The Godfather at 50

 

Though the film does not go into the depth that the novel did, it offers a large number of interesting characters played by a wonderful cast.  It begins on his daughter's wedding day, which puts the viewer in the middle of happy, vibrant Sicilian culture feeling warm, real and inviting.

I don't like gangster movies.  For example, I'm a contrarian about Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, which is considered a great film.  But I find that, despite the superb directing, the story has all the traits of most any other gangster picture.  I don't care about any of the characters and they really don't reveal much about themselves that you didn't already know when you first meet them.  Don't get me wrong.  Scorsese is a masterful film director, but all gangster movies are basically the same movie with minor variations. They have a cookie-cutter feel to me, featuring a bunch of toxic masculine crooks squabbling over the same illegal behavior.  So what?
 

The Godfather is different.  While it is clearly a gangster movie, it is also a fictionalized examination of history.  And it is a deeply human story.  Director and Co-writer Francis Ford Coppola takes a vibrant combination of passion and honor and tradition and family and power and violence and makes it something worth delving in to.  The film is both comfortable and bestial, familiar yet inhumane.  The viewer is richly rewarded within this well-crafted tension of emotive extremes.   

The audience feels Don Vito Corleone as distinctively portrayed with ample nuance and subtlety by Marlin Brando.  We feel the psychological transformation of his youngest son, Michael, aptly played by Al Pacino, a new talent then, as the central conflict of the movie develops.  Solid support is given by veteran Sterling Hayden.  James Caan is featured in the signature role of his career.  Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall superbly fulfill their vital roles.  Beyond these, a large splendid cast of dozens more give this “gangster movie” a human "space" filled with surprising empathy.  

The screenplay co-written by Coppola and Mario Puzo (who wrote the best-selling 1969 novel) gives us textured character exploration set in a horrific, historic narrative in which these characters perform.  The cinematography by Gordon Willis plays with shadows and contrasting light in such a way that much of The Godfather resembles a Rembrandt painting.  The original music score by Nino Rota is one of the best Hollywood ever produced.

The Godfather is first-class movie making.  It resides at the edge of the grand films of the 50's and 60's, is sweeping in its scope, and yet it is simultaneously intimate with the viewer, allowing sympathetic performances to affect the viewer amidst all the mobster scheming and murders.  With all due respect, that is not the way Goodfellas (or any other gangster film) feels to me.  The Godfather transcended the genre while simultaneously redefining it in 1972.   

The "horse head" episode was wildly infamous from the novel before the film was ever shot.  Coppola directs it as shockingly as possible.  The film's bloody violence scenes were almost too much for some audiences.  They hold up well though seem tame by today's movie standards.

Luca Braci's murder was not bloody but nevertheless shocking to watch.  It takes him awhile to die with a piano string choking him.  This character has a long history in the novel that the movie wisely did not go in to.  But not knowing some things in the book makes his early, easy death in the film seem odd.  Luca Braci is one of the novel's most vile and monstrous characters.  This is only alluded to by Michael in an early conversation with Kay.  Braci was present years earlier when Vito made Johnny Fontane's bandleader "an offer he couldn't refuse."

Don Corleone is shot several times while buying fruit.  The hit sparked a war with the five families and put Brando out of the picture for about an extended part of the film..

Sonny's brutal multi-machine gun massacre shocked audiences.  If five bullets couldn't kill his father then hundreds of them would surely hill his oldest son.  Again, this is tame, almost cliche by today's standards.

Coppola created several incredibly realistic hit scenes.  This shot mimics many newspaper photos of the historical war in New York City.  The entire scene where Michael kills these two men is a masterpiece from start to bloody finish.

Michael's Sicilian bride is blown up in a 1940's automobile.  This intensifies Michael's determination for revenge and power.  Here we have another of bloodless yet shocking act of violence.  Audiences had no reason to suspect this would happen before their eyes.

Don Vito Corleone has the ultimate source of power.  He has plentiful connections with the media, politicians, police and judges.  But this creates a big problem when the narcotics business came along in the mid-1940's.   The illegal gambling and alcohol and prostitution that had built the Don's empire were not moral issues.  These were all areas where the components of his power could turn the other way, allow business to operate without serious crackdown.

But narcotics (heroin among other drugs) was something the police and judges could not look the other way on.  And because they could not, neither could the politicians, which made the media impossible to control.  Vito refused to enter the narcotics business to protect his source of power even though it was unwise it terms of business.  Narcotics was a money multiplier in an extreme way these other rackets were not.  By the late-1940's, a vividly brutal war broke out among the five families in the New York City area.

The families wanted access to Vito's near-monopoly on his power in order to protect their interests in narcotics.  Vito saw this as the end of everything.  But to end the war that killed his oldest boy, Sonny, among a great many other people, Vito relinquished some of his power.  He granted the other families access to his politicians and judges over drugs but with the understanding that it would be controlled to some extent.  Never sold around schools, focused toward blacks and other disenfranchised aspects of society.  Oh, and he will be fairly compensated for access to near-monopoly.

