Part star, part supporting actor, Robert Duvall lit up 1970s American cinema – and kept going
- Written by Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, Adelaide University
Robert Duvall, who has died at the age of 95, will be remembered for a glittering career that saw him appear in two of American cinema’s most iconic films. But let’s not forget the other hundred or so more across a career spanning six decades.
Duvall was as comfortable in disposable fare like Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) as he was in thoughtful dramas such as True Confessions (1983).
In 1990 alone, he played Tom Cruise’s mentor in the NASCAR epic Days of Thunder followed by The Commander in Volker Schlöndorff’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale.
Acting is listening
Born in 1931 in San Diego, Duvall was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and enlist in the US Navy. But his love of acting led him to theatre and television in New York. There, he learned his trade – he once remarked the most important aspect of acting was talking and listening.
He made his film debut in 1962, playing Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Duvall dyed his hair blonde and avoided sunlight for six weeks to capture the character’s gaunt, fragile look. From then on, he was rarely off the screen, appearing in classic genre films Bullitt (1968), True Grit (1969) and M*A*S*H (1970).
Film historian David Thomson wrote Duvall was “neither beautiful nor forceful enough to carry a big film”. Yet he was nominated for an Academy Award seven times, winning once in 1984. His most recent nomination was in 2015 for The Judge, where he played Robert Downey Jr’s crankily dominating father accused of murder.
He was often drawn to authoritative historical figures, portraying iconic outlaw Jesse James in The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid (1972), as well as Adolf Eichmann, Dwight Eisenhower and the confederate general Robert E. Lee.
Working with Coppola
Like so many of his contemporaries, Duvall idolised Marlon Brando.
It was fitting, then, that Duvall’s breakthrough role came in 1972, and his role as Tom Hagen, consigliere to Brando’s mob boss, in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) and its sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974).
His performance as clean-cut Hagen is majestic – all quiet menace and uneasy conviviality.
Coppola cast Duvall again in Apocalypse Now (1979), as Kilgore, the surfing-loving, Stetson-wearing, Wagner-listening colonel who, despite the bloodshed of the Vietnam War, is helplessly addicted to its carnage.
It’s a deeply unsettling cameo (Duvall was on-screen for only ten minutes of the three-hour running time), but his calm and complete control in the middle of The Ride of the Valkyries scene is one of contemporary cinema’s most indelible moments. His speech steals the show.
Seeking stardom
The followup was Tender Mercies (1983), in which he played Mac Sledge, a washed-up country music singer struggling with alcoholism. Sledge’s attempts to rebuild his life and find redemption after hitting rock bottom is a world away from the bombast of Kilgore.
Duvall beautifully captures Sledge’s laconic, introspective nature and promptly won the Best Actor Oscar.
Yet true stardom would prove elusive.
Unlike his counterparts Al Pacino, Robert de Niro and Jack Nicholson, or Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman (with whom he shared an apartment in the 1950s), Duvall remained “an actor’s actor” – talented, versatile, happy to play a supporting role, pivoting between paycheck film and passion project.
If the hallmark of a great actor is how effortlessly they deliver their lines and how plausible they are, then Duvall’s relaxed professionalism ensured he remained Hollywood’s most sought-after supporting actor.
Look again at this scene in Network (1976). As TV executive Frank Hackett, Duvall plays anger, vulnerability and humour all at once as he faces off against William Holden. Look at how his hands move and how he dabs his brow as he raises his voice.
Highly accomplished actors always make bold choices in terms of body language, posture and vocal delivery – Duvall’s work here is exemplary.
Throughout the 1990s, Duvall continued to deliver outstanding performances across various genres. He admitted his favourite role was as Stalin in the 1992 HBO movie, in part because of the challenge of portraying monstrous, morally compromised characters and finding a glimmer of vulnerability.
A late bloomer
He then wrote, directed and starred in the wonderful The Apostle (1997). As Sonny Dewey, the charismatic and passionate Pentecostal preacher from Texas who goes on the run and starts a new life in a small Louisiana town, Duvall received another Oscar nomination in this startling tale about the quest for forgiveness.
One critic called it a “sublime exploration of what it is to be a human being, struggling somewhere between good and evil, sin and redemption”. The Apostle was a labour of love for Duvall (he invested US$4 million of his own money to ensure it got made). It’s one of his best films.
Duvall at the 2007 Emmy awards, with his trophies for the miniseries Broken Trail.
AP Photo/Chris Carlson
He continued to appear in quirky work that surprised his loyal fanbase. He was quietly marvellous in Assassination Tango (2002), playing John J, a hitman who travels to Argentina for a job. When the hit is postponed, John J explores the world of tango clubs (the dance became an obsession for Duvall, and he spent much of his later life in Buenos Aires).
The film’s leisurely pace recalls earlier Duvall films, in which he worked with such slow-burning directors as Philip Kaufman, Sam Peckinpah and Sidney Lumet.
When asked to explain how he was able to tap into the darkness within his characters, Duvall described his approach as “all about percentages – perhaps 80% negative personal qualities and 20% positive on one day, and the next day, you reverse it.”
For an actor incapable of a false moment, this equation sums up Duvall’s entire career – authentic, unpredictable and ego-free.
Authors: Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, Adelaide University
