Cinema: A Father Finds His Son

The magical looking glass of Dustin Hoffman

Ratso Rizzo, the crippled hustler of Midnight Cowboy. The grizzled old codger of Little Big Man. The myopic counterfeiter of Papillon. The eager virgin of The Graduate. Carl Bernstein of All the President's Men. Dustin Hoffman has played them all in a career of dazzling virtuosity. But in Kramer vs. Kramer, he has assumed perhaps the most difficult persona of all: Dustin Hoffman.

The plot does not follow the facts of his life, of course, but many parts of Ted Kramer have been consciously modeled on the actor....

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