On Any Other Year: Marlon Brando vs. Humphrey Bogart

Two very different actors. Two very different shows of masculinity.

As I have written about before, the 1952 Academy Awards saw The African Queen and A Streetcar Named Desire facing off against each other - great films with very different content and a great deal of parallels to be drawn, not least in the performances of the films' stars.

The Best Actress category had seen Vivien Leigh and Katharine Hepburn facing off for the top prize, but the remarkable thing about Streetcar and The African Queen is that their greatest strengths come from the interplay between leading lady and leading man. As strong as Leigh and Hepburn were in these films, their performances would have been diminished without a strong, male sparring partner to face off against, and vice versa. For both films to work, a very special chemistry was required between their stars. That is exactly what we got.

Just as Leigh had put in a landmark performance in Streetcar, Marlon Brando matched her as the repugnant yet compelling Stanley Kowalski. It is surprisingly rare to see a star born over the course of a single film, but for Brando, an unknown in one of his very first films, it was a performance that set him on the road to becoming one of the greatest actors ever to live. Brutal, manipulative and charismatic, Brando perfectly captured a deceptively complex character - a man that has an almost hypnotic hold over his mistreated wife Stella. His routine life is turned on its head by the arrival of the disapproving Blanche DuBois.

It is the chemistry between Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando that makes this film such a brilliant adaptation. The sexual charge behind their exchanges bubbles under the surface as they display their contempt towards each other - elegant femininity contrasted with raw animalism. In all their scenes, a sense of impending dread that something is going to go horribly wrong between the two of them builds. Those who know the play will, of course, know something will go wrong, but the tension developed by Brando and Leigh is a remarkable display of acting talent.

For Leigh, this meant Oscar glory, but Brando was to (unfairly, in my view) miss out. Standing in his way was the legendary Humphrey Bogart.

Bogart was a man in transition. He was, perhaps, two old to hold the role of traditional, dashing leading man. He always had a world weary air about him but, now in his 50's, Bogart was crying out for a role that took the idea of a mature, grizzled man who was been there and done that, and just roll with it. The African Queen  was just such a roll.

It is impossible for Bogart not to be charming, but the character of Charlie Allnut was a world away from Phillip Marlowe or Rick Blaine. The gin swilling and the cynicism are familiar character traits, but Allnut is Blaine without the hope or kindness; a slob who has all but given up on himself. Grumpy to the point of being cruel, Bogart pushes his traditional image to its limits in his early exchanges with Hepburn in the film. But, as with so many films from this era, it takes the love of a good woman to turn him around.

The chemistry between Hepburn and Bogart is perfect. Nowhere near as intense and combustible as Leigh and Brando, Charlie and Rose's chemistry is reluctant, moving slowly from intense dislike to mutual respect and, finally, to pure attraction. It could more or less write the rulebook for the love-hate relationship - something that Hepburn and Bogart were used to, but perfected alongside each other.

Brando should have won this particular showdown, but on any other year, Bogart would have walked this award without a problem.

On Any Other Year will return to examine the Best Actor category once again, and the 1963 competition between Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird and Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.

On Any Other Year: Vivien Leigh vs. Katharine Hepburn

The 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire would live and die on the actors chosen to portray Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. Plenty of stage adaptations have faltered by casting a Stanley who wasn't raw and animalistic enough. Many more have suffered with a Blanche who lacked a unique enigmatic and alluring quality. The film adaptation nailed its casting.

On Any Other Year will focus on Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski in the next post, but today Filmstubs is looking at the 1952 Best Actress category. Just a year after the award was presented with an extraordinary array of competition, two of the era's greatest actresses went into direct competition in the category. Vivien Leigh had perfected Blanche DuBois in Streetcar. In a film filled with career defining performances, hers was the most extraordinary. Blanche is incredibly difficult to get right, but Leigh's charm and fragility, along with her portrayal of a woman beginning to lose her sanity, was utterly convincing.

