The actor who played the legendary Sonny Corleone has died, leaving behind an extraordinary filmography that reflects Hollywood for history.
In Francis Ford Coppola's book The Godfather Notebook published in 2016, the director tells a curious anecdote about the actors who played the Corleone family. Once the film's central cast was complete, a few scenes were filmed that didn't make much of an impact. They were just actors interacting with each other. Ford Coppola, who maintained a long communication via mail with the author of the original novel Mario Puzzo for months, knew that the mafia was more than just a criminal organization. It was a lifestyle and something more related to the family, the sensitive marrow of a singular idea about transgression and devotion to the head of the clan. And that was exactly what the director wanted to show in his film. How to achieve something similar? After several attempts and mediocre results, Coppola had an idea.
“I asked them to eat together,” the director writes in the book. “Everyone, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, John Cazale, Robert Duvall, and James Caan sat down at the table. There was pasta, wine, and dessert. I told them: eat and talk to each other”. Little by little, the actors, who barely knew each other, began to laugh and joke out loud. And immediately, Coppola understood the dynamics of the Corleone family. The way strange bond between all the members of the clan was shown in jokes, comments, and even gestures. But it was James Caan who left the most lasting mark. “It was Santino Corleone. Strong, impetuous. The one who laughed out loud, the one who tilted his head to listen, the center of all the energy at the table. The ideal actor to play a relentless, unstoppable, and beloved older brother.
Something about the personality of Santino 'Sonny' Corleone defined the recently deceased James Caan for a good part of his career. Turned into an idol and movie icon, the actor earned a reputation as impulsive, complicated, and stormy. Also, of being a force of nature, whose presence was extraordinary. Even from his first and brief roles on television in series such as The Untouchables (1959-1963), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-1965), Combat! (1962-1967), Ben Casey (1961-1966), Dr. Kildare (1961-1966), Rodeo (1962-1963), and Route 66 (1961), Caan stood out for his overwhelming personality. “I remember that many times, they asked me if my character was strong. What was the meaning of that force? ”, he wondered aloud in an interview for Variety a few years ago. “I understood that every character has a story, a life, and energy. I imprinted that on everyone, even the little ones, whom I barely interpreted for minutes.
Caan was an intuitive and brilliant actor. One who had a formidable physical presence, surprising and uncomfortable. "Jimmy was a big man, with a stevedore's gait and he was impressive in size," Coppola recounted in The Godfather Notebook. “And while Sonny was portrayed in the books as sensual and violent, Jimmy portrayed him as unstoppable. A fundamental energy that showed the first generation of the Corleones. Everything that America had given them and what they expected of the future. For Caan, acting always had something of that conviction of invisible power, pure energy condensed in stories like elaborate language. So much so that it overflowed scenarios, demands, or limits.
A man with the necessary strength to succeed
"I don't need Hollywood," he said in an interview with Rolling Stone. It was the year 1981 and the actor was going through one of his constant dalliances with the press. “I can even act in theaters, in nameless towns. Acting runs in your veins." By then, Caan had come a long way to becoming a star. From his first film appearance in the 1964 thriller A Trapped Woman to his early involvement with Francis Ford Coppola in the 1969 film The Rain People, Caan quickly became the epitome of the strong, intelligent, and shrewd man that Hollywood needed for unclassifiable papers.
Coppola undoubtedly admired him. "He could be as strong as he was vulnerable, all in less than two gestures and with a single look," he said in the director's book about him. “Many times, an actor can be powerful but not endearing. Jimmy was both." And indeed, the camaraderie was a good reason to hire him again, this time for The Godfather in 1972. Coppola, grappling with the enormous pressure of making a film that would rescue Paramount from bankruptcy, found in Caan support to the incessant work, the confrontations with the producers, and the hardest moments. For the director, Caan was more than an actor he trusted. He was a solid figure that allowed her to understand his work from a completely different point of view.
“Jimmy was someone who was around in my life longer and closer than any movie figure I've ever met. From those early days working together on The Rain People, and through all the milestones in my life, his movies and the many great roles he played will never be forgotten. He will always be my old friend from Sunnyside, my collaborator, and one of the funniest people I've ever met, ”said the director in a heartfelt interview with MovieWeb about Caan's death.
