In defence of Al Pacino’s per­for­mance in Scent of a Woman

Con­ven­tion­al wis­dom says that back in the 1970s Al Paci­no was intense and inter­nalised, and after that he became a ham­my scream­er, roar­ing in self-par­o­dy. Espousers of this view mock­ing­ly chor­tle ​“Hoo-ah!”, his catch­phrase from Scent of a Woman, as their dis­mis­sive short­hand. ​“Integri­ty-of-a-mad­man mono­logues wrapped in osten­ta­tious cos­met­ics,” is a descrip­tion Kari­na Long­worth has used for lat­ter-day Paci­no, and she’s a Paci­no admir­er. ​“Arm-wav­ing, qui­et-then-loud blus­ter,” says the crit­ic Nick Schager. Fre­quent­ly, Paci­no skep­tics will pine back to his sub­tly dev­as­tat­ing work as the qui­et­ly cor­rupt­ed Michael Cor­leone in The God­fa­ther, and mourn the loss of the great Ital­ian-Amer­i­can hope of nat­u­ral­is­tic screen acting.

There’s some mer­it to this ren­di­tion of the actor’s tra­jec­to­ry, but it fudges and reduces a more appre­cia­tive view. Indeed old­er Paci­no has been known to scream his way through a lit­er­al infer­no, as in The Devil’s Advo­cate, while he did under­play so sen­si­tive­ly in The God­fa­ther that exec­u­tives at Para­mount, who want­ed him to come on strong, almost fired him. But the ful­ly inte­ri­or, brood­ing-soul per­for­mances are rar­er than lore makes out, and have result­ed in some of the actor’s least suc­cess­ful work.

They include Bob­by Deer­field, in which Paci­no plays a rac­ing dri­ver so silent­ly dull it’s unclear what the nature of his inter­nal con­flict actu­al­ly is, and Rev­o­lu­tion, the his­tor­i­cal epic that was reject­ed by review­ers and audi­ences as so gar­bled and flat that after­ward Paci­no took a four-year hia­tus from film. Look­ing at Pacino’s laud­ed ear­ly work – from dra­mas as low-key as The Pan­ic in Nee­dle Park and Scare­crow, to dan­ger­ous thrillers like Dog Day After­noon and Ser­pi­co – what is oper­at­ing even then is not sim­ply with­drawn sub­tle­ty, but an actor whose silences are seething with frus­tra­tion, who jan­gles with ner­vous ener­gy, and who occa­sion­al­ly boils over into shout­ing rage. ​“Atti­ca! Attica!”

Mar­tin Brest’s Scent of a Woman came dur­ing Pacino’s come­back phase in the ear­ly ​’90s. Most of the 1980s had not been kind to him – whether he played small, as in Rev­o­lu­tion, or large, as in Scar­face, or in between, as in Cruis­ing, he was crit­i­cal­ly mocked and com­mer­cial­ly unsta­ble. Then came Sea of Love, a for­mu­la­ic but pol­ished erot­ic thriller; Dick Tra­cy, with Paci­no as mad gang­ster Big Boy Caprice; The God­fa­ther: Part III, with its sham­bles of an age­ing Cor­leone; and Frankie and John­ny, a low-key losers’ love sto­ry that reunit­ed Paci­no with his Scar­face co-star Michelle Pfeif­fer. These were hits, match­ing depend­able gen­res with roles that dia­logued with the actor’s wound­ed, washed-up cir­cum­stance. In Scent of a Woman, we got a role both clipped and large, a rage-against-the-dying-of-the-light tour de force where Paci­no strug­gled to assert dom­i­nance while disabled.

As Lt Col Frank Slade, a for­mer aide to Lyn­don John­son, now blind and con­fined to a granny shack in his niece’s sub­ur­ban New Eng­land gar­den, Paci­no slumps in an arm­chair nurs­ing whisky and cig­a­r­il­los, drawl­ing to him­self one minute and reviv­ing his mil­i­tary bark the next. ​“I’ll wipe your nose in enlist­ed men’s crud!” he snaps at Char­lie Simms, the prep school stu­dent played by Chris O’Donnell who has been roped into babysit­ting him over Thanks­giv­ing week­end. But you can see Slade quiver and founder as he says it; it’s the grasp­ing threat of a paper tiger.

