Who are the great movie anti-heroes? Gable? Bogart? Brando? Dean? Newman? Nicholson? AFI picked Bogart as America’s favorite movie star – and his appeal was on that basis, the anti-hero – as was Gable’s (the King) and all the rest of the aforementioned. Rhett, Rick, Stanley, Terry, Fast Eddie, Hud, Butch Cassidy, Henry Gondorff, Randle McMurphy – some of the names may escape you, but certainly not the movies or their classic scenes. Be an interesting survey to find out who is America’s favorite anti-hero. My guess is Newman, not because he was the most anti-heroic, but because he was the most common denominator. Gable was too big. Bogart too small. Brando too heavy. Dean too young. Nicholson? Yes, he is probably the best anti-hero, but it never has the physical appeal of a Newman. Newman was a Greek god. None of the others even came close, with the exception of Brando at his very best. And that was only two movies – Streetcar and Waterfront and after that? Too heavy. Newman always looked 10 to 15 years younger, and his face and body was a Greek statue, yet he was still vulnerable.
So – Nicholson was the best. But Newman was the most popular. Dean was immortalized by his early demise, and the only three films he ever made were classics. So, he never lived long enough to fail. Newman had the Silver Chalice, which was so bad he’d even take out billboard ads on the weeks it’d play on TV and say, “Paul Newman apologizes every day this week for the Silver Chalice.” And Brando? He had a lot of clunkers. And as far as Nicholson? Well – how many Academy Awards has he won? He had so many brilliant performances no one really noticed the failures.
But regardless of all that – it’s the scenes we remember them for. Pick a movie. Anyone of the classics, and what’s the first image or line that comes to mind? Gone With the Wind? Casablanca? Streetcar? Waterfront? – you can reduce them to even one line! Or word! “Frankly, my dear.” “Play It, Sam.” “Stella!” “I could have been a contender.” “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “you talking to me?” Scenes: poker scene from The Sting. The backseat of a cab in Waterfront. Diner scene in Five Easy Pieces. Now, picture anyone else playing those parts. Or delivering those lines.
Okay, back to our hero. Who is he? What does he look like? Dean, Newman, Brando? – all the above – none of the above? All we know is what we hear in his monologue and see in his paintings. Both of which, as established – by him in particular – are unreliable. So, has he created another myth? Any more than Dean, Brando, or Newman? Or Nicholson? De Niro, etc., etc? Or does it all hearken back to America’s uniqueness in terms of its own self-expression and self-image? Henry James never typified America – nor cared to. Twain did (the polar opposite of James – in his day, Twain was considered the most popular man on the planet). Hemingway did. Fitzgerald did. Salinger, Roth, Updike, and so forth – but were their characters any more reliable or less reliable? Gatsby, for example. The Great Gatsby was considered by some to be the greatest American novel, yet Gatsby was a complete fraud. At least on one level. And yet to Nick Carraway, the narrator, he was “better than all of them.” Tom, Huck, Jake, Jay, Holden, Portnoy, Rabbit – how reliable was our image of them – whether told in the first person or the third? And besides, we are talking about anti-heroes, aren’t we? – and America’s myths? And unlike any other country, our capacity to reinvent ourselves, like Gatsby, is what America is all about, isn’t it?
“I became aware of the old Island here that once flowered for Dutch sailor’s eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house and once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams, for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
“As I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow, we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning –
“So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.” The Great Gatsby