Robert Duvall Seared Himself Into Our Memories Even When He Wasn’t the Star

The first time you watch the opening of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” you may not notice the pale man with the hawklike stillness seated quietly in the room. There are so many other things to look at in this seismic opener, including James Caan’s Sonny as he waits restlessly in the background and Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone, who’s seated behind a desk in pooling shadow and holding a cat as he listens to a man ask him to murder someone. The Don declines to do so though promises to handle matters, and then both men stand.

As soon as the petitioner leaves, the pale man suddenly and silently takes his place before the Godfather, materializing from the inky black like an apparition. For the rest of this scene, these two men remain close to each other, the darkness enveloping them like a shroud. Don Corleone is facing the camera while the pale man’s face remains largely obscured. You can’t quite make him out, and he doesn’t say a word as the Godfather speaks, adding to his strange mystery. Yet by the time the scene ends, so much has already been expressed, including the men’s intimacy and the unwavering intensity of the pale man’s supplication. This is a man, you understand, who doesn’t just serve power but also helps make it happen.

In a sense, the same was true of Robert Duvall, who died on Sunday at 95. Over his decades-long career, he sometimes took the lead, as in the 1980 drama “The Great Santini,” but was also a brilliant team player. By the time he appeared as the mysterious pale man, a.k.a. Tom Hagen in “The Godfather” — the Don’s future consigliere — Duvall was part of a group of Coppola’s close collaborators who over the years and in different movies would help the filmmaker realize his ambitions. The actor and director made a number of movies together, starting with “The Rain People” (1969), a moving, loosely plotted drama about a pregnant woman (Shirley Knight) who flees her middle-class life by hitting the road. Along the way, she meets two oppositional men, one poignantly wounded (Caan), the other menacingly so (Duvall).

Duvall plays a patrolman, Gordon, who stops the woman, Natalie, for speeding on an atmospherically lonely highway. Wearing sunglasses, the cop is crisply officious at first, but after some banter about her marital status she seems to understand that there’s something else in his attentions. Duvall excelled at tightly wound characters, and though he doesn’t tip what Gordon thinks, you can intuit the danger in the man. Even so, before long, he and Natalie are in a diner, then in bed. Duvall didn’t play romantic roles often, yet while he’s convincingly attractive here, Gordon remains almost imperceptibly on edge. You can see volatility in his darting eyes, hear the impatience in his words. The film ends badly for all of the characters, but by that time all of the actors — Duvall included — are seared into your memory.