The image is that of a photographer doing his job at a wedding party. Suddenly, the eldest son of the bride’s father grabs him from behind, grabs his camera, throws it on the floor and then contemptuously throws him some bills and leaves. The photographer is terrified. The actor who personifies him, too. Because the scene is improvised by his attacker and remains in the final cut of The Godfather (1972). The son with few fleas of Don Corleone was James Caan, one of the best interpreters of his generation. His family announced that she passed away on Wednesday at the age of 82.
James Edmund Caan was born on March 26, 1940 in the Bronx., one of the typical scenarios for characters like his Santino Corleone. The son of German Jews, he played football for the University of Michigan team before continuing his studies at Hofstra University in New York state. where he met Francis Ford Coppola.
He began to attend theater groups and studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School, later moving to off-Broadway. Already inserted in the commercial circuit, the possibility of television in series such as Ruta 66 y Combat, and soon after, the cinema. Her first film role was a cameo in Sweet Irmaby Billy Wilder, just 22 years old. the western The Glory Guysfrom 1965, put him in the crosshairs. He was nominated for a Golden Globe as new star of the year.
One year later rubbed shoulders with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in The Golden, the penultimate film by Howard Hawks. filmed Countdown under the orders of Robert Altman before starring, in 1969, The Rain Peoplehis first collaboration with Coppola.
Three years later he was part of the cast of The Godfather. He was nominated for an Oscar as supporting actor, in a quintet that also included Al Pacino and Robert Duvall, his partners in the film.. The scene of Santino’s death, riddled with bullets at a toll booth, remained one of the most iconic in the film.
After love leave until midnight and his brief appearance in the flashback that closes The Godfather II, Caan opted for rough paperssuch asThe Killer Elite from Sam Peckinpah, who reunited him with Duvall; and the futuristic Rollerball, directed by Norman Jewison. He had time to make himself into Silent Movie of Mel Brooks and a bowling in 1941 by Steven Spielberg.
In 1980 he directed Hide in Plain Sight, his only experience as a director. It was a box office flop. He compensated the following year with the success of ThiefMichael Mann’s directorial debut. However, he acted little in the cinema in the 80s, a decade in which the most significant thing was the reunion with Coppola in stone gardens.
The early ’90s saw him as part of the all-star cast of Dick Tracy of Warren Beatty and as Bette Midler’s counterpart in for the boys. They were not years of memorable titles, but in 1990 the decade left his most remembered image along with that of Sonny Corleone: that of the writer Paul Sheldon in Miseryhostage of a fanatical reader of his books (the shocking Kathy Bates won an Oscar) who forces him to write a novel for her while she is holding him prisoner and tortures him after having found him injured on the road.
Caan began the new millennium with a role close to that of Sonny in The Way of the Gunas in charge of solving the problems of a mobster. And she had a secondary but decisive appearance in The Betrayal/The Yards (2000), James Gray’s masterpiece. He alternated roles in Dogville by Lars von Trier and the Super Agent 86 movie, in which he played the president of the United States. The comedy Queen Beesfrom 2021, meant his last presence on the screen.