Montgomery Clift: An American Original
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physically broken-down before his time. Laurence Harvey, in the superb BSRM
entry, Room at the Top (1959), seems to take a page out of Clift’s roles in the
Heiress and A Place in the Sun, as his desire to advance economically and
socially drives him to marry for money over love and ultimately to the suicide of
his mistress. While more in the swaggering, macho and dangerous rebel mode of
Brando, Richard Harris, in This Sporting Life (1963), displays the Cliftian
elements of quiet self-belief (Harris bluntly refuses to negotiate down in his
rugby contract ffom what he believes he is worth) and an awkwardness around
women (his early, futile attempts at courting his landlady are tinged with a
profound sense of pathos and serve to add to the downbeat nature of the film).
IV. The Spirit of Clift in the Strängest of Places: Rocky Balboa and the
Punk Rock Movement
What do Rocky Balboa and elements of the punk rock movement have
in common with Montgomery Clift? Quite a bit, really. We observe elements of
Clift in the original Rocky (1976) film, as the main character, Rocky Balboa, is a
sensitive loner and Outsider (a joumeyman boxer, by definition, is an Outsider to
the realm of fistic mainstream acceptance) whose shyness leads to inarticulacy
around women. While Clift, like Rocky, is seen as somewhat uncommunicative,
that trait was bom out of Clift’s self-assured aloofness; with Rocky, however, it
emerged from a lack of confidence in his conversational skills. Clift is noted as
demonstrating, “...zeal, fortitude, endurance and lack of complaint in the face of
persecution” (Lawrence 184) in roles such as I Confess (1953) and From Here
to Eternity. The same characteristics can be attributed to Rocky Balboa. Both
Stallone (at least in the first of the Rocky films) and Clift throughout his career
demonstrate a refreshing lack of ego in their work. This lack of overwhelming
ego sets Clift and early Stallone apart from Dean, Brando and Sid Vicious—who
will be discussed in greater detail shortly—an artist whose ego was far in excess
of his talent and professionalism.
What ultimately places Rocky in a different realm than what we see in
Clift’s work is realism. While Rocky, with its gritty, urban location filming and
clumsiness portrayed in the courtship between Rocky and Adrian, attempted to
convey a sense of realism, the plot was so absurd as to lose all credibility. The
film ultimately fails in this regard, as its underlying theme is outrageous enough
to make Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) look like an exercise in neorealism.
Joe Queenan describes Sylvester Stallone as “...A witless faux prole” and the
original Rocky film as “cheerfiilly moronic” (2). These are adjectives one would
never hear applied to Montgomery Clift or any of his films, so Rocky Balboa—
despite channeling many Cliftian characteristics—ultimately falls short of
embodying the ethos of Clift in the realism arena.
In Sid Vicious, one also observes Cliftian attributes. The punk and
progressive music scene has shown a fascination with Montgomery Clift dating
back to “The Right Profile” by The Clash (1979); “Monty Got a Raw Deal” by
R.E.M. (1992) followed. The year 2007 brought us the tunes, “Montgomery