All 5 John Cazale Movies Ranked

Actor John Cazale is notable not just for his talents and intensity as a performer, but also for having one of the most impressive filmographies for any actor with a career as short as his. Cazale, a prolific theater veteran, famously only appeared in five feature films before his untimely death of lung cancer in 1978 at the age of 42. Those five films, however, are often considered some of the best and most significant films of the 1970s, which is saying something.

Cazale appeared in three Francis Ford Coppola movies ("The Godfather," "The Godfather Part II," and "The Conversation"), as well as Sidney Lumet's stirring bank robber drama "Dog Day Afternoon" and Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter." Cazale played supporting roles in all of them. Each one of them was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Three of them won.

Cazale's film career, of course, was only a small piece of his acting experience. Notoriously guarded and shy, he made his stage debut in a 1962 rendition of the play "J.B." He also performed in multiple off-Broadway shows like "Spoon River Anthology," "The Iceman Cometh," and Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" (playing the role of Angelo). In 1977, he was to make his Broadway debut playing Agamemnon in the first play of Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy. Cazale only played the part in the show's first preview, however, as he had to withdraw for health reasons. He received his cancer diagnosis shortly thereafter.

Cazale's performances are all marked by tragedy, as one can see how much talent and presence he had on the big screen. Had he remained healthy, there's every reason to believe Cazale would have continued to turn out amazing performances for interesting, ambitious filmmakers.

Of the five films he did appear in, /Film offers the following (perhaps controversial) ranking of their quality.

Michael Cimino's intense Vietnam War drama "The Deer Hunter" is a downbeat, thoughtful portrait of PTSD and the true depths to which is runs. The film is about a small group of friends from a Slavic community in Pennsylvania who are drafted into the war in 1968. Robert De Niro plays the more taciturn Mike Vronsky, while Christopher Walken won an Academy Award for playing Mike's best friend Nick, who suffers more openly after his war experience. And their war experience was harrowing. While soldiers, the young Americans were captured by the Viet Cong and forced to play games of Russian Roulette (though they eventually escaped).

John Cazale plays their hometown buddy Stan, who regularly joined them on deer hunting trips. Cazale had already been diagnosed with terminal cancer when he signed on to play the part, and the story goes that De Niro and co-star Meryl Streep (who was dating Cazale at the time) had to petition for his job. He couldn't be insured, so De Niro also paid for his friend's insurance; De Niro just liked him that much. Cazale passed away before "The Deer Hunter" was released.

"The Deer Hunter" ranks last, however, because of how slow-moving it is. The story of PTSD, war trauma, and the horrors of combat are all salient and powerful, but Cimino's film opens with a 50-minute-long Robert Altman-esque wedding sequence which seems weirdly disconnected from the eventual war tragedy. Cimino was trying to establish who these characters were, of course, but he let himself go on too long.

It may be brave of me to list Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" as fourth on any list, as it regularly tops most lists as one of the best movies of all time. This is less a testament to my personal taste, however, and more a comment on how amazing John Cazale's filmography is. It's also a comment on Cazale's role in the film, which is smaller and less significant than in any of his other high-profile movies.

In "The Godfather," Cazale plays Fredo Corleone, the middle son of Mafia Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando). "The Godfather" is mostly about Michael (Al Pacino), Vito's youngest son, who begins the film kind of resenting his family's crime business, yet ends the film taking over the business. Michael is the only one who seems competent enough to lead, and takes on the responsibility he doesn't want ... but then falls into the role all too neatly by the end of "The Godfather."

Fredo, on the other hand, is seen as somewhat weak-willed and certainly not fit to lead. His exists in the story merely as a "less preferrable option" when it comes to leading the Mafia. The elder Corleone son, Sonny (James Caan), meanwhile, is too hot-headed. Only Michael, the reluctant villain, has the wherewithal and the love of his family to take over. There's a Shakespearean quality to "The Godfather" that highlights the tragedy of each character. Fredo's tragic flaw is his lack of leadership skills.

Also, as we later learn in "The Godfather Part II," Fredo's arc is more than just "the other brother."

In "The Godfather Part II," Michael is handling the Mafia well and has internalized the need to kill anyone who would betray or expose the family. He already had one brother assassinated, and Fredo seems to be next in line when he betrays Michael to a rival family. Michael always kind of suspected that Fredo might become a turncoat, though, knowing that he didn't have the constitution to be in the mob. (Spoiler: things don't go so well for Fredo in the movie.)

Many hold "The Godfather Part II" is higher esteem than its predecessor because of its two-fold story. Half of the movie is about Michael's continued downfall into moral turpitude, while the other half is about the younger version of Marlon Brando's Vito Corleone (now played by Robert De Niro) fleeing to the U.S. and finding a living in the world of crime. "The Godfather Part II" connects crime and American Alger-like ambition, paired with the limited opportunities offered to immigrants.

"The Godfather Part II" is loved by cinephiles and fratboys alike. Many understand the underlying tragedy of the film and how survival can grow into tyranny. Others admire the "taking care of business" professionalism displayed by Michael, conflating his willingness to do violence with strength. That there is any confusion at all reveals the moral complexity of the film.

In Coppola's "The Conversation" (which came out the same year as "The Godfather Part II"), Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, a professional surveillance expert and wire-tapper who takes his job seriously to the detriment of everything else. He can intensely listen to distant conversations using advanced recording equipment, yet doesn't have much skill in actual conversing. He tries to remain neutral with his spying skills only to feel guilty about what he's doing, especially when he learns what some of his clients do with the information he captures.

Harry, you see, has captured a distant conversation between a couple in Union Square and spends the bulk of the film remixing it in such a way that it becomes listenable. What he finds is harrowing and darker than he expected. "The Conversation" is a wonderful commentary on the use of modern media to penetrate new moral snarls, handled by a technically minded engineer who can't use his engineering to flee them.

John Cazale plays Stan, Caul's assistant, and he's more or less Harry's "normal" counterpart. He knows a lot about the recording equipment, but doesn't have the light touch Harry possesses. He also seems more capable of walking out of the room and having an ordinary life. Stan is a reminder that real people exist in this universe.

The best of Cazale's films is Sidney Lumet's 1975 bank heist movie "Dog Day Afternoon." The most appealing thing about Lumet's film is how shabby the main characters are. They are not professional thieves and their plan goes terribly awry. The bank heist becomes a hostage situation pretty quickly, and the need to get a little money soon becomes a media spectacle. The effort is led by Sonny Wortzik (Al Pacino) who, audiences eventually learn, was robbing the bank to pay for gender reassignment surgery for his trans girlfriend (Chris Sarandon), still living by her deadname. John Cazale plays Sal, one of Sonny's compatriots, who announces that he is ready to do violence if necessary. He's kind of a scary character.

"Dog Day Afternoon" was based on the real-life heist committed by John Wojtowicz, who also intended to secure gender reassignment money for his trans girlfriend (a woman named Elizabeth Eden). While Wojtowicz didn't get the money he wanted from the heist, he did get a hefty sum selling the film rights to his life story. Thanks to the success of "Dog Day Afternoon," Eden was able to get the reassignment surgery. She married thereafter.

Lumet's film is a human, humane, and grounded crime thriller featuring frank discussions of queerness and queer love. It's also a stirring, intense, and sweaty story that interrogates the police state (Sonny's chanting of "Attica" is a reference to police violence in a nearby prison), as well as a touching story of romantic desperation. It's one of the best films of the 1970s and, for my money, the best film of Cazale's impressive run.