But it is over for Vito and his reign as the supreme Don of New York City.  Michael takes over the business even though he swore he never would be that way.  When the other families tries to kill his father, he found the family fire deep inside him.  Transforming him.    He works toward “legitimizing” the business in legalized gambling in Nevada.  Pacino portrays this brilliantly and Coppola captures it intimately.

Marlin Brando is strong yet subtle as Don Corleone.  To watch this performance is to relate to him as a human being despite the shocking world violence and crimes he rules over.  Simply brilliant and captured like a painting in the film's beautiful cinematography.  Here the Don painfully makes peace with the other families after Sonny is murdered.

Michael learning from his father, observing him.  The transfer of power has begun.  All Pacino matches Brando's performance.  I am shocked that Pacino did not win the Oscar for Supporting Actor in 1972.  He could have been nominated in Brando's category, but it was only his second picture.

One of my favorite shots in the film.  Love the cigarette smoke detail.  Michael looks so cocky and confident.

“Make him an offer he can't refuse.”  Slight variations of this line are uttered three times during the course of the film.  The first time is by Michael, the World War Two hero, talking about his father's nature.  The second said in the future tense is by Vito.  Finally, Michael says another version again, in the present tense.  This one line depicts the arc of this grand tragedy.

In its time, this line was probably the most quoted movie line ever. It was part of the vernacular of the decade.  It finally became kitsch through its extensive use in pop culture.  Throughout the 1970's this line was quoted all sorts of ways.  Of course, today the it means little and is known mainly to film aficionados.  That's what 50 years of time does to a movie.  Nevertheless, this one line remains the symbol of power of the movie.
 
Michael tells Kay about Vito and says “My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse.”  Then the Don tells Johnny Fontane that “I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.”  Johnny Fontane symbolizes the transfer of power, the birth of a new Don.  Near the end of the film when Johnny sits beside Michael who says regarding gambling tycoon Moe Green, “I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.”  That turns out the be exactly the case.

Father and son are the only ones who say this.  By the end of the film, Michael has embodied this line as the line embodied Vito earlier.  The line is a kind of transfer portal, almost a ritual saying, that reinforces the existent to which Michael becomes his father's power, heir to the throne. 

The juxtaposition of the baptist of Michael's first born son and the simultaneous massive hit on all the other families is superbly edited and another shining moment in the film.

The baptism is mixed with shots of the most shocking, helpless acts of murder.

Another realistic shot mimicking the 1940's New York City newspapers.

The actual seizing of power and becoming the new Don Corleone involves a brutally violent purge of the other families.  This moment of utter bloodlust is artfully set against the Catholic baptism of Michael's first born son as juxtaposed against the violence of Michael's first big hit on the other families.  

As the priest speaks Latin, as Michael swears to the Church that he has “renounced Satan,” numerous murders take place.  Some with single shots.  Some with messy multiple machine guns.  The bloody depiction of violence in The Godfather seems quaint by today's gory standards but it was shocking to audiences at the time, pushing the limits of what had been shown in film before.  Perhaps that was one reason for its immense popularity.  Hardly any sex but a ton of blood and shooting.  (Bonnie and Clyde helped pioneer this overly violent trend in 1967.  Coppola was partly inspired by that film.)

The Godfather was blessed with popular and critical acclaim.  It was not just the highest grossing film of 1972, it surpassed all previous films to become the biggest blockbuster in history up to that time.  It won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor (Brando) and Best Screenplay.  Almost unheard of for the same picture, Caan, Duvall and Pacino were all nominated for Best Supporting Actor, a testament to how strong the performances were by a number of actors in this film.  It took five Golden Globes and the score won a Grammy.

As I said, for a time it was a common part of American lives.  People watched it again, talked about it, quoted it, made jokes about it, and imitated it at Halloween parties.  Its impact on society was not unlike Star Wars in 1977 and The Matrix in 1999, though these disparate films only share the fact that they were all entertaining movies that were ingrained into our culture in their times.  The Godfather was not just a night's entertainment.  It was something you wanted to linger in the way you lived.  It plugged into the zeitgeist of 1972.

Michael the war hero talks about his father in the third person near the beginning of the film.

Vito utters the line to Johnny Fontane early in the film.   Sonny smokes a cigarette in the background.  This shot is framed perfectly, as is most of the film.

Michael actually utters this line toward his hapless brother, Fredo.  But Johnny Fontane fills the right side of the frame.

To some extent that impact remains fifty years later.  The Godfather is still ranked second on the Internet Movie Database's Top 100 greatest films of all-time.  This reflects resilient popularity through subsequent generations of viewers.  Meanwhile, many film critics have it at or near the top of their personal list of great films.  I was fascinated watching it again after all these years.  This is superb, magical film-making.  There are moments where it dates itself but those are minor and few.  It holds up very well and is obviously relatable to new audiences today.

The Godfather is a 10, one of the greatest movies ever made.  Francis Ford Coppola proved himself to be a talented young director able to master a large-budget picture.  This would lead him on to future greatest with Apocalypse Now in 1979 and, before that, the greatest film sequel ever made in The Godfather: Part Two (1974).  I'll praise that magnificent film in a couple of years.