Films from and with Robert Duval

Robert Duvall seemed—or at least gave the impression—to have lived his roles for a long time before a camera was ever pointed at them. That is, long before the first day of shooting. To take it a step further: long before they were even written. A character who was already fully formed in the screenwriters’ minds and had a face. A Robert Duvall character, in other words. Even if that character could be many things. A scoundrel wrestling with his conscience. The broken artist on his way back into the dazzling spotlight. And a little later, the fatherly mentor who supports his protégé or stands in front of him when necessary.

His characters were rarely heroic protagonists, not always glorious victors, but individuals…—no, human beings who moved through a world that had demanded too much of them with a mixture of well-earned weariness and unquestionable dignity. In a year that has seen no shortage of losses (even in the first half alone), his death is also a heavy blow. Fortunately for us, however, he leaves behind an extensive body of work that reads like an atlas of American interior landscapes. And the spaces he traversed—whether dusty country roads, dark back rooms, church halls filled with longing, or living rooms filled with silence—he filled with an incomparable presence. A chronicler of quiet catastrophes, a performer who took the tragedy of the everyday seriously and found in it a form of truth that has become rare.

For SUMMER OF SADNESS, we’ve selected five films that showcase the enormous breadth of his work. They show him as an aging musician, a taciturn (former) gangster, a fanatical preacher, a participant in the garishly cynical media circus in one of the most influential films of the 1970s, and a serene police officer in a city on the verge of falling apart. Each of these films highlights a different facet of his acting: the quiet vulnerability, the stoic resolve, the feverish energy.