Slade whisks Char­lie to an unau­tho­rised leave in New York City, where they stay at the Wal­dorf-Asto­ria and embark on ​“a tour of plea­sures.” The colonel cack­les one-lin­ers and chugs down John Daniel’s. (“He may be Jack to you, son, but when you’ve known him as long as I have…”) He’s one of those drunks who presents as so incor­ri­gi­bly offen­sive it tran­scends into a kind of charm (“There’s only two syl­la­bles in this whole world worth hear­ing – pus-sy”), and who nur­tures a yearn­ing, old-fash­ioned roman­ti­cism (“Have you ever buried your nose in a moun­tain of curls, and want­ed to go to sleep forever?”)

Because Scent of a Woman is struc­tured as a revue of last-chance adven­tures, Paci­no gets to dance a tan­go, dri­ve a Fer­rari, flirt with a seam­stress as she fits a spank­ing new suit, wax lyri­cal about the poet­ic eroti­cism of the high-class escort he meets off­screen, assem­ble a .45 as he threat­ens sui­cide, and deliv­er a barn­burn­ing final speech in defence of Char­lie, who’s being threat­ened with expul­sion from school for refus­ing to rat out a trio of van­dal classmates.

It’s a smörgås­bord of emo­tion­al notes and tech­ni­cal act­ing chal­lenges. Paci­no vis­it­ed insti­tu­tions for the blind, and trained him­self to unfo­cus his eyes so he could per­form as good as actu­al­ly sight­less (which led him to falling and incur­ring a gen­uine eye injury dur­ing pro­duc­tion). Where­as in Pro­fu­mo di don­na, the 1974 Ital­ian ver­sion of this mate­r­i­al, Vit­to­rio Gassman’s eyes were stern­ly fixed and crossed, Pacino’s eyes seem to soft­ly gaze at a dis­tant void, under­scor­ing his wal­low in defeat.

The icon­ic tan­go sequence – star-mak­ing for Gabrielle Anwar – is a rush not just for the sta­mi­na of the dance, or even the illu­sion it’s real­ly a blind man doing it, but also the hum­ble, trem­bling delight Paci­no con­veys – his face is frozen in a dis­be­liev­ing grin as his body strains for expert moves; we sense his grat­i­tude, respect and unwor­thi­ness for his beau­ti­ful, ele­gant young part­ner. Paci­no gets to rev­el in the exer­cise of for­get­ting the sense of sight so that the oth­ers come alive – Slade’s head shakes and his nose chas­es scents up into the air, and like a mag­ic trick, he deduces and barks the names of per­fumes worn by near­by women. (“Fleurs de Rocaille! Flow­ers… from a book.”)

His slur­ring, then yap­ping, some­times sing-song­ing voice, gets to both fes­ter in qui­et bit­ter­ness and roar into the wish-ful­fil­ment of the rous­ing final mono­logue. (That famous ​“Hoo-ah!” is at first croaked in self-con­grat­u­la­tion after sav­age put-downs, and final­ly employed as a breath of vale­dic­tion from the sat­is­fac­tion of act­ing self­less­ly.) Bo Goldman’s screen­play is an infi­nite stream of zingers, but it also gives Paci­no the rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to show chops in com­e­dy. (When Slade and Char­lie are con­ning the Fer­rari sales­man into let­ting them take a test dri­ve, Slade assures him, ​“My boy dri­ves so smooth, you could boil an egg on the engine. When we bring the car back, I’ll peel the egg for you.”)

There’s no doubt this is showy, or that the redemp­tive, sur­ro­gate-father qual­i­ty of the sto­ry par­al­lels Amer­i­can cinema’s drift from the search­ing tragedies of the New Hol­ly­wood era that intro­duced Paci­no to the reas­sur­ing fic­tions of the Rea­gan-Bush-I-love-you-dad years in which he found him­self after his despon­dent sojourn. (“How’s that for corn­ball?”, Slade him­self asks, as the school­house cheers his clos­ing statement.)

