Robert Duvall or Gene Hackman would more likely be my gut response, but Cazale’s all-too-brief film career certainly sported the best batting average of his or any period. He did five features: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather: Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, The Deer Hunter. Wow.  His volatile vulnerability was both searing and thoughtful, featuring moments of incredible raw intensity but always possessing a reserve that made him seem more a journeyman than a star. Best true character actor of his time? Certainly.

The title of the new documentary I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale trades off his recognizability / anonymity, the instant “Oh yeah, that guy!” reaction. The doc, featuring interviews with peers (Pacino, De Niro, Streep, Hackman, Coppola, Lumet) and modern admirers (P.S. Hoffman, Steve Buscemi, Sam Rockwell) premiered to raves at Sundance and is showcased this coming week at a BAM festival in New York, where all of his classic films will play as well.

From New York Magazine:

“To call Cazale a Zelig of the seventies movie boom is to undersell his talent and his influence. It’s true he appeared in three films and three plays with Al Pacino—they’d met while working as messengers at Standard Oil—including a famed 1968 Off Broadway production of The Indian Wants the Bronx, written by Israel Horovitz (the father, incidentally, of Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz). It’s true that Cazale was romantically involved with Meryl Streep, whom he’d met doing Measure for Measure at Shakespeare in the Park, and whom he loved right up to his death from lung cancer, at age 42, in 1978. (“I’ve met the greatest actress in the history of the world,” he told Pacino; as it turned out, he may well have been right.) I Knew It Was You is a lively summation of Cazale’s career, but its real success comes in demonstrating that, had he lived, he’d be mentioned today in the same breath as Pacino, Streep, Robert De Niro, and Gene Hackman—i.e., the Mount Rushmore of American Film Acting.”