godfather movie review gulte

From 1972: ‘The Godfather’ is a film ‘close to the soul of modern man’

Editor’s note: “The Godfather” was released 50 years ago this month. This review appeared in America on March 25, 1972. The original grammar and style elements are preserved here.

Often films set at some distance lend a perspective to the here and now; they allow us to step back from our everyday skin to see who we really are. Bergman, for example, used a medieval knight in The Seventh Seal (1956) to reveal the crisis of faith in post-Christian Europe, and Robert Gardner, in Dead Birds (1963), used a primitive tribe of warriors in New Guinea to reveal the pathetic madness of a people, who like ourselves, have come to accept war as a normal way of life. And now The Godfather . How remote from actual experience, this world of violence and treachery, and yet how close to the soul of modern man.

With The Godfather , Francis Ford Coppola, at 33 years of age, has become a major new talent among American directors.

The mafiosi , murderers and extortionists all, emerge from the film as believable people, when they might easily have become comic gangsters or monsters. Their world tips wildly from the orbit of normalcy; it is a closed world, where their ghastly brutal work is considered an ordinary way to support a family. In the idyllic Sicily sequence, the quaint customs, the fierce family loyalties and the rigid patriarchal formality have a rustic lovely charm; in the New York underworld they are pathetic anachronisms. Yet it is precisely these grotesque rural customs that humanize the members of the famiglia . They are human in the midst of a sordid world, and they do what they must to survive. That is their way, and perhaps the way of all of us.

Don Vito Corleone, meaning lionhearted, is an aging racketeer whose empire and health both show the stress of old age. Brando brings depth and sensitivity to the part, but because of his long established “star” quality he has taken too much of the prerelease publicity. Al Pacino, as his son Michael, gives a virtuoso performance which should bring him instant recognition. He is an idealistic college graduate, marked for a career in the foreign land outside the mob, but gradually the destructive world of his father overwhelms him in its evil. He matures both in humanity and ruthlessness to become a calculating killer and worthy heir to the Don's empire.

At three hours, The Godfather is by any reasonable standard too long to sustain interest, but most viewers will be sorry to see it end.

With The Godfather , Francis Ford Coppola, at 33 years of age, has become a major new talent among American directors. Two sequences in particular are set pieces of editing and directing, and are even more remarkable because of their different styles. During a baptism at which Michael is godfather, his men plan and execute a series of assassinations designed to consolidate his power over the other famiglie . The ceremony drags on endlessly, but the intercutting of the preparations for the murders builds a palpable tension. The explosion of violence at the end of the sequence snaps the tension; it is almost a relief to end it all despite the horror of the bloodletting.

The second sequence, by contrast, is a tender, loving family portrait of Don Corleone and his infant grandson playing together in the garden of his estate. The Don is weak, but with his grandchild he appears perfectly at peace with himself. At this moment, when he appears most fully human, he dies quietly and gently, alone with his grandchild and his flowers. Alone, each of the two scenes is a cameo of directorial art; together they show Coppola's immense versatility.

Nino Rota, who prepared the music for all of Federico Felliní's great films, blends Italian folk themes and America kitsch of the 194O's into an effective comment on the dramatic action.

Richard A. Blake, S.J., served as managing editor and executive editor of America and director of the Catholic Book Club, as well as America 's regular film reviewer for many decades. He is the author of Afterimage: The Indelible Catholic Imagination of Six American Filmmakers , among other books.

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DVD & Streaming

The Godfather

Crime , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

March 24, 1972
Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone; Al Pacino as Michael Corleone; James Caan as Sonny Corleone; Diane Keaton as Kay Adams; Richard S. Castellano as Clemenza; Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen; Sterling Hayden as Capt. McCluskey; John Marley as Jack Woltz; Richard Conte as Barzini; Al Lettieri as Sollozzo; Abe Vigoda as Sal Tessio; Talie Shire as Connie Corleone Rizzi; Gianni Russo as Carlo Rizzi; John Cazale as Fredo Corleone; Rudy Bond as Cuneo; Al Martino as Johnny Fontane; Morgana King as Mama Corleone; Lenny Montana as Luca Brasi; John Martino as Paulie Gatto; Alex Rocco as Moe Greene; Julie Gregg as Sandra Corleone; Simonetta Stefanelli as Apollonia

Home Release Date

May 6, 1997
Francis Ford Coppola

Distributor

Paramount Pictures

Movie Review

Michael Corleone has learned a lot from his family over the years. Never tell anyone outside the family what you’re thinking. Don’t discuss business at the table. Leave the gun, take the cannoli.

But most importantly, never forget to show proper respect to Michael’s father, Vito Corleone, “Don” of the Corleone family and “Godfather” to all who offer him friendship.

Of course, not everyone seems to have gotten this memo.

