Unlike other actors, he can turn 'fucking' decay into magic and transform it into high art. —Pacino in American Film Arts Awards for Scarface
"Por Una Cabeza" (One Step Away) by Argentine tango singer Carlos Cardel is a very famous tango song that has appeared in many film scores, and its most classic use in the film must be Martin Brewster's 1992 "Smell the Woman".
When the music starts, the blind Al Pacino and the sexy girl Gabriel Anwar dance a beautiful tango dance on the dance floor, leaving a deep mark on the history of world cinema.
And Al Pacino himself is worth remembering forever. Today is his 80th birthday, and seeing this day, I can't help but realize that we have grown up, and the good actors who accompanied us to grow up are also old.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01 before becoming a godfather; after The Irishman
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Before becoming a godfather
Al Pacino didn't instantly become famous, and before becoming a hit with The Godfather, Pacino had acted in plays for many years. In addition, he first began to study acting, not on purpose, but because the Performing Arts Middle School was the only school willing to accept him.
Born 80 years ago today, Al Pacino was born in the South Side of the Bronx, New York, usa, and is a descendant of Italian Sicilians, yes, Sicily, the birthplace of the mafia. In this way, Pacino's role as the godfather is really a fate in the dark.
But two years later, Pacino's parents divorced, so he had to live with his mother and grandparents. The unfortunate and lonely single parenthood made little Pacino very sensitive and nervous, and for a time he had no friends.
At the age of nine, he began to "grow fast" and "fall quickly." Sex became the first door to his heart, a nine-year-old, lustful and reckless, and soon after, he had his first sexual experience with a girl. Then start smoking and chewing tobacco again, and finally again marijuana.
Pacino firmly knew the world in his own way, until he went to middle school. Because his grades were so bad that only the acting school was willing to ask him, he went to study acting.
"I was always acting at that time – over-acting. It's not that you do things too much, it's that you act too much. --Pacino in middle school
During this period, he became exposed to Stanislavsky's theory and starred in his first work, a school drama adaptation of "Family Sweet Murder". But that period soon ended again, and he dropped out of school in his sophomore year of high school for the simple reason that he had spent all his tuition. Pacino, who had no money, began to work, and he would do anything, as long as it was a service industry you could think of, of course, he only sold his labor, not black circles.
It all ended when he started to really get interested in acting. After several years of acting training, he joined Lee Strasberg's actor studio. Then I started writing plays with friends. At the age of 28, he won the Obi Award for Best Actor in a Play Obi Award for Drama for his play "Indians Want the Bronx" (Zun Long also won this award).
The work that officially opened Pacino's film career was Jerry Schatzberg's 1971 Poisoned Sea Mandarin Duck. The film attracted him a lot of attention and attracted the then-rookie Hollywood director Francis Coppola, who invited Pacino and the lonely actor of the time, Marlon Brando, to star in his new mafia film, The Godfather. The final result is known to everyone, the "Godfather" trilogy became the originator of Hollywood gangster movies, and Pacino became the hottest actor in Hollywood.
After The Irishman
I believe that many people on the day of the 92nd Academy Awards, are eagerly waiting for the final result, the author is no exception, thinking that "The Irishman" will always take one of the two nominations, but did not expect that "Parasite" won a Grand Slam, Bong Joon-ho's tribute to the old horse when receiving the best director award is still vivid.
When I was in school, I was studying the work of director Martin Scorsese. --Bong Joon-ho
"The Irishman" and "The Godfather", Bong Joon-ho and Scorsese have cleverly grasped the spirit of "inheritance". The former is the reunion of mafia veterans after old age, and the latter is the handover of the baton of film status.
Speaking of Pacino, "The Irishman" was his first collaboration with Scorsese, but his performance in the film did not have the slightest sense of alienation. The gangster godfather with Pacino's anger did not erase his former glory in the half-hidden door. As for the Oscar nomination, Pacino is already very open:
"Right now, I'm doing a little thing, a new role that interests me, but I have to clear my head and put these awards and things like that on back so that I can reopen myself and see if I want to continue to do that." You'll never expect the final result, but so far, I feel lucky to be able to do everything I want. ”
Now, Pacino has decided to write a memoir about himself to comb through his life. "I probably talk a lot about things in books that have nothing to do with acting, so people wonder how it can be understood in today's world."
