The Streets of San Francisco (Quinn Martin, 1972)
Before concluding his acting career, in the 1970s, Karl Malden starred in the successful television series "The Streets of San Francisco", which plays the veteran and widower Police Lieutenant Mike Stone, along with his young assistant Steve Keller ( Michael Douglas) will be in charge of investigating crimes in the City of San Francisco. With 119 episodes, the series made Malden a world-renowned actor, somewhat ironic, given the great recognition within American cinema since the golden age of Hollywood. A sober and very comfortable Malden in the role, since it seems to have been faithfully written for his personality and his type of character.
Nevada Smith (1966)
Western genre film, based on a text by Harold Robbins and directed by Hathaway. Despite the conventionality of the story, the rise of this avenging gunslinger is captivated not only by high-quality acting work but also by the great directing talent of Henry, who develops his series of clichés with great energy and that adventure tone so distinctive of his filmography. Likewise, under his direction, McQueen gives one of his best "dramatic" performances (in the skin of a wandering avenger who will have to search for the three who killed his father), also supported by a superb Karl Malden as one of the three antagonistic gunmen.
The Gunfighter (Henry King, 1950)
We are possibly facing the most unjustly forgotten classic of the western, with remarkable narrative agility and that only uses 7 scenarios for its high impression of drama and suspense, changing the interiors and exteriors of a canteen for the bullets, giving the story justification necessary for its culmination in one of the most tragic endings and climaxes of the Wild West. One of those scenarios, the main one, is graced by the presence of Malden, a bartender who serves as the humanist nexus of the redeemed and disgraced gunman (a sublime Gregory Peck). A very charismatic and important supporting role for this poetic sketch is the shadow of the social intolerance that persecutes the figure of the gunman.
Fear Strikes Out (Robert Mulligan, 1957)
A tape that incredibly despite being almost over 50 years old is still valid. At a time when the issue of athletes suffering from anxiety attacks has been raised again, Fear Strikes Out tells us the story of a baseball player named Jim Piersall, who begins to suffer a nervous breakdown, which is largely derived from several “daddy issues” that he had in his childhood. Excellently well written, especially for the character development and the psychological background of Piersall and his dad, complement two excellent performances by Perkins and Malden. It is a film that beyond baseball offers an interesting psychological portrait of frustrated dreams transmitted from children to parents.
A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951)
Soap opera of great cinematographic level and that responds to the theatrical conception of both its director and his students; Kazan's ability to transform a single stage into a chair of dynamism and planes is excellent, as is the first communion with his pupil Marlon Brando in a double statute on the great capture of emotional-mental degradation in the relationship of the couple, a toxicity that would become the hallmark of his playwright filmography. The presence of the toxic lady par excellence, Vivien Leigh, also helps to a great extent to sustain this planetary system of emotions, where Malden acts as a balance point at the best and same acting level of the two aforementioned.