Although the five Italian mob families that run New York’s crime syndicate generally avoid going to the mattresses, Sollozzo, aka “The Turk,” starts an all-out war after Vito turns down his offer to add drug-dealing to the Corleone family’s business ventures.

Sollozzo had hoped that Sonny, Vito’s eldest son who showed interest in Sollozzo’s plan, would take over the family in the event of Vito’s death. What he hadn’t counted on was Vito surviving the assassination attempt and Sonny seeking vengeance.

But Sollozzo won’t give up hope just yet. He has the backing of the Tattaglia crime family, after all. And he’s pretty sure that he can reason with Vito and Sonny by appealing to Michael, who’s been kept out of the stickier elements of his family’s dealings and who generally avoids violence after seeing his fair share of it in the war.

Unfortunately for Sollozzo, Michael also learned this lesson: Never takes sides with anyone against the family .

Positive Elements

The Corleone family deals in organized crime. As such, many of their seemingly noble values are tainted by their misdeeds. That said, many characters demonstrate loyalty to their friends and families. A few men seem to have a sense of protection, keeping women and children out of the fray. And at least one man wants to make the Corleone business legitimate so he can live an honest life.

Spiritual Elements

Godfather is more than just a title held by Don Corleone. He actually is the godfather to Johnny Fontane, and we’re told that this religious position is taken very seriously by the Italian people. Later on, Michael himself becomes a godfather to his nephew, and we see the ceremony take place in a church. It’s presided over by a Catholic priest, where Michael states his belief in the Holy Trinity and renounces Satan.

In other instances, priests perform marriage ceremonies and funeral services. Sonny Corleone wears a cross necklace. Angels and crosses adorn headstones in a graveyard. Michael’s girlfriend asks him if he’d like her better if she were a nun after watching The Bells of St. Mary’s . A man swears on the souls of his grandchildren.

Sexual & Romantic Content

We see a woman’s exposed breasts just before she and her husband have sex (offscreen). A couple has sex onscreen fully clothed. Two men have extramarital affairs (which are hidden by their friends). A movie producer says he’s had sex with many young actresses, but he’s angry that Don Corleone’s godson “ruined” one, the implication being that he got the woman pregnant. We hear about other unmarried people having sex.

While Michael is hiding overseas, he marries a woman, even though he still technically has a girlfriend in the States (though they’d been out of contact). Several couples kiss.

We hear that women in a town are “virtuous,” and Michael angers one woman’s father after expressing interest in her. However, he apologizes for offending the man and courts the woman (they’re chaperoned), marrying her before anything sexual occurs.

We hear that prostitution is one of the businesses of the mob families. A man gets mad when someone tries to bribe him with prostitutes. Someone is frisked for weapons in an invasive manner. We see a man sleeping in nothing but boxers.

Violent Content

It probably won’t come as a surprise that a film about mobsters has a lot of bloodshed. Dozens of characters are shot, and blood pours from their wounds. We also see stabbings and strangulations. Some people survive, some don’t. But nearly every death in this film is the result of carefully organized crime.

A woman is killed by a car bomb that was meant for her husband. After a man is gunned down, one of his assailants kicks his corpse. A man falls to the ground, dead from natural causes, as he plays with his grandson. A few characters are roughed around a bit. Michael gets his jaw broken by a corrupt police officer.

A man wakes to find a horse’s severed head in his bed, soaking the sheets in blood. The Corleones are sent a dead fish as a message that one of their men is dead.

In one scene, Connie, Vito’s daughter, is savagely beaten by her husband, Carlo. She starts smashing dinnerware after learning of an extramarital affair, and he hits her repeatedly with a belt. And this isn’t the first time since we see her with a bruise on her face.

Sonny retaliates after one of these incidents by attacking Carlo in the streets, punching, kicking and even biting the man viciously, promising to kill him if he ever harms Connie again. (Connie begs her brother not to harm her husband, even blaming herself since she struck first.) And that’s not the end of violence in this triangulated trio of relationships.

We hear that two men got a woman drunk and then tried to rape her. When she resisted, they beat her, breaking her nose and jaw (which had to be wired shut). Don Corleone agrees to make the men suffer when the woman’s father begs him for justice.

There are many death threats, and the Corleone family fondly refers to this as “making them an offer they can’t refuse.” One man was told either his brains or his signature would be on a contract. We hear that some politicians have used the mob to have people killed.

Mob goons smash a photographer’s camera at a wedding after he snaps some pics of mob bosses. (Though they give the man cash to replace the equipment.) Don Corleone slaps his godson for crying, telling him to “act like a man.”

Crude or Profane Language

The f-word is said once in Italian. God’s name is abused 11 times (eight of those uses paired with “d–n”), and Christ’s name is abused once. We hear a single use of the n-word used as a slur, as well as derogatory slurs for Italian, German and Irish peoples. There are several uses each of “a–,” “b–tard,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “d–k” and “h—.” And a woman is called a “whore” by her husband.

