![]() ![]() They do rotten things and don't fell bad. For another, they don't seem to have basic human feelings. Although they exhibit heroic stubbornness and integrity, they're not very likable.įor on thing, they're loners. If the characters he has played stopped there, they would be more or less conventional heroes. And he fights back, no matter how much it hurts. The bad guys in his movies don't like that, and so they try to break him. ![]() He's more or less like the people he hangs around with, except he won't be pushed. Instead, he's been in movies where he is a fairly ordinary guy in a fairly ordinary situation. ![]() He could have gone the Charlton Heston route, getting more noble in every picture until finally he was heroic enough to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, drive chariots, part the Red Sea and take dictation from God.īut he hasn't been making that kind of movie. The ability to pull off a line like that is important, and the actors who can do it last forever, like John Wayne and Richard Widmark.īut then Newman did something else. But he went through a gradual shift in image, starting with "Exodus," and finally he was convincing enough that you didn't snicker when he shouted "Follow me, men" and went over the top. Newman used to be just another good-looking movie star. And then you have the case of Paul Newman. Anthony Quinn is practically a professional unwashed anti-hero, although "Zorba" was an old-style lovable rebel. Lee Marvin and Steve McQueen have made several apiece. But Rod Steiger's "Pawnbroker" was a pretty tough case, and James Dean's entire career descended directly from Brando's early style. Not all the roles went as far as Brando's motorcycle hoodlum. In a few movies every year, the central character seemed to be rejecting the values of the audience and stomping on its sympathy. And then, two years later in 1954, Brando made "The Wild One" and Hollywood had invested a new kind of film. Brando's belly-scratchng, under-shirted Stanley Kowalski in " A Streetcar Named Desire" was a leading character like that. In fact, he despised social workers, and audiences who thought like social workers. He didn't want your sympathy or understanding. But in the early 1950s, a new breed of anti-hero started to develop. ![]()
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