One of Brando's best performances

The other film was The Teahouse of the August Moon, and he was so good that many people don't catch on to which character is him.

It's Moon and Sayanora that make me think he can act. The ones he's famous for don't really impress me all that much.



Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear

<Didn't his accent bug anyone else? I thought he totally overdid it, it did not sound natural at all. They should have let him use his normal voice.>

Agreed. His mumbling style of speech could be hard enough to understand at times, without him using a heavy accent too.

I thought Brando's accent was actually well done, and Lloyd's self-deprecating remarks about his own cultural limitations were in context with the character. However, as the son of a general, Lloyd Gruver had moved about a great deal and been exposed to a great variety of people and experiences. Also, he had attended boarding school (where he was cast in a Molnar play) and West Point, which certainly would have given him a certain degree of polish. Gruver's presenting himself as unsophisticated, at times almost buffoonish, was some kind of affectation on his part for humorous effect. It worked well in the scenes where he bantered with James Garner but did seem odd in the scenes with his American fiancee's family.

Flawed as it is, I love this movie for its characters, especially Kelly and Katsumi. James Garner's girlfriend Fumiko-San (Reiko Kuba) is adorable: "I can't help myself! He's so tall!"

His accent bothered you so much? He overdid it. Sounded completely natural to me. I guess you've never around anyone from the Deep South?

I certainly did bug me. It sounded ike a bad Elvis Presley imitation or someone trying very hard to sound like a good old boy and doing an awful job of it. Actually I think Elvis might have done a more believable job in this part.Dont get me wrong . Brando could be a magnificent actor but I dont think he was very good in this. "Whachu doin, 'boa?"

I watched this again last night when it was on TCM.

I also loved the light comical moments in his performance, and thought "Lloyd Gruver" was a wonderful character.

Makes me wish Brando would have done more light comedy during his career. I never saw "Bedtime Story," but the dialogue and overall script of The Countess of Hong Kong was sooooo bad, there wasn't much either he nor Sophia Loren could do with it.

As far as his two girls in the movie-"eh" to both of them! There were only a couple of his female co-stars in his films that I thought really "worked" magically with Brando-

both Kim Hunter and Vivien Leigh in Streetcar;

Eva Marie Saint in Waterfront (my favorite female co-star/chemistry between lead characters );

Jean Simmons in Guys and Dolls (again showing that wonderfully sweet, light, comic touch);

Mary Murphy in The Wild One;

Angie Dickinson in the Chase;

Faye Dunawy in Don Juan DeMarco.

(There was something very heartbreaking in the relationship between "Val" and his boss in The Fugitive Kind, but the chemistry still wasn't quite right.)

I thought the actress portraying "Hana- Ogi" was pretty bad (in fact, she was a dancer, not an actress)- the actress portraying Eileen was slightly better, but as often happened-Brando's naturalistic style harshly hilighted the silly, "old-style" fakeness of conventional Hollywood acting. Very appparent in the contrast between his performance and Teresa Wright's in The Men, and it was certainly visible in his scenes with the two women in this film. On the other hand, his scenes with both Red Buttons and James Garner were wonderful!

I haven't scene all of his films- so if there's some I missed in which there was great chemistry between Brando and the leading lady, let me know!

Brando's southern accent is an example of his rejection of play-acting as a collaborative endeavor. It may have irritated his director, but not enough to have a key piece of dialogue struck or revised; Gruver explains to Kelly that he's known his fiancee since "we were that high." If they were children when they met, why didn't his fiancee and both her parents have southern accents? Did Brando care? No. Did anyone? Apparently not. The result is a glaring lapse in continuity. Can we presume that Brando, responding to the racial themes of the story, thought it would be more dramatic and ironic if Gruver were from an American region typified by racist culture?

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It took me a little bit to get used to his accent and the DVD didn't have subtitles, so I had to wing it. He was quite charming in this role.

Why ain't you at the garden party you heathen?