Drug & Alcohol Content

Don Corleone declines Sollozzo’s offer to invest in heroin because he thinks it’s a dangerous vice that will cause politicians to turn against him. (But he has no problem with alcohol.) Eventually, the mob families agree to control the distribution of heroin, ensuring that it won’t come near schools or be sold to children. We hear that a celebrity switched from marijuana to heroin.

Various characters drink throughout the film. They also smoke cigarettes, cigars and pipes. A few scenes take place in bars.

Other Noteworthy Elements

Several members of New York’s police force, most notably Capt. McCluskey, are on the payrolls of the mob families. (And McCluskey arranges for guards at a hospital to be absent so that mobsters can sneak in and kill someone.)

Much of Don Corleone’s power stems from the fact that he has several judges and politicians in his pocket. We hear that a judge suspended the sentence of two men who beat a woman after she resisted rape.

People lie and betray. Someone jokes about theft. A man spits on an FBI agent’s badge. A woman spits on her brother. Gambling is one of the Corleone’s business dealings, and they own a few hotels and casinos.

A man is called fat. We hear someone urinating. A man neglects to tell his girlfriend that he loves her in front of his friends because he’s embarrassed.

You know, Michael repeatedly tells people that “it’s not personal, it’s just business.” Yet many of the actions he and his family take seem very, very personal.

If you hit a woman, you’re made to suffer. If you make a deal with the wrong person, you’ll get sent away. And if you betray the Godfather, your life will end.

It isn’t until after the sons of the five crime families start getting killed that Don Corleone finally acknowledges a very simple fact that ends the fight between them all: Vengeance won’t bring back their sons .

Of course, by that point, audiences have already had to witness a war’s worth of bloodshed. Not to mention a few sex scenes, foul language and domestic violence.

The Godfather won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1973, and it’s been on the American Film Institute’s top 100 list since the list was first published in 1998. We’re reviewing it now as part of Plugged In’s efforts to cover some classic films that came out before Plugged In existed.

And after reading what sort of problematic content is in this critically lauded film, aren’t you glad we did?

Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.

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Parents' guide to, the godfather.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 60 Reviews
Kids Say 195 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

By Elliot Panek , based on child development research. How do we rate?

The classic tale of a Mafia family, violence and all.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 16+?

Constant mob movie violence. Characters shot and killed, often at close range an

"Bastards," "goddamn," "son of a bitch," "ass," "hell," "bitch." Sonny uses the

Brief nudity (breasts), brief sex scene (fully clothed). At Connie's wedding, wo

Wine drinking. Cigarette smoking. Talk of marijuana and heroin, and of the Mafia

Any Positive Content?

Movie explores double standards and hypocrisy of the Mafia characters, as they p

Positive aspects of Italian American life and culture are overshadowed by Mafia

The Godfather relies on -- and firmly cemented in the public's mind -- the stere

Violence & Scariness

Constant mob movie violence. Characters shot and killed, often at close range and graphic. Attempted killings by gun. Characters choked to death. Character killed by a bomb in a car. Man stabbed in the hand with a knife. Domestic abuse: man shown beating his wife with a belt. Opening scene concerns a man asking Don Corleone for vengeance on two men who raped and violently beat his daughter. Movie executive wakes up covered in blood, with decapitated horse head in his bed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Bastards," "goddamn," "son of a bitch," "ass," "hell," "bitch." Sonny uses the "N" word at the dinner table. Mafia don equates Black people with "animals." Ethnic slurs are used to describe German, Irish, and especially Italian Americans. Vito uses an Italian homosexual slur.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Brief nudity (breasts), brief sex scene (fully clothed). At Connie's wedding, women at a table giggle while one makes reference to the size of Sonny's penis. Sonny is shown having sex with his mistress -- in their clothes, but audible. Reference to how Fredo is "banging cocktail waitresses two at a time."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Wine drinking. Cigarette smoking. Talk of marijuana and heroin, and of the Mafia moving into drug trafficking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Movie explores double standards and hypocrisy of the Mafia characters, as they profess to be religious, and family- and friend-centered, but their actions ultimately come down to "just business," no matter who gets hurt or killed. As in other Godfather movies, a theme is hypocrisy of American life: People successful and/or religious and family-oriented on one level are also cutthroat, willing to do whatever is necessary to provide for their families.

Positive Role Models

Positive aspects of Italian American life and culture are overshadowed by Mafia killings and double-crossing.

