criterioncollection: Stylization is a great part of westerns’ appeal—something they have
criterioncollection: Stylization is a great part of westerns’ appeal—something they have in common with film noir. In particular, both forms purvey intensely stylized, ritualistic versions of masculinity. Survival in the cinematic West depends on performance, and westerns’ intense scrutiny of men’s bodies and clothes, gestures and mannerisms, subjects males to a gaze at once desiring and judgmental. Brando, with his confounding mix of raw virility and voluptuous beauty, makes a distinctly modern western hero. At once brooding and flamboyant, he’s able to carry off the most traditional western theatrics, and at the same time give glimpses into an inner landscape more vast and varied, and harder to map, than the one through which he rides. Dark Passages: Noir on the Range -- source link
#marlon brando