From 'Streetcar' to 'Freshman,' series celebrates Brando's career

Brooding, muscular and intense, Marlon Brando transformed the art of screen acting. When he died at age 80 this past July, there was no question that America had lost one of its greatest actors. This November, Cornell Cinema pays tribute to the screen legend by devoting its Monday Night Classic Cinema series to five of Brando's early, groundbreaking performances. Screenings take place at 7 p.m. Monday evenings in Willard Straight Theatre, with repeat screenings typically held Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m.

"A Streetcar Named Desire," a steamy adaptation of the Tennessee Williams' play, directed by Elia Kazan, will show Nov. 1 and 2. "Burn!," directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, stars Brando as a British agent on a Caribbean island in the 1840s in what he considered his best performance. It screens Nov. 8 and 9 in a newly restored print of the complete uncut Italian language version. In "The Wild One," directed by Laslo Benedek, Brando plays the leader of a leather-jacketed gang that vandalizes a small town. See it Nov. 15 and 16. "On the Waterfront," Kazan's Oscar-sweeping melodrama, features Brando's famous line "I coulda been a contender ... ," and it screens Nov. 22 and 23. Yet another collaboration with Kazan, "Viva Zapata!" paints a portrait of the life and battles of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata based on a script by John Steinbeck. It will be shown Nov. 29 and 30.

The tribute will continue in January and February 2005 with a selection of some of Brando's most famous roles from the 1970s in "Last Tango in Paris," "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now."

Also scheduled is the sleeper hit from the 1990s, "The Freshman," in which Brando delivers a laugh-out-loud funny screwball burlesque of his role in "The Godfather."