Diverse Representations

The Godfather relies on -- and firmly cemented in the public's mind -- the stereotype of Italian Americans as violent gangsters. Despite this, characters are shown with depth. Southern Italian and Sicilian culture, as it was brought over by immigrants from late 19th and early 20th century, is shown at length.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that The Godfather is the classic, genre-defining Mafia movie in which Marlon Brando plays the titular character, who's facing grave threats from rival families. Unsurprisingly, there's constant violence. Characters are shot and killed, often at close range in graphic scenes. Characters are strangled to death and die in car explosions. Domestic abuse is shown: A man beats his wife with a belt. In one of many iconic scenes, a movie executive wakes up covered in blood, with a decapitated horse's head in his bed. In the opening scene, a man asks Don Corleone for vengeance after two men raped and beat his daughter. Ethnic and racial slurs are heard, as well as some profanity, including the "N" word. The movie also depicts Italian American culture in a sympathetic but crude and stereotypical light. Characters smoke cigarettes and drink wine, and there's brief nudity (female breasts) and a scene of clothed but audible sex. References are made to the sexual behavior of Sonny ( James Caan ) and Fredo ( John Cazale ). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (60)
Kids say (195)

Based on 60 parent reviews

Violence, mafia and brief nudity it is still as must watch for everybody

Slow and methodical masterpiece depiction of sociopathy, what's the story.

THE GODFATHER follows the Corleone family and their rapidly multiplying troubles. Don Corleone ( Marlon Brando ) is on his way out, and his most promising, but unwilling, potential heir is his war-hero son, Michael ( Al Pacino ). As family members cope with the trials of gangster life, the latent power structures of society and family become evident.

Is It Any Good?

Epic in scope while maintaining a patience and intimacy characteristic of European art cinema, this film is rightly considered one of the greatest ever made. Despite valid questions around its role in perpetuating stereotypes of Italian Americans, The Godfather continues to influence producers of films, TV shows, and video games decades after its release. Nino Rota's score, the sumptuous set design, and Brando's raspy pseudo-whisper have become part of our collective cultural memory.

The film has an operatic quality, yet it's more understated than it is flamboyant. It takes its subjects seriously, bestowing legitimacy upon the power struggles of the Mafia normally reserved for classical themes in high art. The film's release initiated a period when American filmmakers dared to take themselves and their artistic ambitions seriously (perhaps too seriously). There's something deeply resonant in the film's treatment of filial piety, the need for respect, and our culture's abiding interest in the parallel moral universe of the Mafia.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about classic movies. The Godfather is considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time. What makes a movie not only great, but a classic? How do you think it set the standard for the Mafia movies and TV shows to come?

How does the movie's violence serve to show what these characters are capable of in order to get what they want?

How does the movie explore hypocrisy, not only among the Corleones, but in society as a whole?

How does the movie depict Italian Americans? Do you think this was accurate? How do movies like this shape how people think about specific cultures and groups of people?

Movie Details

In theaters : March 11, 1972
On DVD or streaming : May 9, 2017
Cast : Al Pacino , James Caan , Marlon Brando
Director : Francis Ford Coppola
Studio : Paramount Pictures
Genre : Drama
Topics : History
Run time : 175 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : Violence, Language
Last updated : April 23, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Godfather, The (United States, 1972)

Rarely can it be said that a film has defined a genre, but never is that more true than in the case of The Godfather . Since the release of the 1972 epic (which garnered ten Academy Award nominations and was named Best Picture), all "gangster movies" have been judged by the standards of this one (unfair as the comparison may be). If a film is about Jewish mobsters, it's a "Jewish Godfather "; if it's about the Chinese underworld, it's an "Oriental Godfather "; if it takes place in contemporary times, it's a "modern day Godfather ."

If The Godfather was only about gun-toting Mafia types, it would never have garnered as many accolades. The characteristic that sets this film apart from so many of its predecessors and successors is its ability to weave the often-disparate layers of story into a cohesive whole. Any of the individual issues explored by The Godfather are strong enough to form the foundation of a movie. Here, however, bolstered by so many complimentary themes, each is given added resonance. The picture is a series of mini-climaxes, all building to the devastating, definitive conclusion.

Rarely does a film tell as many diverse-yet-interconnected stories. Strong performances, solid directing, and a tightly-plotted script all contribute to The Godfather 's success. This motion picture was not slapped together to satiate the appetite of the masses; it was carefully and painstakingly crafted. Every major character - and more than a few minor ones - is molded into a distinct, complex individual. Stereotypes did not influence Coppola's film, although certain ones were formed as a result of it.

The film opens in the study of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), the Godfather, who is holding court. It is the wedding of his daughter Connie (Talia Shire), and no Sicilian can refuse a request on that day. So the supplicants come, each wanting something different - revenge, a husband for their daughter, a part in a movie.

The family has gathered for the event. Michael (Al Pacino), Don Vito's youngest son and a second world war hero, is back home in the company of a new girlfriend (Diane Keaton). The two older boys, Sonny (James Caan) and Fredo (John Cazale), are there as well, along with their "adopted" brother, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), the don's right-hand man.

