The Essentials: Al Pacino’s Best Performances

Some icons are so enduring, so ubiquitous, so larger than life, they take on an air of invulnerability. Some renowned figures seem to last forever and it’s possible to take them for granted. Take Alfredo James Pacino, who has been around for on screen for five decades in every role imaginable and somehow is just two years away from turning 80 years old (he turns 78 next month). The thought blows our mind, frankly. Al has been with all of us, all our lives on screen through good and bad, amazing and distressing films, moments and eras. And in the 11-year history of The Playlist, somehow, shockingly enough, we’ve never created an essentials or retrospective of this venerable actor. It’s apparently been easy to not quite fully appreciate having a living legend in our midst.

A rare “Triple Crown of Acting” performer, winning an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony, Al Pacino is simply one of the greatest actors in American Film History, and when he’s long gone, we’ll look back on him as one of the rare Marlon Brando-types of our day. It’s perhaps become a bit easy to forget or, take Pacino for granted.

The Academy Awards surely has. Going on close to 60 films credits, while Pacino has been nominated for an Oscar eight times, he only won once, an after-the-fact, “you’re due” award for “Scent Of A Woman,” (a broad performance we couldn’t even bear to put on this list). Yes, despite nominations for “The Godfather Part I and II,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico” and other timeless classics, Pacino would not win an Oscar until 1993

While respected and adored, everyone’s overlooked Al. It’s, as the Village Voice aptly put it this week, absolutely bewildering that there’s never been a film retrospective of Pacino’s work in New York. Never! And this is an actor who’s arresting 1970s work practically defined New York City in the tumultuous decade when he rocketed to prominence: his startling breakout turn in “Panic In Needle Park” centered on heroin junkies who shoot up in Manhattan’s Upper West Side; the Corleone’s of “The Godfather” are an infamous New York crime family; the corruption of the NYPD was never more blistering than it was in “Serpico,” perhaps the defining New York film of the 1970s; the problematic, and essentially homophobic “Cruising” is set in the underbelly of New York’s gay scene; and “Dog Day Afternoon’s” famous botched heist takes place in Brooklyn. Perhaps like no other actor on the planet, aside from maybe Robert De Niro, Pacino is defined by New York, and the city defined by him (This is all without mentioning Pacino’s five year, pre-film stage career almost of it centered in and around the Big Apple).

So, to right this egregious wrong, The Quad Cinema is running New York’s first Al Pacino retrospective, with over 30 titles; 23 on 35mm. Running now until March 30, the retrospective will coincide with the U.S. theatrical premiere engagements of Pacino’s “Wilde Salomé” and its companion piece “Salomé” starring Jessica Chastain (a film that was shot in 2011 and did the film festival rounds, our review here, but never saw the light of day in the U.S. until now).

So yes, the appreciation is well overdue, and with this massive, must-see retrospective currently running, we thought it was high time to weigh in on this force of nature’s essential films.

“The Panic In Needle Park” (1971)
In only his second film role, Pacino had shown that he was destined for even greater things to come. As Bobby, a fast-talking hustler, drug dealer, and addict who frequents Sherman Square – aka “Needle Park” – Pacino demonstrates nearly every spectrum of his acting range. At one moment, he’s the subdued New York native who is authentic and down-to-Earth with the people he’s with, and at the next, spurts of rage burst out of him like a soda can that’s been shaken and opened too soon. It also helps that he has another terrific actor to play off of. As good, if not better, is Kitty Winn who plays Helen, Bobby’s new girlfriend who moved to the city and decides to stick it out with him instead of moving back home. In what feels like a clear inspiration on the Safdie Brothers’ excellent “Heaven Knows What,” “The Panic in Needle Park” mimics the ebbs and flows of heroin use to perfection – moving at a clip and at times slowing to a crawl – and ends on the bittersweet note of two people doomed to repeat the cycle. It’s because of Pacino and Winn that the ending sticks the tricky landing. – Ryan Oliver

