Maybe it was after Showtime, 2002. Or after Meet The Fockers, 2004. Robert de Niro was now acting in action films and comedies.
But then he’s very good again in Kirk Jones’ Everbody’s Fine (2009) as Frank Goode, an elderly, sad man who visits his children after the death of his wife and travels by train from town to town. From the window he sees his earlier work. He attached telephone wires to poles. And as Anne Hathaway’s patient intern and chauffeur in The Intern (2015), he’s also very good.
And he hasn’t stopped filming with Martin Scorsese. He reprises his old role in The Irishman (2019), but the stubborn Al Pacino steals the film. And in the fall we will see him in Killers Of The Flower Moon.
Young Robert De Niro was reminiscent of young Marlon Brando
But it wasn’t Scorsese who spotted De Niro for the film. In 1965 he had a tiny role in a small film, then he starred in a short film. Then Brian De Palma cast him in Greetings (1968), an anarchic comedy. And then for “Hi! Mom” (1970), an anarchic comedy. In between, De Niro has been acclaimed for his roles in Off-Broadway plays. Shelley Winters was reminded of young Marlon Brando. Who does not. De Niro auditioned for The Godfather, but he didn’t get the part. In 1973 he starred alongside Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets.
In “The Godfather 2” (1974) he then played the young Vito Corleone. So in the movie there’s Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, but they don’t meet. De Niro received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for this leading role. Jerome Charyn writes in Movieland: “He is the great object of our desire, a similar phantom as Brando had been. Maybe the star is always female, even if he’s a man…”
De Niro shot 1900 in Italy with Bernardo Bertolucci. Scorsese was waiting for him in New York. They were shooting Taxi Driver in the summer of 1975. Travis Bickle in his army jacket changed cinema. He changed the acting. He changed screenwriting. Robert De Niro was now the most famous actor in the world. Even Scorsese’s crazy musical “New York, New York” (1977) could not harm him. He wears Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978). He climbs the mountains and hunts a deer. It’s an overwhelming picture of loneliness.
Then came Raging Bull (1979). The film begins with the ending, plump Jake La Motta in a dressing room. Then you see skinny, tough Jake La Motta boxing and having sex. De Niro had to eat a lot of pasta, it took six months. “He never regained his needle-like Renaissance looks,” writes Jerome Charyn.
The epitome of the cinema actor
But he got something else. He was Noddles in Sergio Leone’s epic Once Upon A Time In America. In “Falling In Love” (1984) he played opposite Meryl Streep a civil engineer who falls in love with a married woman in a bookstore. The film is hardly known, but it is one of the most beautiful films about love. He starred in The Untouchables, Angel Heart, Awakenings, with Jane Fonda in Martin Ritt’s Stanley & Iris, and a minor role in Scorsese’s GoodFellas (1990). A year later, he overdid his role in Cape Fear. In 1993 he directed the film Down the Streets of the Bronx, written by Chazz Palminteri.
Then came Michael Mann’s “Heat”. Then Scorsese’s “Casino”. Then Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. Then you stopped going to the cinema for every film with Robert De Niro.
But how excited are we now ahead of “Killers Of The Flower Moon”! On Thursday (August 17) Robert De Niro, the quintessential movie actor, turns 80.