With the end of the war, the times are changing, and as much as Don Vito seems in control at the wedding, his power is beginning to erode. By the standards of some, his views on the importance of family, loyalty, and respect are antiquated. Even his heir apparent, Sonny, disagrees with his refusal to get into the drug business. Gambling and alcohol are forces of the past and present; narcotics are the future. But Don Vito will not compromise, even when a powerful drug supplier named Sollozzo (Al Lettieri) arrives with promises of high profits for those who back him.

Don Vito's refusal to do business with Sollozzo strikes the first sparks of a war that will last for years and cost many lives. Each of the five major mob families in New York will be gouged by the bloodshed, and a new order will emerge. Betrayals will take place, and the Corleone family will be shaken to its roots by treachery from both within and without.

The Corleone with the most screen time is Michael (it's therefore odd that Al Pacino received a Best Supporting Actor nomination), and his tale, because of its scope and breadth, is marginally dominant. His transformation from "innocent" bystander to central manipulator is the stuff of a Shakespearean tragedy. By the end, this man who claimed to be different from the rest of his family has become more ruthless than Don Vito ever was.

Despite the likes of Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Scarface, ...And Justice for All , and Scent of a Woman on his resume, Pacino is best remembered for the role he created in The Godfather (and subsequently reprised in two sequels). While this is not his most demonstrative performance - indeed, he is exceptionally restrained - the quality of the script makes Michael Corleone notable.

Next to Humphrey Bogart's Rick from Casablanca , Oscar winner Marlon Brando's Don Vito may be the most imitated character in screen history. The line "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" has attained legendary status, as has the entire performance. With his raspy voice, deliberate movements, and penetrating stare, Brando has created a personae that will be recalled for as long as motion pictures exist.

Don Vito is a most complicated gangster. In his own words, he is not a killer, and he never mixes business with personal matters. He puts family first ("A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man") and despises displays of weakness. He understands the burden of power, and his wordless sympathy for Michael when he is forced to assume the "throne", is one of The Godfather 's most revealing moments (about both father and son).

The Godfather had three Best Supporting Actor nominees, all well-deserved. The first was Pacino (who probably should have been nominated alongside Brando in the Best Actor category). The other two were James Caan and Robert Duvall. In a way, it's surprising that Duvall wasn't passed over. His presence in The Godfather isn't flashy or attention-arresting. Like his character of Tom Hagen, he is steady, reliable, and stays in the background. Not so for Caan's Sonny, whose demonstrative and volatile personality can't be overlooked.

Family responsibility. A father's legacy. The need to earn respect. The corrupting influence of power. These are some of the ingredients combined in Francis Ford Coppola's cinematic blender. They are themes which have intrigued the greatest authors of every medium through the centuries.

Although the issues presented in The Godfather are universal in scope, the characters and setting are decidedly ethnic. Even to this day, there is an odd romanticism associated with New York's Italian crime families. The word "Mafia" conjures up images of the sinister and mysterious - scenes of the sort where Luca Brasi meets his fate. Francis Ford Coppola has tapped into this fascination and woven it as yet another element of the many that make his motion picture a compelling experience.

We come to The Godfather like Kay Adams - outsiders uncertain in our expectations - but it doesn't take long for us to be captivated by this intricate, violent world. The film can be viewed on many levels, with equal satisfaction awaiting those who just want a good story, and those who demand much more. The Godfather is long, yes - but it is one-hundred seventy minutes well-spent. When the closing credits roll, only a portion of the story has been told. Yet that last haunting image (Kay's shock of recognition), coupled with Nino Rota's mournful score, leaves a crater-like impression that The Godfather Part II only deepens.

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(There are no more worst movies of Marlon Brando)

"The Godfather," which opened at five theaters here yesterday, is a superb Hollywood movie that was photographed mostly in New York (with locations in Las Vegas, Sicily and Hollywood). It's the gangster melodrama come-of-age, truly sorrowful and truly exciting, without the false piety of the films that flourished 40 years ago, scaring the delighted hell out of us while cautioning that crime doesn't (or, at least, shouldn't) pay.

It still doesn't, but the punishments suffered by the members of the Corleone Family aren't limited to sudden ambushes on street corners or to the more elaborately choreographed assassinations on thruways. They also include life-long sentences of ostracism in terrible, bourgeois confinement, of money and power but of not much more glory than can be obtained by the ability to purchase expensive bedroom suites, the kind that include everything from the rug on the floor to the pictures on the wall with, perhaps, a horrible satin bedspread thrown in.

Yet "The Godfather" is not quite that simple. It was Mr. Puzo's point, which has been made somehow more ambiguous and more interesting in the film, that the experience of the Corleone Family, as particular as it is, may be the mid-20th-century equivalent of the oil and lumber and railroad barons of 19th-century America. In the course of the 10 years of intra-Mafia gang wars (1945-1955) dramatized by the film, the Corleones are, in fact, inching toward social and financial respectability.

