British correspondent Steve Saragossi pays tribute to one of the unsung superstars of the 1970s.
The Seventies cinema was many things, the decade of the blockbuster, the disaster movie, the conspiracy thriller, and it was also the decade of the Superstar - with a capital “Sâ€. Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Burt Reynolds, Charles Bronson – you couldn’t pick up a movie magazine without seeing that word prefixed before their names.
The word guaranteed a lot of things, certainly a green light on any film they signed their names to, as well as generally assured big box office. One thing it didn’t automatically mean was believability in a given role, a certain honesty that penetrated from screen to audience, and an acting style that easily accommodated drama, comedy, sci fi, westerns, musicals, blockbusters and stark intense character studies. One Superstar however, did manage this, and his name is James Caan.