Marlon Brando might be best known for his role in The Godfather, but he has another Oscar-winning performance that has aged better for the actor. Brando was widely considered one of Hollywood’s greatest stars, a man who popularized method acting. His role as Don Vito Corleone remains one of the best in gangster movie history.

However, Brando earned an Oscar nomination years before this for a different movie, although it was a more personal drama. Brando starred in A Streetcar Named Desire, based on Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Now, almost 75 years later, that movie remains one of Marlon Brando’s best performances.

Why Marlon Brando’s A Streetcar Named Desire Performance Is Better Than The Godfather

A Streetcar Named Desire was about a Southern belle named Blanche who was dealing with a stressful situation and moved in with her sister Stella. However, Stella’s husband, Stanley, is a crude and arrogant man who openly mocks Blanche, and their antagonistic relationship drives this story.

Marlon Brando plays Stanley, an unlikable and cruel man, and someone who is very different from Don Corleone. Instead of the honorable man who will deal harshly with people who wrong him, like he did in The Godfather, he is a mean man who lashes out at the weak and innocent around him.

Stanley is violent. He physically abuses his wife, emotionally abuses his sister-in-law, and in the most shocking moment of the movie, he Sєxually ᴀssaults Blanche while his wife is giving birth to their child. Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando were a perfect match for the conflict in the movie, and the film received four Oscar nominations for acting.

Shockingly, Marlon Brando was the only one of the four actors who didn’t win an Oscar, losing to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. However, even with the loss, Brando showed in this performance why he remains so acclaimed as an actor, delivering a pᴀssionate performance and always aware of his purpose in a scene.

In The Godfather, Marlon Brando was mainly a stationary figure, the man who pulled the strings and ran his empire from his home. While still a masterful performance, A Streetcar Named Desire had him even more active, lashing out at those around him and proving a destructive force who doesn’t care who he hurts.

A Streetcar Named Desire & The Godfather Highlight The Range Of Brando’s Acting Career

Marlon Brando earned eight Oscar nominations over his career, all for Best Actor, until 1989, when he earned his first Best Supporting Actor nomination. He won for On the Waterfront and The Godfather, both of which were masterful performances. A Streetcar Named Desire stands up well with both of those movies.

In The Godfather, Brando showed his calm demeanor, but still dominated every scene in which he appeared. He would quietly deliver his lines, but with enough intensity to make everything he said mean something. In A Streetcar Named Desire, he lashed out, yelled, and exploded in the scenes, a very different performance.

Marlon Brando delivered varied performances throughout his career, whether in crime dramas like On the Waterfront, where he was a beaten man, or erotic dramas like Last Tango in Paris, where he delivered a late-era Sєxual performance. In The Godfather and A Streetcar Named Desire, he showed the range that made him a star.