It is a film that has passed into almost folkloric legend – not just in the western world, but throughout the entire world. You don’t even need to have watched the film to know where the line, ‘I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse…’ came from. At the 30th Golden Globes in 1973, Francis Ford Coppola won Best Director for the film. At the 45th Academy Awards of the same year, Marlon Brando famously refused the Oscar for Best Actor in protest of Hollywood’s depiction of Native Americans. Forget the technicalities, underneath it is still The Godfather.
Based on Mario Puzo’s brilliant 1969 novel of the same name, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic is one of the most recognisable films ever, based on its memorable quotations, performances and score by Nino Rota. Like the novel, it follows the story of the Corleone Family in post-war America, the most powerful mafioso family in New York City. It portrays a more private aspect of mafia life – that of inside the powerful family; the struggles that family members face; how they overcome them and ultimately how that affects their relationship with other criminal organisations. But that is not to mean that at times the film cannot be stark and brutal, laying bare the sheer viciousness of organized crime. It is still a blood-soaked thriller and a fantastic one at that. I won’t detail the plot, as I would be doing a great disservice to those who haven’t experienced it yet. It needs to be seen with fresh eyes and a clear mind.
It is impossible to say whether or not The Godfather would have still been so significant had it featured other actors in its most iconic roles, but I would say that it is unlikely. Despite the struggle to get Marlon Brando into the role of Don Vito Corleone, due to his reputation as a troublemaker, it is in my opinion the purest performance ever put to the screen. Brando becomes Vito Corleone. He encapsulates everything that is brilliant about cinematic performance – he made himself inseparable from the character, and therefore the character is inseparable from him: a true mark of his genius.
Likewise, Al Pacino is Michael Corleone, and vice versa. You watch as he gradually leaves his life of innocence behind and morphs into the role he was always meant to take in life, that of a mafia chief. Pacino was relatively unknown when he was cast in The Godfather, beating actors such as Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty to the role. I love Nicholson (he is one of my favourite actors of all time, after all) and Beatty would have been an interesting pick, but Michael Corleone needed the quiet subtlety that Pacino was able to bring to the role that made him a star.
Brando and Pacino are backed up by James Caan as Santino ‘Sonny’ Corleone, Don Vito’s eldest and most violent son, a hot-headed bully who can’t control his temper. Robert Duvall plays the part of Tom Hagen, Vito’s adopted German-Irish-American son who becomes his consiglieri, or advisor. Each character, not matter how unimportant, is fleshed out like a book, each with their own identities, and this makes the story so powerful – when you have powerfully created characters, you have a powerfully formed story.
Visually, The Godfather is breathtaking. It is so rich in colour and depth and Gordon Willis’ cinematography is an example of how cinema can look so brutally beautiful. True, it is largely shots in and around New York City, but the way in which it is presented is so rich in life and experience. It doesn’t look like a film made in the early 1970s – instead, it looks and feels like you are sat in post-war America, completely fixated on the compelling screenplay adapted from Puzo’s novel by the writer himself and director Coppola. Everything on screen, from the first minute to the end of the one hundred and seventy-eighth, is cinematic brilliance. From the colour of Carmela Corleone’s homemade tomato sauce to the placing of the camera to capture tiny details that help to build the story, The Godfather is not the account of a single man’s production. The whole crew should be heralded as geniuses of cinema, if only for the running time of the film.
Nino Rota’s score, too, has gone down in history as one of the iconic motifs of film – a piece of music so instantly recognisable that you don’t even need to think about where it came from. And it is the brooding, minor key of the music that aids the general atmosphere of the film.
The biggest thing that The Godfather does, mentally, is to completely subvert your expectations of criminals. There is nothing that Don Corleone does without honour and you find yourself rooting for men who are essentially the ‘bad guys’. You can’t finish watching the film without thinking about honour and respect – the idea that these men aren’t just petty criminals gives some sort of justification to their crimes. They have a class about them that is impossible to resist and you come to feel a part of their family, which is another strong theme running throughout the film. The importance and power of the family, literally and symbolically, is of such importance to the characters and makes them quite endearing. Despite their obvious flaws, each character is their own individual identity and you can’t help but feel close to them all in some way.
There’s a lot more to say about The Godfather, and you could sit and read my words all day. Or, you could go and watch it. If you haven’t watched it yet, do it now. If you have, go and watch it again. And again. Every time you do, it will be a new experience, trust me. Leave the review, ‘take the cannoli’ and watch The Godfather. This is what cinema is at its most powerful, most gorgeous and most gripping.
Build the Scene Reviews 