Al Pacino, who shot to fame in The Godfather, is for many the screen's finest actor. He comes to San Sebastián this week with his latest film Looking for Richard. Is he the King of Cinema or just another pretender? Nick Thomas reports
Is Al Pacino the world's greatest living screen actor? It's a moot point, and a sure fire way of initiating a debate among cinephiles. Other actors, such as Dustin Hoffman or Daniel Day-Lewis, are arguably better able to transmogrify themselves on-screen, while Harrison Ford, Paul Newman and Jeff Bridges (Pauline Kael's favourite) are better at playing those deceptively subtle everyman roles. He is not as versatile as Gene Hackman, nor is he yet a living legend like Marlon Brando, while his track record does not include as many great films as that of his closest rival, Robert De Niro.
Yet, Pacino fans argue, he has produced the definitive performance of modern American cinema, one for which he will be forgiven any number of subsequent misadventures. His role as Michael Corleone on Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, from part one in 1972 to part three in 1990, stands alongside any in screen history. Not least, it stands alongside that of Marlon Brando, playing his father.
The performances in the first two parts of Coppola's trilogy to some extent reflect the relationship between the actors. Brando's powerhouse performance, a glorious return to form after a decade of indifferent material, dominates the early part of the trilogy, and rightly won him an Oscar. But it is the rookie Pacino's transformation from apparently principled college boy to a don as chillingly cold and brutal as his father which, in retrospect, seems an even finer performance.
It is a beautifully complex and graduated performance. His veneer of cool control and restraint, in contrast to his hotheaded relatives and cohorts, gradually reveals, through telling gestures and subtle touches, a cruel and ruthless tyrant. And this in only his third film. It may not be entirely fanciful to see here the mantle of greatest actor being passed from father (Brando) to son (Pacino), parallel to Michael's assumption of power.
Though the subsequent 25 years have produced a number of fine performances, it could be argued that he has never been able quite to match the magnificence of that early performance. But then, who has? Pacino carries Michael Corleone with him, for better or worse, through every role he plays. It is both his defining moment as an actor, and, perhaps, his burden.
Another 'problem' with Pacino is his modest work-rate 20 films in 27 years is hardly prolific. In the 80s, for example, we had to wait four years after the debacle of Revolution for proof that he hadn't lost the plot. Fortunately, he turned in a reassuringly fine performance in Sea of Love, a workmanlike thriller which he nevertheless managed to lift on to a higher plane.
In his early films not just Godfather, but his work for Sidney Lumet in Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon and for Jerry Schatzberg in The Panic in Needle Park and Scarecrow he established a twitchy, unpredictable, nervously energetic persona whose dark vulnerability and sinister edge worked perfectly within the context of those films.
In the later work, however, Pacino's 'baggage' a combination of his on-screen qualities and an off-screen star persona sometimes threatens to overburden the films. Playing a gangster, in Carlito's Way or even Scarface, Pacino can never quite escape Michael Corleone's shadow, brilliant though his performance is as coke-fuelled monster Tony Montana in Brian De Palma's film.
It is difficult, moreover, to picture him as the low key loser (opposite Michelle Pfeiffer) of Frankie and Johnny. And while his Oscar-winning depiction of a blind army officer in Scent of a Woman was a bravura piece of showmanship, that is not necessarily the same thing as a great performance.
Among his contemporaries, the most obvious comparison is with Robert De Niro. Both Italian-Americans from New York, both devotees in their different ways of the Method school of acting, both offering edginess and more than a hint of violence. Their much-hyped on-screen meeting in Michael Mann's Heat was certainly a welcome reminder of both men's talents.
But while De Niro found a perfect guide and collaborator in Martin Scorsese, Pacino has found no director since Coppola able to channel his talents to quite such a degree. As Coppola's career trickles off into oblivion with the likes of the forthcoming Jack, it now seems unlikely that the partnership could provide one more return to glory for Pacino (as Coppola, of course, did for Brando).
For his latest project, he has chosen to direct himself, returning to his first love, the theatre, for inspiration. His work on stage has won him plaudits and honours over the last three decades, and now he has tried to combine the two worlds with Looking for Richard. Both a filmed version of Shakespeare's Richard III, and a study of the making of the film, it has received a warm critical reception. Pacino may now be the elder statesman of American cinema, but he's still taking risks, and has a lot of acting left in him. For that, we can only be grateful.
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