The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

When the viewer finally gets to really see Marlon Brando, at exactly eleven minutes and fifty-six seconds into the film, he’s shot from Blanche’s point of view, captured in close-up right after he enters the Kowalski home. Immediately, even across the gulf of more than seventy years, the sense of a revolution taking place is palpable. It isn’t only that he’s beautiful—although he is, almost upsettingly so, and the camera ogles him again and again throughout the film as if driven wild by him. It’s the way Brando carries himself. He is masculine and feminine at the same time, forceful and graceful at once. He’s chewing gum, but it doesn’t look like an affectation. His clothes are stained with grime, but they don’t look like a costume. He seems to be Stanley Kowalski, the cocksure and charismatic king of his small and grubby domain.