The “greatest actor of all time” is coming to a screen near you. A tribute to Marlon Brando is starting at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre from Tuesday.

Whether the angry young man (who died on July 1 at age 80, without any real signs of having mellowed), would have appreciated the tribute is a different matter. Brando had famously dismissed acting as “an empty and useless profession”, claiming he did it only for the money. But the anger and the eccentricity have not stopped the legendary star from being one of the most loved and lauded performers of his time, and beyond.

Starting his film career with The Men in 1950, and ending it with The Score in 2001, he received eight Academy Award nominations and won two, though he refused the second to protest the treatment of Native Americans.

The Seagull festival has had to stick to six films only, due to time constraints. In an effort to present him in a range of roles, a few lesser-known works have been included, though these “are thought to be some of his best work”, explained a spokesperson.

Brando may be best known to the uninitiated as Don Corleone of The Godfather. That is why it has been left out of the package. “Though many have seen films like A Streetcar Named Desire as well, there are still enough people who want to watch it,” Seagull officials added.

It’s a good thing, too, because a tribute to Brando would be incomplete without Streetcar... After Tennessee Williams approved him for the role of Stanley Kowalski in the stage production, he starred in Elia Kazan’s 1951 film version as well. To some of his fans, the line dividing Brando and Stanley have blurred.

“Even today I meet people who think of me automatically as a tough, insensitive, coarse guy named Stanley Kowalski. They can’t help it, but it is troubling,” wrote the actor in his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me.

Marlon Brando: Angry young man

Quemada, the opening film of the fest, is a noted work on racism, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, with a stunning score. The Men, 1950, was Brando’s first film after his stupendous success on stage with Streetcar... and also goes by the name of Battle Stripe. He plays a war veteran, paralysed in combat, a role for which he spent a month in a bed in a veterans’ hospital.

He joined forces with Elia Kazan once more for On the Waterfront. “There’s a line in the picture where he snarls, ‘Nobody tells me what to do.’ That’s exactly how I’ve felt all my life,” he was quoted in Portraits and Film Stills 1946-1995 as saying.

Calcutta may explore the legend’s on-screen persona this week but his personal life will remain forever elusive. While Brando had taken pains to keep it that way, such “tributes” may also have drawn a laconic smile. Keenly aware of an actor’s inherent narcissism, he said: “An actor’s a guy who, if you ain’t talking about him, ain’t listening.”

We’ll be talking about Brando for some time to come.