“The Godfather” (1972) and “The Godfather Part II” (1974)
It’s telling that amongst an ensemble that includes Marlon Brando, James Caan, Diane Keaton, and Robert Duvall that Pacino walks away with the strongest performance. Of course, it helps that the trilogy is Michael Corleone’s story and that he has one of the greatest character arcs in the history of cinema. The golden son who rejected the family business to join the military, comes home and takes up the mantle out of guilt, and struggles to keep his mind at ease trying to balance being an honest man while keeping the family business afloat. The strength of Pacino’s performance is in the eyes. Michael is perceptive, reading his immediate environment and playing the long game when it comes to business and relationships. He’ll make the right decision at whatever cost, even if it destroys his feelings (notably over Fredo’s fate at the end of ‘Part II’). Countless quotes and imitation in popular culture almost always stem from Brando’s Vito Corleone, but it is largely Pacino who gives “The Godfather” the soul that has it looming large over every other cinematic trilogy. – RO

“Scarecrow” (1973)
A true 1970s gem painfully overdue for a proper reevaluation and rediscovery–Criterion Collection, we are looking in your direction; we’re talking restoration and everything–it’s a little bit nutty that you know 70s classics like “Serpico,” and “Dog Day Afternoon,” but might not be familiar with this shaggy buddy movie, perhaps not unlike “Midnight Cowboy” or “The Last Detail.” And there’s literally every reason you should. A follow-up to “The Panic in Needle Park” for its director Jerry Schatzberg and Pacino, the movie pits Al toe to toe with Gene Hackman during an era when the two of the titans were at the height of their powers. Shot by the legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Deer Hunter”), this shaggy road trip “odd couple” buddy movie focuses on a brawling ex-con drifter (Hackman) who partners up and head’s out east with a fragile homeless ex-sailor (Pacino). Quirky and sometimes meandering, at its core it’s a soulful tale of friendship, the need for empathy while lost and struggling for purpose in America. While mostly unknown to Americans (it was a box office bomb), and still not really considered a cult hit, in all fairness, it was highly regarded internationally where it won (or tied) the equivalent of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival when it was then known as the Grand Prix. Pacino recently told the Village Voice that Quentin Tarantino forced him to rewatch the film at his New Beverly Cinema. The reluctant star did and called the movie “a revelation… Jerry Schatzberg gets these two guys in that five-minute span to connect when they absolutely are opposite ends of the world.”  – Rodrigo Perez

“Serpico” (1973)
Al Pacino is an actor gifted with a phenomenal range of versatility and vulnerability. One of the brightest showcases of Pacino’s intimidating talents came from Sidney Lumet’s powerful, disquieting “Serpico.” As the titular Frank Serpico, a whistleblowing New York City police officer who exposed corruption in the police force and grew only more tormented by his decisions, Serpico remains one of Pacino’s most haunting and inhabited performances. A role that would give the legendary actor his second Oscar nomination, only a year after garnering his first for “The Godfather,” “Serpico” provides another extraordinary examination of Pacino’s nuance, depth and inner life breathed throughout his impeccable run in the ‘70s. Burdened by isolation, frustration, and self-determination, it’s a pivotal, extraordinary role for Pacino and one that only solidified his excellence. It’s an epic, pulsating, brilliantly displayed demonstration of Pacino’s stunning, immensely immersing on-screen talents. – Will Ashton

“Dog Day Afternoon” (1975)
Progressive, deeply moving, thrilling, and sensuous (you can practically feel the heat and smell the sweat coming off of the screen), Sidney Lumet’s masterfully constructed thriller is a powder keg of a film, and a large portion of that comes from Pacino’s commanding performance as Sonny. Right from the beginning – as the ringleader of this bank heist gone awry – Sonny knows things did not go according to plan, and doubles-down on it, also knowing it’s not going to end up the way he wants to in the end. The movie grips you as a hostage film, but once Sonny’s real motivations come out – that the money is to pay for his lover’s sex change operation – it becomes a less hostile and more empathetic look at how far someone will go for the one they love. And even if Sonny doesn’t succeed, the truth will at least come out. Not only is the film itself complex, but Pacino’s performance is one of his most complex, as a man facing doom but keeping up the guise that suggests that he is in control. – RO