As remarkable as the performance was, Leigh's Oscar was no foregone conclusion. She was up against an acting titan who the Academy loved like no other; Katharine Hepburn had just put in one of her most memorable performances in The African Queen. Like Leigh, Hepburn was playing a woman who finds herself placed in a situation with a man she believed was beneath her; a classy lady stuck with a slovenly and unkempt alcoholic. Whilst the chemistry between Leigh and Brando is raw and destructive, the equally engaging combination of Hepburn's Rose and Humphrey Bogart's Charlie is reluctant and classically love-hate.

Charlie is not the brute that Stanley Kowalski is, nor is the initially frigid Rose a Blanche DuBois, so their relationship in far more restrained and slow-burning. The chemistry is there for all to see, however. The African Queen is made great by the interplay between Hepburn and Bogart, who spend long stretches of the film alone together on the boat. Only great actors can carry a film in such a way, and Hepburn and Bogart's charisma shines through.

Ultimately, we were left with two greats of the golden age, both Oscar winners already, competing for the ultimate prize again in 1952. Vivien Leigh won, I would say deservedly so, but 1952 was a ceremony that pitted two extraordinary women at the peak of their powers against each other. It was a rare and great moment for the acting community.

Tomorrow, I will look at the same ceremony, this time focussing on the Best Actor category and the two men who played opposite Leigh and Hepburn that year - Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart.

8 Memorable Movie River Trips

Sometimes the movie road trip gets too much credit. It's one of cinema's great clichés; the voyage of discovery or bonding experience that comes from taking a drive. It's not the only way to travel though, and some of cinema's great journeys have been taken down (or up) river, and it's time they got their moment in the limelight. This is a list of 8 great movie river trips. It's by no means definitive; I chose to leave out great scenes that take place on rivers (The Deer Hunter) or indeed great scenes of crossing rivers (Temple of Doom) but instead focus on journeys, whether by boat, canoe or even paddle steamer. This is simply 8 films that use a journey on a river to great effect:

Deliverance (1972)

Burt Reynolds leads a group of friends on a canoe trip down the Cahulawassee River in a determined effort to experience it one last time before it gets turned into a giant lake. It doesn't exactly go to plan.

For its time this was a truly provocative film and even today it has the capacity to shock. Along the way Reynolds, Voight and co. experience raging rapids, jagged rocks and a group of back-country yokels that set the standard for stereotypical, backwards Southern folk that most horror movies can't even come close to. The tension rises as the group make increasingly unwise decisions about how to deal with the problems that befall them, leading to an edgy finale of nervous glances and suspicious questions.

Although "dueling banjos" and the infamous rape scene will be the ones that stick in people's minds, one of the true stars of the show is the river itself. Filmed on location on the Chattooga River in Georgia, the rapid scenes are beautifully shot and bring about a real sense of excitement. Of all the journeys on this list, its probably the one you'd least want to go on. Except, maybe for....

Apocalypse Now (1979)

During the Vietnam war, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a dangerous journey up river to Cambodia to assassinate the dangerous and charismatic Colonel Kurtz.

This is one boat trip you don't want to go on. As Willard and his crew head "75 klicks above the Do Long bridge," they encounter the full horror and insanity of war, and that's before Willard encounters Kurtz at the end of his journey. Along the way they encounter the eccentric Colonel Kilgore and his interesting appreciation of certain scents, negotiate the natural perils of the jungle, and come under attack from the locals. Not only do the crew experience the horrors of war, they even commit atrocious acts themselves. The entire journey is an escalating descent into madness, with a destination that will top it all...

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski) has a dream of building an opera house in Iquitos in Peru. To do this he needs money. To get money, he needs rubber. Fitzgerald buys a paddle steamer and enlists a crew to reach an unclaimed patch on the Ucayali River. Its unclaimed for a reason though, and getting there is easier said than done.

