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# Posted 9:07 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

THE GODFATHER PASSES ON: Marlon Brandon, age 80. In the WaPo, Stephen Hunter provides a tribute to Brando's tumultuous life and career. With regard to The Godfather, Hunter writes that

Opinions vary, but I think this has to be the single greatest American movie and his the single greatest film performance. But why quibble? It's enough to say that the rogue genius, coming off 10 years of failure, managed to tame his demons long enough to give himself up to the dark part of Don Corleone: father, husband, leader, visionary, diplomat, killer. Somehow he resolved these complexities into a single coherent being, and yet was secure enough to have no need to dominate; his willingness to fit into an ensemble of another new generation of actors was estimable.

I couldn't agree more that The Godfather is the greatest American film ever made. More than fitting into an ensemble, Brando transformed it. I don't think it is possible to say whether it was Brando, Pacino, or James Caan whose performance deserves to be known as the greatest ever. Because it is simply impossible to disentangle their greatness from one another.

Nor would such greatness have been possible without the vision of Francis Ford Coppola. If you share my obsession with The Godfather, I strongly recommend getting a hold of the DVD box set, which contains Coppola's voice-over commentary on all three films as well as extensive documentary and archival footage. (And if you're a real purist, you can bring the disc with Godfather III back to the store and insist that it is artistically deficient.)

Finally, a bit of Brando trivia. Hunter opens his profile of Brando by recounting a legendary scene from The Wild One:

In 1954, a babe had a question for Johnny Strabler, who leans next to his gleaming hog, in a pathetic small town in the middle of nowhere.

"Johnny, what are you rebelling against?"

Johnny doesn't even have to think. Every line in his body expresses the answer, as does the contemptuous power of the machine, the beautiful sullenness of his face, the slouch of his heavily muscled body as it contorts the leathers that drape him like knight's armor, the rakish tilt of his cyclist's cap pulled across his broad forehead.

He replies, "Whatta ya got?"

Having just watched the film on video last week, I'm pretty sure that Brando is indoors and without his motorcycle when asks his infamous question. Moreover, he is in a corner and the camera delivers a medium-long shot, so its pretty hard to see the "beautiful sullenness of his face" or "the slouch of heavily muscled body".

Even though Brando's "Whatta ya got?" is the one legendary moment that survives from an otherwise fourth-rate film, it seems the director had no idea that the line was particularly dramatic, and certainly not that it was destined for immortality. All of that came from Brando.

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