The Anti-Brando

From the "Paper of Record."

But Mr. Malden, who died Wednesday at 97, specialized in being uneasy, playing men who are variously worried, angry, disappointed and defeated. Like many other actors who distinguish themselves in supporting roles and whose charisma consists of a kind of intensified ordinariness, he has often been referred to as an everyman. That doesn’t seem quite right, though. In his best movie roles, mainly in films directed by Elia Kazan, Mr. Malden is specifically the other man, the guy defined partly by his lack of certain attributes abundantly present in the protagonist. The other man is never ruthless, or dangerous, or dashing, or cool. His regret may be that he could never have been a contender, but he makes up for it with a stoical sincerity that is all the more affecting for being so easy to discount. Twice, in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “On the Waterfront,” the magnetic protagonist was Marlon Brando, and in embodying Brando’s antithesis Mr. Malden achieved an unusual kind of heroism. In “Streetcar” he was Mitch, fumbling suitor for the favors of Vivien Leigh’s Blanche DuBois, his awkward gentleness a quiet rebuke to Stanley Kowalski’s brutish self-confidence. And in “Waterfront” his Father Barry, full of righteous rage and social concern, serves as the angel on Terry Malloy’s shoulder, a figure of conviction and moral clarity in a world lousy with corruption and double-dealing.

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