Cazales

There was an actor who never starred in a mediocre movie because he simply didn’t have time for it. John Cazale died of cancer in 1978, at the age of 42, leaving behind a filmography of just five titles. All of them were nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. An achievement incomparable to that of any other actor in the history of cinema. The perfect filmography. The scale. There’s a way to measure the quality of a film career that’s more telling than any box office or individual accolade: the percentage of an actor’s films that have been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Based on this criterion, the absolute winner is a semi-unknown actor: John Cazale participated in five feature films between 1972 and 1978. All five were nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. Even more: three of them took home the statuette: ‘The Godfather’ (1972), ‘The Godfather. Part II’ (1974) – in which he played the unforgettable Fredo Corleone – and ‘The Hunter’ (1978). His entire filmography generated a total of forty Oscar nominations. And the culmination: all his feature films were selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. 5 out of 5, 100% of his work, in the most important category of the most influential awards in the industry. Let’s compare. To understand: Meryl Streep, the actress with the most nominations in the history of the Oscars (21 nominations in total) has a filmography that exceeds ninety films in five decades of career. A dozen of his works have touched the category of Best Film, but the proportion with respect to his total filmography does not reach 15%. Jack Nicholson, with around eighty film credits, or Al Pacino, with more than sixty, present similar proportions. The greater the volume of work, the greater the exposure to relative failure: a mediocre director, a box office failure, a slight setback. Cazale didn’t have time to make a mistake. The momentum. Cazale entered the cinema at the height of New Hollywooda trend that transformed the American industry between the late sixties and mid-seventies: directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet and Michael Cimino broke with the model of the big studios and opted for darker stories, more ambiguous characters and character actors. Like Cazale: without the weight of fame, without the burden of stardom, available to embody weakness, betrayal and fear with ruthless effectiveness. Who was it? Born in 1935 in Revere, Massachusetts, John Cazale studied acting at Boston University with the help of a tutor who pushed his students towards the darkest aspects of each character. Before coming to the movies at the age of 36, he spent a decade in the New York off-Broadway theater, where he won several awards, and worked as a taxi driver and messenger, a job in which he met Al Pacino. a casting director recommended him to Coppola for ‘The Godfather’ and there he aroused glowing praise from colleagues like Pacino himself. He died shortly after turning forty, a victim of bone cancer. The case of the hunter. The admiration that Cazale aroused is perfectly summarized by what happened in ‘The Hunter’, a film that he filmed while he was sick. Michael Cimino hired him knowing the diagnosis, but Universal didn’t know, and when they found out they pushed for him to be replaced. What happened next is one of the most cited episodes of loyalty in Hollywood at the time. To start, De Niro paid the premium out of pocket of Cazale’s insurance because the production company could not cover it. Meryl Streep, then Cazale’s partner, threatened to walk out of filming if he was removed, and Cimino rearranged the production schedule to film all of his scenes first. ‘The Hunter’ was nominated for nine Oscars in 1979 and won five, including Best Picture, Best Director for Cimino and Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken. Cazale died nine months before the premiere. He was not able to see the film but his legacy, with an absolutely perfect filmography, will always endure. In Xataka | What would have happened to the 80s (and beyond) if Steven Spielberg had not been born