Cinema: The Private World of Marlon Brando

Nearly 30 years ago, Marlon Brando exploded on the Broadway stage as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Since then he has become the leading movie actor of his generation. Some of his films have been good; more have been awful. No matter. Audiences could always count on Brando for performances that were surprising, overwhelming in their power, sometimes perversely idiosyncratic—his foppish Mr. Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty, for example. At the very least, there was always an unforgettable moment or two, like the garden scene in The Godfather in which...