For the Corleones, the land of opportunity is America the Ugly, in which almost everyone who is not Sicilian or, more narrowly, not a Corleone, is a potential enemy. Mr. Coppola captures this feeling of remoteness through the physical look of place and period, and through the narrative's point of view. "The Godfather" seems to take place entirely inside a huge smoky plastic dome, through which the Corleones see our real world only dimly.

Thus, at the crucial meeting of Mafia families, when the decision is made to take over the hard drug market, one old don argues in favor, saying he would keep the trade confined to blacks--"they are animals anyway."

This is all the more terrifying because, within their isolation, there is such a sense of love and honor, no matter how bizarre.

The film is affecting for many reasons, including the return of Marlon Brando, who has been away only in spirit, as Don Vito Corleone, the magnificent, shrewd, old Corleone patriarch. It's not a large role, but he is the key to the film, and to the contributions of all of the other performers, so many actors that it is impossible to give everyone his due.

Some, however, must be cited, especially Al Pacino, as the college-educated son who takes over the family business and becomes, in the process, an actor worthy to have Brando as his father; as well as James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Al Lettieri, Abe Vigoda, Gianni Russo, Al Martino and Morgana King. Mr. Coppola has not denied the characters' Italian heritage (as can be gathered by a quick reading of the cast), and by emphasizing it, he has made a movie that transcends its immediate milieu and genre.

"The Godfather" plays havoc with the emotions as the sweet things of life--marriages, baptisms, family feasts--become an inextricable part of the background for explicitly depicted murders by shotgun, garrote, machine gun and booby-trapped automobile. The film is about an empire run from a dark, suburban Tudor palace where people, in siege, eat out of cardboard containers while babies cry and get under foot. It is also more than a little disturbing to realize that characters, who are so moving one minute, are likely, in the next scene, to be blowing out the brains of a competitor over a white tablecloth. It's nothing personal, just their way of doing business as usual.

Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, Diane Keaton and Al Lettieri.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola; screenplay by Mario Puzo and Mr. Coppola, based on the novel by Mr. Puzo; director of photography, Gordon Willis; editors, William Reynolds and Peter Zinner; music composed by Nino Rota; produced by Albert S. Ruddy; distributed by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 175 minutes. At Loew's State I and II.

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The Godfather Reviews

This magnificent multigenerational mafia drama represents a benchmark not just in crime movies but in American cinema as a whole.

Full Review | Aug 16, 2023

The Godfather works like a masterfully conducted orchestra, whose immaculate symphony is a meticulously crafted and extraordinarily integral thread in the fabric of cinema history.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2023

... Villains and criminals that fulfill the American dream with complete disregard for the American way. A contradiction that engenders gods. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 24, 2022

Now half a century old, Francis Ford Coppola's revered New Hollywood masterpiece has one of the best-known final shots in film history - but it almost had a much more Catholic ending.

Full Review | Apr 8, 2022

A cultural milestone.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 26, 2022

The Godfather is as much about America, and the American experience, as any other great movie is (50th anniversary)

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 25, 2022

Skepticism of American exceptionalism is far more commonplace now than it was when The Godfather was first released. But the fragility of the American Dream was revealing itself as the illusion it had always truly been.

Full Review | Mar 19, 2022

The Godfather films have set home-video standards for decades, and that trend continues with Paramounts astonishing 4K restorations.

Full Review | Mar 18, 2022

50 years after its release on March 24, 1972, The Godfather is now and forever, one of the greats.

Full Review | Mar 17, 2022

An engrossing metaphor for American capitalism, watching the film on the big screen emphasises the majesty of Coppolas work.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 11, 2022

It is a gangster film without any of the pity and hatred we might feel towards such aliens in our midst, because it recognises that in all of us there is the ignition towards power and criminality.

Full Review | Mar 7, 2022

The Godfather justifies every minute of its extravagant running time.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 25, 2022

For all its graphic violence, the movie was—unlike the novel it was based on—no mere exercise in popcorn sensationalism; it was emotionally complex, tragic, melancholy, definitely for grownups.

Full Review | Feb 24, 2022

As the doomy burnish of Gordon Willis’s photography captures the darkened souls of the Corleones, the effect is flat-out mesmeric.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 24, 2022

The Godfather is the most memorable, most influential, most quoted, most beloved, most discussed, most imitated, most revered and most entertaining American movie ever made.

Full Review | Feb 23, 2022

Five decades later, The Godfather still resonates with the paradigm shifts from one generation to the next, still influences one filmmaker after another, and continues to be the foundation of a lasting mythology.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 20, 2022

The Godfather is a rarity in film as every element off and on screen work here.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 18, 2022

There is simply not a character introduced or exchange of words or looks that doesn't inform or add.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 10, 2022

Marlon Brando gives a bravura, dusty-voice performance in the title role as the Sicilian who harvests favours from all comers, only to ask them to be paid back.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 17, 2022

The Godfather redefined concepts of Mob movies by standing out artistically, and that comes partly from its distinct look, as deep browns and blacks contrast with light and golden tints reminiscent of Caravaggio...violence and beauty indelibly combine.

