Part star, part supporting actor, Robert Duvall lit up 1970s American cinema – and kept going

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. 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). 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.

Author: Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, Adelaide University

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