“Bobby Deerfield” (1977)
“Bobby Deerfield” stars Pacino as a narcissistic race car driver who falls in love with a terminally-ill woman played by Marthe Keller. While not well received by critics at the time, some critics called the film schmaltzy, the Sydney Pollack-directed race-car romance  did appeal to Roger Ebert who gave it 3 stars, describing it “a big, slick melodrama that knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and does so with great craft.” Ebert acknowledges “Deerfield’s” unabashed tearjerker tendencies and yet Ebert disagrees with the consensus critical opinion, saying that he appreciated the film’s “willingness to go for the grand gesture, to play it big.” Admittedly, ‘Deerfield’ isn’t exactly super compelling, but Pacino is always watchable. Slow moving and talky, “Bobby Deerfield” goes for an “European arthouse thing,” and Pollack never nails it. And as such includes such bizarre scenes as one where Pacino does a Mae West impression, and another where a woman tells Pacino that she doesn’t give a damn whether or not he wants an omelet, she’s gonna make him an omelet anyway. These scenes don’t play as high art, but they do end up contributing to the general sense of atonal weirdness that pervades “Bobby Deerfield” at the very least a curiosity that you might want to check off your list. —EF

“…And Justice For All” (1979)
A courtroom drama that redefined courtroom dramas for the ‘70s– the line “you’re out of order! The whole trial’s out of order!” has been parodied countless times in pop culture media including a memorable send-up on “The Simpsons” — filmmaker Norman Jewison’s “…And Justice For All” may feel fairly familiar now, but it’s only because it helped contemporize the virtuous idea of upholding the law and the righteous, principled lawyers who want to ensure justice is carried out in a grittier, more realistic setting. But it’s a lot funnier than you may think. Blackly satirical in its blistering indictment of the American justice system, practically rendered as an oxymoron in the movie, “…And Justice For All” actually resembles the work of Hal Ashby, Jewison’s protégé and editor who left him in 1969 to start his own career. It’s dead serious and grave, but also quite funny and sometimes scathingly amusing. About an ethical lawyer (Pacino), blackmailed into defending a repulsive Judge, whom he loathes, accused of brutally assaulting and raping a young woman (John Forsythe). Co-starring Jack Warden as a suicidal Judge and a-then fully coiffed Jeffrey Tambor as unstable Pacino’s law partner, “…And Justice For All,” straddles the line between comedy and drama, but it can feel slightly schizoid at times. While the movie perhaps isn’t quite as essentially as the rest of his oeuvre, Pacino was still justly nominated for Best Actor Academy Award. A biting look at corruption and how, money, greed and power distort and corrode the wheels of justice, ‘Justice’ may veer in tone occasionally, but when its firing on all cylinders and at its coherent best, the drama never wavers to Pacino’s relatively restrained and ardent performance. – RP

“Cruising” (1980)
A grimy serial killer crime drama set amongst the backdrop of the underground gay S&M subculture of New York City, “Cruising” was a bit of a comedown after William Friedkin’s terrific run of “The French Connection,” “The Exorcist,” and “Sorcerer.” However, minor Friedkin – coupled with a prime Pacino – is still worth seeking out. Pacino plays Steve Burns, a cop who goes undercover to track a killer who has been killing gay men who resemble Burns’ physicality. The two keys to the moderate successes of “Cruising” is the relationship between Burns and Ted (Don Scardino), a playwright who Burns befriends when he moves to his undercover apartment, and a dance scene at the leather bar midway through the movie. Until that point, Burns is awkward and hesitant during all of his encounters, coming across as suspicious. In this scene, Burns feels the music and lets his confidence radiate, and in doing so, both surrenders himself over to this facade he is portraying, but also comes into question with his own sexuality. The ambiguous ending does the film zero favors, but until that point, it is a compulsively watchable, if disjointed, crime procedural. – RO

“Scarface” (1983)
It would be difficult to put anything ahead of “Scarface” in terms of Pacino’s showiest, larger-than-life performance. Tony Montana’s image has been plastered across dorm room’s all over the country, inspired hip-hop concept albums, and has influenced other film characters, all of whom only remember the first two-thirds of the film and forget how it ends for Montana. “Scarface” is partially a sneak peek into the “HOOAH” phase of his career that would come in the wake of his Oscar win for “Scent of a Woman,” but the over-the-top aspects of Montana are perfectly harmonious with Brian De Palma’s bold and broad satire of the American dream. It’s less of a performance and more of a vessel for capitalistic ideals, and through the lens of 2018 eyes, the whitewashing is potentially problematic, but it would be difficult to imagine anyone else screaming “SAY HELLO TO MY LIL’ FRIEND!” with such fervor as Pacino. – RO