Tom Shone theorizes that “great films arise when there is a triangulation between director, actor and protagonist — when all three share a spiritual umbilicus”:

[T]he Godfather is Coppola’s shadow-King as much as he is Brando’s; “One Flew over The Cuckoo’s Nest” is Milos Forman’s kiss goodbye to soviet Czechoslovakia as much as it is Jack Nicholson’s middle-finger salute to Hollywood. This also explains the airlessness that hangs over “Citizen Kane”, whose star, director and main character are already united in the singular frame of Orson Welles. What was never sundered cannot coalesce.