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Movie Reviews, & Film Industry Commentary
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1972 – R – 175 min.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Primary Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, John Cazale, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, Al Lettieri, Abe Vigoda
Stars **** 1/2 (of 5)
Popcorn ***** (of 5)
Film Type(s): Drama, Post-World War II, Gangster, Epic
Synopsis: A crime epic to end all crime epics. The Godfather follows the Corleone family from Don Vito’s (Brando) daughter’s wedding day after World War II till the mid-1950s. While Don Vito attempts to keep drugs off the streets he is attacked, triggering a gang war. Among the fallout, Don Vito’s law-abiding son Michael (Pacino) kills to revenge his father and the son he expected to take over for him, Sonny (Caan), is killed. As a result of all of this, when Don Vito steps down, Michael takes his place and must find who betrayed them in the gang war before he is killed. Music by Nino Rota with a main theme based on an Italian folk song.
Review: “I believe in America.” That is how this cinema classic begins and makes it’s mission statement. Adapted from Mario Puzo’s novel by Director Coppola and Puzo himself, we see the moral downfall of an Italian immigrant family after World War II. The family just happens to also be a crime family. There are almost too many infamous scenes to count in the movie: the horse head scene, “take the canolli”, the opening scene, “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”, and the baptism sequence. The best of these best, however, is probably the Italian Restaurant sequence: Michael meets with a crime boss and crooked cop to kill them, but hesitates after he gets the hidden gun from the bathroom. Listening to the background noise, you can hear the subway train braking, almost as though the ‘train’ of Michael’s mind goes off the tracks when he crosses a line that he can never turn back from. This is just one example of how much of a triumph of filmmaking this whole film is, with excellent plotting, acting, production value, and direction all around. Adding touches of real life, the character of ‘Johnny’ (who is told by the Godfather (Brando) that his problem will be solved by “(making) him an offer he can’t refuse”) is an allusion to Frank Sinatra circa 1950 trying to get a part in From Here To Eternity. Among other things, this is the film that made Pacino, Caan, Keaton, Shire, Duvall, and Coppola famous. (This in spite of the fact that Coppola had already won an Oscar two years prior for co-writing Patton and writing the 1966 hit, Is Paris Burning? ) Making it all the more a family affair, Shire is Coppola’s sister and future Oscar winner and Coppola’s daughter, Sofia, is the infant in the infamous baptism sequence. Brando caused a stir when he sent a young woman in Indian costume to refuse his Best Actor Oscar for this film due to his ‘outrage’ over how they had been depicted in films. The Godfather is consistently at the top of critics ‘All-Time’ lists, usually in the same breath as Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Gone With The Wind, and Lawrence of Arabia. Among its descendents in filmmaking are Scarface (1983), Once Upon a Time in America, Goodfellas, and TV’s The Sopranos. If you ever need to point out what are the important scenes in this film to someone, just tell them to look for the Oranges.
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