(1950)
3
Michael Costello
This was the movie audience's first opportunity to see the actor whose legendary performance as Stanley Kowalski had galvanized Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire a few years before, revolutionizing the art of acting in the process, and he doesn't disappoint. Like many films of the period, it adopts a semi-documentary approach to the problems of the wounded vets, dwelling at length on the exact nature of the obstacles faced by the patients, as well as detailing the kind of clinical treatment, both physical and psychological, that will make them as functional as they can be. While the focus of the script is on the brooding Brando, nearly all of the characters are well-developed, and Foreman sensitively underlines the barely restrained awareness of their stigmatization in the gallows humor which nearly all affect. Jack Webb, light years from his Dragnet persona, is surprisingly deft and witty as the house intellectual, and Everett Sloane is stingingly effective as the doctor who vents his frustration over the stagnation of his patients. But the main attraction is Brando, who brings to the film the same kind of naturalness and spontaneity which had electrified Broadway. American audiences had never seen an actor of such range and power on film, nor one so willing to court their rejection in mining the darkest regions of his psyche for the sake of his craft.
cast-crew for The Men on AllMovie
The Men (1950)
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