After sev­en pre­vi­ous nom­i­na­tions, Paci­no final­ly won his Acad­e­my Award for this per­for­mance – not only was it regard­ed as a role designed to win awards, and a reward for for­mer glo­ry, but it’s one of the most derid­ed Oscar-win­ning per­for­mances in movie his­to­ry. ​“A male weepy with a size prob­lem,” Manohla Dar­gis called the film in Vil­lage Voice. ​“This is lit­tle more than an enter­tain­ing show-off rou­tine for Paci­no, with lit­tle appar­ent inter­ven­tion from the direc­tor,” opined Ang­ie Erri­go in Empire. Philip Strick in Sight & Sound called Slade ​“a gift of a part… it allows [Paci­no] to be jok­er, ora­tor, vir­tu­oso, human­ist and dirty old man” – but he didn’t mean it as a compliment.

Every time I watch Scent of a Woman, there’s a part of me that thinks I’ll mature into accept­ing the uncon­vinced crit­i­cal con­sen­sus on it – that maybe it was just some­thing I was worked over by as a kid. And every time, I find it deeply enter­tain­ing and mov­ing. There’s a philo­soph­i­cal dif­fer­ence here, per­haps too fun­da­men­tal to ever set­tle, between view­ers who fetishise restraint and dark­ness as the apex of dra­mat­ic truth, and those who can embrace sen­ti­ment and max­i­mal­ism. Some­times you need a con­fec­tion as a pick-me-up. Real emo­tion can be bound in a syn­thet­ic frame­work. In her book on Paci­no, Long­worth dis­ap­proves at how this movie rep­re­sents the actor adrift in tra­di­tion­al work rather than the rev­o­lu­tion­ary polit­i­cal cin­e­ma stu­dios were mak­ing in the ​’70s; it’s a valid point, but I pre­fer to look at Slade as a med­i­ta­tion on try­ing to find a place for your rage in a world that wants to ren­der it obsolete.

As to the largesse of Pacino’s per­for­mance, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber he’s a Method actor, a descen­dant of teach­ers like Stel­la Adler, for whom ​“You have to devel­op size!” was a foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ple. In one inter­view with his biog­ra­ph­er, Paci­no said, ​“There’s an old say­ing – ham is okay as long as it’s not Spam. When it’s real­ly hap­pen­ing, when it’s ener­gised and moti­vat­ed by some­thing real, it has size, it’s not over the top.” Paci­no is not an extro­vert on a per­son­al lev­el. ​“He’s shy, soft-spo­ken, tends to blush, spent much of his child­hood con­tem­plat­ing the ani­mals at the Bronx Zoo,” went one typ­i­cal write-up in his ear­ly days. To think that his loud­er rages are phoned in is a fun­da­men­tal mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of his art – for Paci­no, the more livewire he gets, the more he has uncon­scious­ly released into emo­tion­al­ly engag­ing with his roles, and his career arc.

In Com­ic Strip Presents… The Strike, the bril­liant 1988 satire that imag­ines a Hol­ly­wood bas­tardi­s­a­tion of the Arthur Scargill sto­ry, with Peter Richard­son play­ing Paci­no play­ing Scargill, the actor is described as a ​“mum­bling ball of sex­u­al ten­sion from Brook­lyn,” and he brags ​“This his­to­ry-of-the-labour-move­ment speech – I can say all that just by the way I stand. You don’t need all that bor­ing dia­logue.” It also ends with a mes­sian­ic solil­o­quy in the House of Com­mons, respond­ed to with thun­der­ous applause.

Scent of a Woman is an embod­i­ment of both these poles, show­ing off Pacino’s intense train­ing and his Hol­ly­wood milieu from their qui­etest to their most orches­tral. A role like Slade is easy to mock, and easy to imi­tate, but dif­fi­cult to cre­ate, encom­pass­ing gen­uine obser­va­tions on loss and reaf­fir­ma­tion, and ulti­mate­ly an exam­ple of how Paci­no is able to express his ener­gy. And if you wish Paci­no kept doing qui­et per­for­mances like Michael Cor­leone, per­haps you’re in the same posi­tion as Kay in The God­fa­ther – wish­ing for the man to do some­thing you like, but not under­stand­ing his jour­ney, or his destiny.