Cinema: Divine Inspiration

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He seems to live in the skin of characters whose skin you might not even want to touch. His trick is to find the surprising private clue: that, say, Adolf Eichmann, whom he played in a TV movie, "loved his kids, doted on them. That gave me a starting point." Or that Stalin (an Emmy-winning HBO turn) could force himself to talk sympathetically to his daughter--"I felt that was as good a work as I've done." So to get inside America's greatest underrated actor, we should look for that secret quirk, that strange but true passion...

Robert Duvall loves to tango!

Books on the tango decorate the living room coffee table on his 200-acre Virginia farm. Tango records are scattered about. A favorite partner in this dance fever is his dark-haired, thirtyish live-in mate, Luciana Pedraza, who hails from an upper-class Argentine family. The news has to flummox moviegoers who'd have guessed that the only music the 67-year-old actor could move to would be a Sousa march.

A rear admiral's son who grew up on Navy bases around the country, Duvall is best known for playing men with a military bearing about them, a sense of history and tightly coiled power. Think of Stalin and Eichmann, but also Eisenhower (twice), Jesse James, Joseph Pulitzer, Holmes' Dr. Watson. He doesn't just embrace their contradictions; he Heimlichs them to compelling life. The men may be good or bad or (Duvall's favorite) both; he will inhabit them forcefully and without editorializing. His credo of acting is his credo of life: "Don't judge too quickly. Don't patronize. Don't make statements. Don't set people aside. Give them their due."

Since his 1962 debut as Boo Radley, the monster and savior of two Alabama children in To Kill a Mockingbird, Duvall has given more than their due to some indelible movie creatures. The names Frank Burns (MASH), Tom Hagen (The Godfather), Lieut. Colonel Kilgore (Apocalypse Now), Bull Meechum (The Great Santini), Mac Sledge (Tender Mercies) and Gus McCrae (Lonesome Dove) summon sharp, overlapping impressions. The odor of anachronism hangs on most of these characters; they are uneasy with and suspicious of the modern world. While everyone else has gone slack and disorderly, they mulishly hew to an old or private code they dare not question. They alone remain semper fi.

To this gallery, add two miscreants from films opening this month: The Gingerbread Man's Dixon Doss, a wily Georgia eccentric who is sort of Boo Radley grown old and gone wrong; and, more important, E.F. ("Sonny") Dewey. E.F. is the Texas preacher in The Apostle, a complex, cantankerous drama that Duvall wrote, directed, stars in and--after all the studios turned down the $5 million project--paid for. This renegade Pentecostalist has the spiel and showmanship to fill a tent or a temple; when E.F. talks, people listen. "I'm a genu-wine, Holy Ghost, Jesus-filled preachin' machine this mornin'!" He can woo a dying man to the Lord, but he can't heed his own gospel. He menaces his frazzled wife (Farrah Fawcett) and clubs a rival with a baseball bat; when the man falls into a coma, E.F. shows no regret or remorse. He flies away, landing in Louisiana and hoping to build another church. Jesus' retailer needs a new store.