I just wanted to blog briefly on something that caught my attention in the prologue of Miller’s Crossing, especially comparing Miller’s Crossing to The Glass Key. That was the portrayal of Leo, as played by Albert Finney, who was the Paul character for the Coen brother’s adaptation. As opposed to Paul, who was a blustery, brash character with the intelligence to get himself into profitable situations but not through them or out of them, Leo seemed much more controlled, sophisticated, even academic. Of course, the relationship between the Ned/Paul character was still born out in Miller’s Crossing, with Tommy being more intelligent and splitting away in the end, but it was far harder to condescend to the Leo character in terms of intellectual power. I was wondering if this was a directorial choice by the Coen brothers or if it was simply a matter of acting styles changing since the 1940s, evolving more into the subtleties of character (the influence of Method acting, and so forth).