Full Review | Aug 11, 2021

The Godfather (1972)

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THE GODFATHER

"crime classic".

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

What You Need To Know:

(B, C, PaPaPa, Ro, LLL, VVV, SS, NN, A, D, M) Moral but tragic worldview with mild Christian themes in morality tale about violence and hypocrisy in organized crime, with the hero eventually being corrupted by his experiences with evil men, so there’s very strong pagan content and some Romantic elements suggesting society has corrupted the hero; 18 obscenities & 7 profanities; heavy violence including several gunfire murders, one very graphic, strangulation, car explodes with woman inside, man’s hand is stabbed, wife abuse implied, & gross images such as bloody severed horse head & other bloodletting; implied adultery, briefly depicted adultery & briefly depicted marital sex; upper male & female nudity; alcohol use; smoking and drug sales; miscellaneous immorality including lying, cheating, extortion, threats, racial slurs, organized crime, and man orders multiple murders that are depicted at the same time that he’s baptizing his child and saying he renounces Satan.

More Detail:

Gaining an Oscar for best actor for Marlon Brando, an Oscar for best screenplay and an Oscar for best picture at the Academy Awards for 1972 pictures, THE GODFATHER has become a modern classic of rich characterizations and almost mythic qualities concerning organized crime among an Italian-American family following the second world war. Now released with digitally re-mastered sound, this violent and gritty drama suffers from an apparent lack of visual restoration, having washed out color and including no additional footage or scenes.

The story remains the same. At the start, Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) receives visitors into his private study at his New York home, while a party outside celebrates the wedding of his daughter Connie (Talia Shire). One such visitor, an undertaker, begs Corleone for “justice” (revenge), against the thugs who raped his daughter. Corleone says, “these men will be dealt with.” At the party, we meet Vito’s sons, college-educated and suave Michael, played by Al Pacino, and the volatile Sonny, played by James Caan.

We see the muscle of the Corleone family when Don Vito sends his adopted son, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), to Hollywood to persuade a film producer to hire the Frank Sinatra type character, named Johnny Fontaine (Al Martino ) for a new production. Tom places the severed head of a prized racehorse in the bed of the producer, and Johnny gets the role. When a rival gang introduces narcotics into the crime circle, Don Vito balks at including it in his operations. Hence, he is gunned down, but not killed. A second hit team comes to finish the job, but Michael stands guard and thwarts these efforts. This infuriates a police chief who has been paid off by a rival gang. The police chief beats up Michael.

Michael conducts “business”, kills the police chief and heads into exile in Sicily. While Michael hides in Italy, Sonny is brutally gunned down in America. Don Vito recovers slightly and consents to narcotics, but then he dies. Michael comes back to head up the family business. Michael’s cool, educated exterior makes him a perfect instrument of intimidation and power. Insiders who betrayed the Corleone family are removed, and the heads of the other five crime families are murdered in cold blood, while Michael gives allegiance to God during his child’s Catholic baptism.

With a running time of over 3 hours, this movie contains extensive and rich detail of the Corleone family. Rebuked at the time of its production by Italians and Italian Americans, it not only celebrates one aspect of Italian culture, but it also implies that the whole of organized crime is controlled by Italians. Mob movies had been made before in the past, but no movie painted such a clear picture of how the mob operated.

One of the most talked-about aspects of this movie is the special effects make-up applied to a 47 year-old Marlon Brando to make him appear in his 60’s. His persona and voice characterizations have been imitated in parody ever since. This movie also launched the career of Al Pacino who has subsequently acted in many gangster movies such as SCARFACE, CARLITO’S WAY and the recent DONNIE BRASCO. A movie full of detail and ironies, it also represents a major high point of Francis Ford Coppola’s directing career.

Of course, the hallmark of this movie is the violence. It has many instances of brutality and gunfire. It serves as the springboard for even greater violence in movies like GOODFELLAS and CASINO.

In THE GODFATHER, the violence is all part of the family business. One of the great ironies which pervade the film is that the Corleones try to present themselves as legitimate and even moral. One of the most revered scenes in American cinematic history comes near the end, when, at Michael‘s direction, many mob leaders are killed as Michael vows to serve God and renounce Satan. What could be more evil than murder and who could be more hypocritical than a man pretending to be a member of the Christian faith while he endorses murder? This shocking contrast is one of the great attractions of this film, where moviegoers want to see violence perpetrated not by low-life thugs, but by a distinguished family. Ultimately, the story is a morality tale about the downfall of a hero, who is corrupted by the violent, evil men and circumstances around him.