In a way, this feels like a cheat. Sure this is a movie about a man trying to reach a place on a river, but the most impressive, and most memorable, part of the journey is Fitzgerald's attempt to physically pull the steamer over a hill to reach the inaccessible Ucayali River. Its a study into obsession, made all the more fascinating by the infamous on set difficulties and the conflict between director Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski (one of the native extras famously offered to kill Kinski for Herzog). The film shows an increasingly inconceivable attempt to overcome the obstacles of nature in pursuit of the ultimate dream. Likewise, the film was an ambitious project that had to overcome numerous obstacles to get made.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

As Willy Wonka takes the five lucky golden ticket winners on a tour of his extraordinary chocolate factory. The best way to get around the factory is by boat, and Willy Wonka takes the group on a psychedelic and thrilling ride along a chocolate river.

"There's no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going."

This may well be the creepiest song ever sung in a children's film, and the journey's a little bit intimidating too. A seemingly relaxing and docile trip along a chocolate river (as you do) descends into a dark and fast roller-coaster ride with multicoloured lights adding increasing menace to Gene Wilder's face. Demented images with no place in a children's film flash up, as the increasingly nervous group begin to question Willy Wonka's sanity. It's creepy as hell, but it's one of the reasons why this adaptation of a very dark children's book is such a classic.

The World is Not Enough (1999)

Or, if you'd rather, Live and Let Die (1973)

In an explosive opening sequence, James Bond uses a prototype MI6 speed boat to chase an assassin along the Thames, taking in London's biggest landmarks, soaking the odd traffic warden, and destroying a few things along the way.

Let's get one thing straight, The World is Not Enough is not a great film. In fact, it's one of Bond's worst outings. But the opening sequence promised so much. The scene was an attempt to make Bond a bit more up to date, accounting for the climax of the chase taking place against the backdrop of the Millennium Dome. The action's some of the most exciting we've seen in the modern Bond era and, as always, London provides the perfect cinematic backdrop, especially for such an iconic British character.

Special mention has to go to the swamp chase in Live and Let Die, but it loses out because of the presence of Sheriff J.W. Pepper; to date the most annoying character to appear in the Bond universe.

The African Queen (1951)

Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) persuades a grizzled riverboat captain (Humphrey Bogart) to attack an enemy warship in WW1 era Africa.

An all time classic. The interplay between Hepburn and Bogart is the real star of the show, and the film is classic movie example of mutual hate turning to love. However, the thing that drives the film is the treacherous trip down the Ulanga River. The African Queen is a rust bucket, but its trustworthy and negotiates Hepburn and Bogart through rapids, jagged rocks and dangerous animals. At the end of the journey there's the biggest challenge of all; the Louisa, the warship they are determined to sink. This is one of cinema's truly great journeys.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Having left Lothlorian, the remaining members of the fellowship set off down the River Anduin towards Parth Galen, where they will eventually part.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy did a pretty good job of leaving impressive and epic images in you head. The Two Towers and Return of the King would take this to the next level with their vast battle scenes but one of the most impressive and memorable visions from the first film happens as the group rides down the River Anduin. The fellowship passes huge statues of past kings of Gondor, showcasing impressive CGI and creating one of the defining images of the trilogy.

The river would also be the setting for the breaking of the fellowship and the site for Boromir's final farewell. All in all, a pretty important part of the journey.

Into the Wild (2007)

During his voyage of self discovery around America, Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) takes a kayak trip down the Colorado River, disobeying the orders of park rangers, and encounters two of the many eccentrics he meets on his travels.

Depending on who you ask, Into the Wild is either massively overrated or massively underrated. Either way, its hard to deny that the film takes in some impressive scenery along the way. The journey down the Colorado River not only showcases its beauty but also provides an important insight into McCandless' character; impulsive, often reckless, and determined to live out his dreams regardless of the consequences. Along the way, we also meet a quirky Danish couple, which naturally means nudity. They're not the most important people that McCandless will meet on his journey, but at least they're not Vince Vaughn...