While filming of “The Godfather” in 1971, Robert Duvall was focused on portraying the calm, calculating consigliere Tom Hagen. Meanwhile, Marlon Brando was redefining cinematic power with his portrayal of Don Vito Corleone.

Between takes, nonetheless, the atmosphere was far from solemn.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Duvall recalled, “We’d do these intense scenes. Right before the camera rolled, Brando would moon me.”

“He did it to loosen the tension. It was his way of saying, ‘We’re actors, don’t take it too seriously.’”

The prank was never part of the script, but it became part of their shared rhythm during filming.

Director Francis Ford Coppola noticed early on that something unspoken existed between Duvall and Brando. Their process was different.

Marlon Brando used cue cards for his lines early in his legendary career. He believed this method increased his spontaneity. His lines were printed and placed in his character’s line of sight. Stills from the production show that they sometimes required clever placement.

In one photo, a cue card is taped on the wall behind a lamp. In another, Duvall is seen holding Brando’s cue cards up to his chest.

In the scene above, they are held just beyond the view of the camera.

Some thought Brando used the cards out of laziness or an inability to memorize his lines. Once on The Godfather set,Brando was asked why he wanted his lines printed out. “Because I can read them that way,” he said. And that was the end of the cue-card discussion.

Brando relied heavily on instinct, emotion, and spontaneity, while Duvall came from a deeply disciplined background in theater. Yet on set, they developed a surprising chemistry that grounded some of the film’s most quiet yet emotionally charged scenes.

Their bond was forged not just through performance, but through a mutual curiosity and quiet respect.

One morning in Manhattan during a pre-filming rehearsal, Brando arrived unannounced at the hotel suite where Duvall was staying. He knocked, holding a small grocery bag with deli sandwiches and a bottle of red wine.

Duvall later shared the story with The New York Times. “He walked in like it was his house. He said, ‘I figured we should talk like real people before we act like fake ones.’”

They sat at the small round table for hours. They went over family dynamics and voice tone. They also discussed the subtleties of trust. That afternoon shaped their future scenes together.

In a conversation captured by journalist Lawrence Grobel for Playboy magazine, Brando once said, “Bobby has this honesty. He doesn’t try to show off. He listens. That’s what makes him dangerous in a scene. You can’t bluff him.”

It was rare praise from Brando, who rarely gave out compliments without layers of sarcasm.

What struck Duvall most about Brando wasn’t the unpredictable brilliance on set. It was the way Brando would watch others intently during their scenes.

“He was like a hawk,” Duvall said during a 1997 AFI interview. “He’d find the one thing that was working in a scene and anchor his whole performance to it.”

During the filming of Don Corleone’s hospital scene, Tom Hagen and Michael Corleone work frantically to protect their father. Brando would subtly guide the tone.

Before Coppola called action, he whispered to Duvall, “Don’t look at me. Think of your father.”

Duvall said that cue flipped a switch in his brain. The scene took on a heavier tone without any added dialogue.

That same day, a young assistant camera operator noticed Brando silently adjusting a chair’s placement. He moved it by two inches before a shot.

When asked why, he replied, “Bobby walks in from that side. The angle was wrong.”

Duvall later said he didn’t even notice the adjustment but could feel the shot felt different. More natural. More grounded. That kind of unseen partnership became a quiet thread throughout production.

On the final week of principal photography, Brando walked into the make-up trailer where Duvall was sitting in silence. He sat down, lit a cigarette, and said, “We did something here, didn’t we?”

Duvall nodded, and for a few moments, they said nothing. No congratulations. No rehearsed sentiment. Just that pause, filled with mutual understanding of what they had built together on screen and off.

Their camaraderie never demanded attention, but it shaped the tone of “The Godfather” in profound ways. Behind every frame where Don Corleone and Tom Hagen share a glance or a whispered word, there exists a real connection. A strange mixture of mischief and mastery that brought gravity to fiction. Their bond didn’t need to be announced. It simply existed, and in those scenes, it still lives.

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