Durga Chew-Bose

His “sad, lustrous, and doglike eyes,” Lynne Tillman wrote in her 1992 Sight and Sound essay, “Kiss of Death,” describing his performance as “Mikey” Corleone before he transforms into Michael Corleone, when he can still promise Diane Keaton, “That’s my family, Kay. It’s not me.” Those young Pacino eyes capsize me. His battery of protean gestures is absorbing. Young Al Pacino makes me giddy. I sink into my chair. I experience the full-blown, bodily preoccupation of having a crush. Watching him is like discovering a long-lost audition tape, because his delivery, then, was intimate, kept, mild. I cover my face. I even once, not long ago, ducked under my desk while watching a scene from The Panic in Needle Park, before Bobby and Helen—played with disconsolate, plain beauty by Kitty Winn—spiral downward together and before Helen is using, when they’re just getting to know each other, actually.