One role made James Caan legendary
Though not the star, James Caan made a memorable impression as Santino Corleone, the designated heir of a crime family, in “The Godfather.”
Watching that 1972 classic directed and co-written by Francis Ford Coppola, who can forget his public mauling of brother-in-law Carlo Rizzi over a family matter or his private assignation with a bridesmaid during sister Connie’s wedding reception? Or the constant frustration he caused his father and head of the family, Vito Corleone, memorably played by Marlon Brando, leading the Brando character to call him (not to his face) a “bad don, rest in peace?”
Few screen fadeouts are as spectacular as that of Sonny Corleone in a Long Island tollbooth while driving into New York to pummel his brother-in-law again for roughing up his sister. In a movie teeming with graphic violence, Sonny’s machine-gun sendoff moves Vito Corleone to say, “See how they have massacred my boy!” when his body is presented to a local undertaker in debt to the godfather.
Sonny’s gruesome ending demands payback but comes not via his father, anxious only to bring son Michael home from Sicily, where he had been in exile after gunning down a New York City police captain in cahoots with a drug dealer. In a chilling example of revenge being a dish best served cold, Michael (Al Pacino) in time takes control of the family business, famously depowering consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), “You’re out, Tom.”
Michael goes to on “settle all family business” with the mass slayings of his brother-in-law (“You have to answer for Santino”) and the rubouts of the other heads of New York’s five families. One is caught in bed with a mistress, another is pinned in a revolving door and others are gunned down leaving an elevator and descending a flight of steps. Moe Greene, the Las Vegas crime boss, was, like Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, shot in the eye, while getting a massage.
Michael does it all on the day that sister Connie’s child, for whom he serves as godfather in the traditional sense, is christened in a public ceremony. The movie ends when a door is shut on Kay Corleone as she sees firsthand her husband’s ascension to power, Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel ending with her “saying the necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.”
Winner of three Oscars, Best Picture included, “The Godfather” led to two sequels, with “Part II” named the top film of 1974.
Few pictures affect us so powerfully and have for as long, be it the Oscar-winning screenplay by Coppola and Puzo to the music of Nino Rota and the low-lighting camera shots of Gordon Willis. Brando, a longshot to play the lead role, his career in decline after past glories, was named Best Actor for the second time.
As for Jack Woltz, the Hollywood producer who initially declines to cast a character inspired by Frank Sinatra in an upcoming war movie, the timing is especially bad, the punishment dished out by the Corleones especially harsh. Woltz lives but, as someone wrote in review, had to cancel his day at the races.
This is written in the wake of the passing, at 82, of James Caan. Like Pacino and Duvall, he was nominated for an Oscar as Supporting Actor in 1972r, that year going to Joel Grey for playing the slimy nightclub operator in “Cabaret.”
Already famous for playing football star Brian Piccolo in “Brian’s Song,” Caan later starred Best Actress Kathy Bates in “Misery,” based on a Stephen King novel. John Wayne fans remember him reprising the Rick Nelson role in the 1967 remake of “El Dorado,” both directed by Howard Hawks, Caan was effective also as a song-and-dance man in “For the Boys,” co-starring Bette Midler. Coppola coaxed him to appear in “Part II” in a flashback scene that coincided with the bombing of Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7 being Vito Corleone’s birthday) and Michael entering the U.S. Army, Caan calling his brother “stupid” near the film’s end.
Caan never achieved the superstardom of Pacino, the 1992 Best Actor winner for “Scenes of a Marriage.” Try as he might, he could not play any role quite so well in a minor key. But, if for no other character, Caan will remembered as Sonny Corleone. Not since Warren Beatty in “Bonnie and Clyde” had a male lead on screen exited stage right under such a hail of bullets.