The Quad Announces Al Pacino Retrospective "Pacino’s Way"

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Category: Entertainment News

Published on Wednesday, 31 January 2018 18:52

The Quad announces "Pacino's Way," New York's first extensive retrospective celebrating the work of the Academy Award-winning actor, writer, and director Al Pacino, March 14-29. Mr. Pacino will also attend select screenings which will be announced at a later date.

With over 25 titles—the majority screening on 35mm prints—the program will honor Pacino's work both in front of and behind the camera, coinciding with the long-awaited U.S. theatrical premiere on March 30 of his documentary-drama Wilde Salomé (2011), and its companion piece Salomé (2013)—both starring Jessica Chastain alongside Pacino himself.

Legendary for the depth he brings to each performance and for the sheer diversity of characters he has created and inhabited on stage and onscreen, Pacino is defined by an absolute commitment to his art and a zeal for taking risks.

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The Quad's program will survey his wide-ranging body of work, from early hits to mid-career highlights like Harold Becker's Sea of Love (1989) and Michael Mann's Heat (1995), encompassing his experimental directorial projects including his debut Looking for Richard (1996), a documentary deep-dive into Shakespeare's Richard III (winner of the DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary), and Chinese Coffee (2000), an adaptation of Ira Lewis' chamber drama.

"I am grateful to The Quad Cinema for having this retrospective of my films," says Pacino.  "It's particularly heartwarming because Greenwich Village where the Quad is located is the place where I went to live as a teenager and where I developed as a young actor. In a sense this is a homecoming for me and I am deeply honored and remain humbled by this acknowledgement."

1960s Greenwich Village was a place ripe for artistic experimentation; the Off-Off-Broadway movement, The Living Theatre, and the numerous café theaters downtown had a major influence on Pacino as young artist and continue to be a source of inspiration in his work.

With a career spanning over five decades, Pacino honed his prodigious talent on stage, working alongside his lifelong friend and mentor Charlie Laughton and attending the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg before establishing himself as a screen icon with his quietly charismatic performance as Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Instinctual and explosive, Pacino became synonymous with the New Hollywood cinema that defined New York City in 1970s, working with many of the decade's greats including Jerry Schatzberg (The Panic in Needle Park), Sydney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon), William Friedkin (Cruising), and Sydney Pollack (Bobby Deerfield).

Following The Quad's 16-day retrospective, Wilde Salomé and Salomé will be presented theatrically in New York and Los Angeles. Pacino's most personal project to date,Wilde Salomé is an unconventional documentary exploring the complexities of Oscar Wilde's acclaimed play Salomé—and Wilde himself—featuring then-rising star, Jessica Chastain. Salomé dispenses with the former film's documentary elements to focus more deeply on the play's themes of greed and revenge. Both films were produced by Barry Navidi and Robert Fox.

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"Salomé is my attempt to merge theatre and film" Pacino adds. "The mediums can often collide and my hope is to have them unify so that you're seeing pure theatre on film. To make that hybrid effective has been my goal; to have the more naturalistic, photogenic qualities of film complement the language-driven essence of classical theatre." 

Widely recognized as one of America's finest actors, Pacino has received 8 Oscar nominations (and one win for Scent of a Woman), 17 Golden Globe nominations (with four wins), 3 Emmy nominations (2 wins) and two Tony Awards for his stage work.

"Al Pacino is not only one of our greatest living actors, he's perhaps the quintessential New York actor," says the Quad's Director of Programming, C. Mason Wells. "We're honored to be able to celebrate his career in the city in which so many of his films are set."

The full series lineup and schedule will be announced in February.