to memorize lines, I would suggest,
on the contrary, that he is against memorizing lines, which may somewhat explain why he
abandoned the stage. His preference is not to know exactly what his character is going to
say; and if he does know the lines then not to rehearse how he is going to say them. What
Brando works on instead of lines, it seems to me, is character: divining the character
according to the given circumstances of the script; developing the inside of the
character; finding the outside of the character. He then goes after what the character
wants in the manner of the character, which ultimately requires speaking lines. Line
readings are the least and last of his concerns. Ideally for Brando the lines will arise
inevitably and authentically out of script analysis and character study. Preparation makes
way for spontaneity.
While filming The Young Lions in 1958, during which there
wasn’t time to memorize rewrites, Brando took to writing his lines on a piece of
paper that he pinned to the costume of another actor. He soon discovered that the illusion
of spontaneity, derived from not memorizing, feeds the illusion of reality. From The
Young Lions on, he contrived to read his lines from notes placed on the set, although
I cannot believe that he depended on notes for all the lines of all his roles. In any
case, reading the lines was his avowed method of achieving the illusion of spontaneity,
until The Formula when he transferred to technology:
I got rid of the notes and began using a better method to accomplish
the same purpose: speaking my lines into a miniature tape recorder, then hiding it in the
small of my back with a wire connected to tiny speakers that I stuck in my ears like
hearing aids. When I was acting I turned the tape recorder on and off with a remote hand
switch, listened to my voice, and repeated the lines simultaneously in the same way that
speeches are translated into different languages at the UN. It took a little practice, but
it wasn’t hard.
By characterizing Adam Steiffel as hard-of-hearing (a
trait not found in the novel of the same name on which the screenplay is based), Brando
was able to hide the speaker (in fact he employs only one speaker in the movie) inside a
hearing aid. It is a disguise in the service of poetry as well as practicality.
Metaphorically, hard-of-hearing is an apt characteristic for Adam Steiffel who, from his
magnate height, is disinclined to give anyone a proper hearing.
Brando’s deviation from memorization, coupled with a tendency toward
improvisation, allegedly frustrated George C. Scott. Apparently he asked Brando when he
was going to say the lines in the script, to which Brando ostensibly replied: What
difference does it make, you know a cue when you hear one. With this statement Brando may
have been reminding Scott that they were actors, people who know that acting is all
illusion. With a speaker in his ear and changeable words in his mouth, Brando was not
intending actually to express a thought for the first time. He was intending to create the
illusion of expressing a thought for the first time. On the set of his thirty-first movie,
Brando was exploring spontaneity. |
