I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale
Dir: Richard Shepard
2009
****
I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale is a short but sweet look at the work and method of the late great John Cazale. Cazale stared in many successful plays in his early career but only starred in five feature films before dying at a young age. Those five films are celebrated as being five of the very best films of all time, his performance in each being a major part in each's success. His raw and powerful performance is amazing in The Deer Hunter, his last film, even though he is clearly very ill. His performance in The Conversation is subtle and heartbreaking and his turn as Salvatore 'Sal' Naturale in Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon is one of the most intense and nervously exciting in the history of cinema. However, it is his role as Fredo Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II that people will best remember. The "I knew it was you" line is where most people will know him from and why the film is titled as such (even though the actual line was in fact 'I know it was you, Fredo'). None of these films would have been half as great as they are had it not been for Cazale's performance but now, all these years after his death, people still don't know his name. They should, and the likes of Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Richard Dreyfuss, Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet, Sam Rockwell and Gene Hackman are all on hand to explain exactly why. Al Pacino was a close friend of Cazale and once said that "All I wanted to do was work with John for the rest of my life. He was my acting partner. Meryl Streep talks candidly about the romance she had with him (they were engaged and she stayed with him until he died), something that Pacino commented on, saying "I've hardly ever seen a person so devoted to someone who is falling away like John was. To see her in that act of love for this man was overwhelming". Sidney Lumet had just been diagnosed with lymphoma and Gene Hackman came out of retirement, especially to speak well of their old and much missed friend and to profess their admiration for him as a person and as a performer. Steve Buscemi, Sam Rockwell and Philip Seymour Hoffman all site him as an influence with Steve Buscemi saying that every young actor wishes they had played Michael Corleone in The Godfather, then they grow and develop and realize that Fredo Corleone was actually the more interesting character of the movie. Everyone agreed though that he made them up their game. There have been countless great films that have not been made due to Cazale's premature death but without him, we might not have had such great films from those who he inspired. A lovely, albeit a little short documentary.