It can be seen that in his later years, Pacino still loves the world, and "The Irishman" is both an answer sheet for his ten years of silence and an oath of immortality, in short, this is not the end.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02 with De Niro, enemy of the method school & confidant of the acting field</h1>
What can I learn from Stanislavsky? He's Russian, and I'm from the South Bronx. — 13-year-old Pacino
In martial arts novels, the protagonists with superb martial arts skills generally have a sympathetic opponent, and the two usually have different positions or pursuits in kung fu, such as Ye Gucheng and Ximen Chuixue, and Ouyang Feng and Hong Qigong. The same applies to Robert De Niro and Pacino. No matter what the occasion, as long as one of them is mentioned by name, the other person will follow.
Both based on Stanislavsky's theory of performance. The difference is that Parsinobay was under the Methodist master Lee Strasberg, while De Niro studied under Stella Adler. Both were stanislavskis, but had elaborate divisions, with Strasberg focusing on methods, with a major emphasis on "emotional memory" and "improvisation," while Adler emphasized "imagination" and "action." The point of disagreement between the two is "emotional memory", that is, the requirements for the inner state of the actor. To put it simply, the former instructs the actor to go deep into the inner world to analyze himself, which can leave the script to a certain extent; the latter instructs the actor to sort out the prescribed situation in the script itself.
As Strasberg's most outstanding disciple, Pacino has always followed his deductive rules and paid attention to "authenticity", which is also the reason for the great success of Michael Corleone in "The Godfather", the protagonist was originally a pampered young son, who did not care about inheriting the mafia family, but the turning point was the death of his brother and the bullet of his father, and suddenly, the idle Corleone quickly fell into a state of dilemma, and this extremely contradictory position was very similar to Pacino's "self". And this is also the reason why Coppola smelled his temperament earlier and chose him.
Similarly, in "Scarface", in order to interpret the role of the gang boss Tony Montana, he has achieved the essence of Pacino-style anger, and has left the role of Montana itself, becoming a combination of the gangster godfather and Pacino himself, all emotions are leaked, violence, anger, and speech are amplified. So Montana became one of Pacino's most explosive characters.
Adler put a lot of emphasis on "emotional experience", so De Niro seriously learned boxing from the character archetype boxer for a year before starring in "Angry Bull", while gaining 60 pounds for the changes in the role later. When filming "Taxi Driver", it was to be more like a taxi driver, and he specially drove a taxi for half a month. In order to experience the role, quickly enter the play.
It can be seen that Pacino and De Niro have fundamental differences in the way they perform. Perhaps because of this, as well as the contradictions of the masters themselves, the two rarely cooperated (the earliest was "The Godfather 2"). Although Pacino has long said that the two have become personal friends in their 20s, in the eyes of most passers-by, the two as the benchmark figures of the Hollywood method, if not sworn enemies, must be competitors who fight for the head and blood.
Therefore, the emergence of "Thief Line" in 1995 gave the two the opportunity to cooperate again after 20 years. In this film, Pacino plays Detective Hanna, De Niro plays the bandit Leader Macaulay, and the fans' fantasy of the confrontation between the two in reality is finally realized on the screen, but unlike the fixed personnel of the police and the bandit in the past, Hanna is sick and anxious, and Macaulay is a gentleman, and the gap between identity and personality has become the best touchstone for the duo's performance skills.
Director Michael Mann gave the most accurate assessment of this, "De Niro sees it as a process of construction, works very hard, and shapes the character through a detail, just like I.M. Pei did." Al is different, and at the same time parsing the character from the depths of his heart, as if he would stare intently at the canvas for several hours, and then start to splash ink, and a vivid character will jump out. ”
I felt like he was like my brother and I trusted him. And thank you Robert for letting me play this role – it was his idea, the whole project. — 79-year-old Pacino
As mentioned earlier, "The Irishman" is the first collaboration between Scorsese and Pacino, and the matchmaker is De Niro, who is related to the old horse for "Poor Streets and Back Alleys", and the later "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" have completed the old horse and won the film emperor for De Niro.
So, when De Niro developed the project "The Irishman", thinking of the level of reaction of the audience of "Thief of Fire", he took the initiative to invite Pacino to join, so that they reunited after forty years of the godfather to release the style of an old-school gangster movie
For Pacino, even though there aren't so many suitable roles in the circle for him. But he is still full of spirit and active in film and television works, and the current popular American drama "The Hunt for Nazis" is the best proof. And, to some extent, Pacino offers us a non-nagging and valuable solution when people get older—sticking to what they love to do and then doing it until they're old.