The Missouri Breaks : When Titans Meet

My favorite actors and two of the best ever.

       This is a movie that was too much for me. I have been movie obsessed since I was about 15 years old. Next month I will be 55 { shit ! } which means this kind of thing has gone on for 40 years and I am powerless to stop it now. When I first heard that Marlon Brando, in his first film since 1973's Last Tango in Paris { being not quite 17, a film I had yet to see Tango being X-rated }, and Jack Nicholson fresh from his Last Detail, Chinatown and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest trifecta had made a movie together, I expected noting short of earthshaking, brilliant film-making and film-acting. All the others could try, but to me Brando and Nicholson rise above the fray. Brando - father of "The Method"- was a living legend who had comeback from a decade worth of box office failure { he had just made The Godfather in 1972, for which he won and refused a Best Actor Oscar } and the truly myth-making, visually and emotionally stunning Last Tango in Paris - which would earn him another Best Actor Nomination, his seventh { don't let it be said the Academy plays favorites }. Both films brought Marlon back to the forefront of the film world with a vengeance. With The Missouri Breaks, Brando took the smaller, showier part as " the regulator", Robert E.Lee Clayton, who is hired by a ranch baron to suss out and kill the gang of rustlers who are stealing his horses. Nicholson plays the lead outlaw, Tom Logan, head of a motley group of rustlers. His gang comprised of film veteran Harry Dean Stanton and newcomers Randy Quaid, John Ryan and Fredric Forest. Jack's love interest was played by another newbie, Kathleen Lloyd. Add to this mix of talent director of Arthur { Bonnie & Clyde } Penn and how could this movie go wrong ? It couldn't; it just had to be incredible. From the first I'd heard of the film, I marked my calender and started the countdown, like a little kid does for Christmas. When it arrived on May 19, 1976 I, a callow high school student nearing the end of his junior year, was the first person in line at the now long-gone State Theater in Santa Barbara, California. No one else seemed to be there. Where was everyone? Didn't they know an acting lesson was about to commence? Foolish people, I thought, it's their loss. Regarding the fate of the film, The Movie Gods had different plans.

This poster was on my bedroom wall for many years. I still have it.

      Coming half way between Jaws and Star Wars, The Missouri Breaks was meant to be the sort of 70's film experience audiences had come to expect : in this instance a serious film study of the old west, not how it should've been, but how we thought it was; tough, grimy, gritty, bloody. The film was a bit of a disappointment to me, one I didn't expect. Nicholson seemed not only subdued but kind of wandering through the film, not exactly knowing what to do opposite his acting idol { " He gave us our freedom ", said Jack of Marlon's influence on, not only himself, but other actors }. The film, a tad over two hours, seemed to be off-center or somewhat off-kilter, and tended to drag on a bit, even the showdowns with the two best film actors in the world appeared, at the time, anti-climatic. Was I expecting too much?  -  wasn't everyone? -  probably, and I wasn't alone. I have to say the one thing I did appreciate was Brando's outrageously entertaining turn as Robert E. Lee Clayton, regulator. He intially appears about 25 minutes in, only we don't see him because his horse is camouflaging his body as it lumbers down a hill, when he suddenly sticks his head out from underneath the horse's head { a Godfather reference ? } which surprises Kathleen Lloyd in the film, and us in the theater. It's a clever, startling entrance and one that reveals Clayton's character as one who is shifty, deceptive and not to be trusted, all done without a word of dialogue.

     Long lines at the box office didn't materialize; maybe they wanted a "buddy" western like the classic Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Critics were not kind to it calling the film self indulgent or worse. Director Penn, fresh from his critically - acclaimed, commercial - failure Night Moves, and with a resume that includes Bonnie & Clyde and the revisionist western Little Big Man, never really got his footing back after this. He wouldn't make another film until 1981's Four Friends, followed by1985's thriller Target, and the ghost story Dead of Winter two years after that, all three received coolly by both audiences and film scribes. In the 90's his career would continue to lose momentum with a couple of made-for-cable movies { when that wasn't yet fashionable }.  As for the two main cogs in this lark of a western, most reviewers felt Jack actually came off best - if this were a heavyweight bout judged on points - with his straight forward portrayal of an outlaw unwittingly going legit due to love for the rancher's daughter, yet Marlon clearly landed so many heavy punches Nicholson at times seems like he is on the ropes. Most critics who liked Brando loathed the film, and if they liked the film they felt Brando tended to keep it from jelling, with New York Times critic Vincent Canby referring to his work in the film as " out of control ". It's true Brando's work in the film is one of his most eccentric, ranking up there with his Fletcher Christian from Mutiny on the Bounty in it's uneven - even campy - creativity, yet his portrayal works. Clayton's Irish brogue is not authentic, nor is it meant to be for Lee Clayton is not an authentic Irish potato fresh off the boat from Cork County, but a hired gun who amuses himself with accents and disguises { at one point wearing a gingham dress and bonnet } to keep his adversaries on their toes. In other words, it's not a performance to take at face value, something reviewers at the time didn't understand. " Oh, it's just Marlon being a silly ass. Up to his old tricks by upstaging and ruining a costly $8 million production ", they said at the time. Following The Godfather, Last Tango and biting the hand that fed him by refusing his Oscar, the film world was ready to knock him down a peg or two. The film is also notable for being the first in which Brando appears obviously overweight { a condition that would accelerate over time }, his appearance being a distraction to many in 1976. Many film historians call the last 25 years of Brando's screen career a waste. It would all begin here. Likewise it would also mark the beginning of Brando's " take the money and run " phase, when he would demand the most money for the briefest screen time and shooting schedule. His five weeks on Breaks for $1 million would lead to his two weeks on Superman for $3.7 million, followed by his $3 million for three weeks on Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

Brando in his granny outfit that outraged many a film critic.

         The Missouri Breaks ended up losing money becoming one of the most reviled movies of the decade, proof of what can happen when a company offers the moon to it's top of the line talent, only to get burned with the demands of those stars and the deficiency of a script still being written { or re-written } when filming commenced. One of the consistent complaints at the time was that the stars' contracts were longer than the script; how Hollywood had become enamored with deal-making, not movie-making. I went back to see the film a couple of months later at the local drive-in where it was double billed with the Richard Harris western Return of a Man Called Horse, a sequel to that 1970 opus. I admit to not liking more it second time around, but my fondness for Brando's madcap killer remained unabated. I caught the film time and again through the years on television and when it was made available at a bargain price on VHS in the 90's I made sure to buy it, not only for me, but for the video store I owned back then. Seeing it now, after so many years, Brando is still amazing, yet I am struck by Nicholson's job of work. He really keeps the thing going while Marlon is zipping around the fringes of the story " like a firefly ", to use his description of his character. Seen in that light, Jack's work is not only Herculean but selfless. Nicholson knows Brando is walking away with the film, but Jack is still in there trying like hell to throw strikes and keep himself in the ballgame, even though he knows it is a futile gesture. I like to think that, for Jack, working with his idol was reward enough. I guess that's the breaks.

Jack, Kathleen Lloyd, Harry Dean and Marlon serenade on location in Montana.

References : Wikipedia page on Arthur Penn, The Missouri Breaks, Marlon Brando
                      IMDB on Missouri Breaks
                      Jacks Life by Patrick McGilligan
                      Time Magazine