One like Brando, as a matter of fact, is more than Hollywood has been able to handle, or even figure out. It could hardly be conventional good looks. He's the Valentino of the bop generation, and he's bringing the kids back to the movies. Nonsense, says Elia Kazan, who directed him in Streetcar and Waterfront . Brando is just the best actor in the world today.
Many experts agree.
Not since John Barrymore first hauled on his buskins has a young actor's fire brought such a light to so many critics' eyes. They have felt in Brando's acting a kind of abysmal reality that not even Barrymore, who in all technical respects was far and away Brando's superior, could plumb. At moments he can vanish into the character he is portraying like salamander into stone, or a tiger in the reeds. But this man has control of what he's doing. He has the power of total camouflage, like a dweller in the third day of creation.