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Marlon Brando holding a cat in the film “The Godfather”

If ever there was a great example of how the best popular movies come out of a merger of commerce and art, “The Godfather” is it. The movie starts from a trash novel that is generally considered gripping and compulsively readable, though (maybe because movies more than satisfy my appetite for trash) I found it unreadable. You’re told who and what the characters are in a few pungent, punchy sentences, and that’s all they are. You’re briefed on their backgrounds and sex lives in a flashy anecdote or two, and the author moves on, from nugget to nugget. Mario Puzo has a reputation as a good writer, so his potboiler was treated as if it were special, and not in the Irving Wallace-Harold Robbins class, to which, by its itch and hype and juicy roman-à-clef treatment, it plainly belongs. What would this school of fiction do without Porfirio Rubirosa, Judy Garland, James Aubrey, Howard Hughes, and Frank Sinatra? The novel “The Godfather,” financed by Paramount during its writing, features a Sinatra stereotype, and sex and slaughter, and little gobbets of trouble and heartbreak. It’s gripping, maybe, in the same sense that Spiro Agnew’s speeches were a few years back. Francis Ford Coppola, who directed the film, and wrote the script with Puzo, has stayed very close to the book’s greased-lightning sensationalism and yet has made a movie with the spaciousness and strength that popular novels such as Dickens’ used to have. With the slop and sex reduced and the whoremongering guess-who material minimized (“Nino,” who sings with a highball in his hand, has been weeded out), the movie bears little relationship to other adaptations of books of this kind, such as “The Carpetbaggers” and “The Adventurers.” Puzo provided what Coppola needed: a storyteller’s outpouring of incidents and details to choose from, the folklore behind the headlines, heat and immediacy, the richly familiar. And Puzo’s shameless turn-on probably left Coppola looser than if he had been dealing with a better book; he could not have been cramped by worries about how best to convey its style. Puzo, who admits he was out to make money, wrote “below my gifts,” as he puts it, and one must agree. Coppola uses his gifts to reverse the process—to give the public the best a moviemaker can do with this very raw material. Coppola, a young director who has never had a big hit, may have done the movie for money, as he claims—in order to make the pictures he really wants to make, he says—but this picture was made at peak capacity. He has salvaged Puzo’s energy and lent the narrative dignity. Given the circumstances and the rush to complete the film and bring it to market, Coppola has not only done his best but pushed himself farther than he may realize. The movie is on the heroic scale of earlier pictures on broad themes, such as “On the Waterfront,” “From Here to Eternity,” and “The Nun’s Story.” It offers a wide, startlingly vivid view of a Mafia dynasty. The abundance is from the book; the quality of feeling is Coppola’s.

The beginning is set late in the summer of 1945; the film’s roots, however, are in the gangster films of the early thirties. The plot is still about rival gangs murdering each other, but now we see the system of patronage and terror, in which killing is a way of dealing with the competition. We see how the racketeering tribes encroach on each other and why this form of illegal business inevitably erupts in violence. We see the ethnic subculture, based on a split between the men’s conception of their responsibilities—all that they keep dark—and the sunny false Eden in which they try to shelter the women and children. The thirties films indicated some of this, but “The Godfather” gets into it at the primary level, the willingness to be basic and the attempt to understand the basic, to look at it without the usual preconceptions, are what give this picture its epic strength.

The visual scheme is based on the most obvious life-and-death contrasts; the men meet and conduct their business in deep-toned, shuttered rooms, lighted by lamps even in the daytime, and the story moves back and forth between this hidden, nocturnal world and the sunshine that they share with the women and children. The tension is in the meetings in the underworld darkness; one gets the sense that this secret life has its own poetry of fear, more real to the men (and perhaps to the excluded women also) than the sunlight world outside. The dark-and-light contrast is so operatic and so openly symbolic that it perfectly expresses the basic nature of the material. The contrast is integral to the Catholic background of the characters: innocence versus knowledge—knowledge in this sense being the same as guilt. It works as a visual style, because the Goyaesque shadings of dark brown into black in the interiors suggest (no matter how irrationally) an earlier period of history, while the sunny, soft-edge garden scenes have their own calendar-pretty pastness. Nino Rota’s score uses old popular songs to cue the varying moods, and at one climactic point swells in a crescendo that is both Italian opera and pure-forties movie music. There are rash, foolish acts in the movie but no acts of individual bravery. The killing, connived at in the darkness, is the secret horror, and it surfaces in one bloody outburst after another. It surfaces so often that after a while it doesn’t surprise us, and the recognition that the killing is an integral part of business policy takes us a long way from the fantasy outlaws of old movies. These gangsters don’t satisfy our adventurous fantasies of disobeying the law; they’re not defiant, they’re furtive and submissive. They are required to be more obedient than we are; they live by taking orders. There is no one on the screen we can identify with—unless we take a fancy to the pearly teeth of one shark in a pool of sharks.

Even when the plot strands go slack, about two-thirds of the way through, and the passage of a few years leaves us in doubt about whether certain actions have been concluded or postponed, the picture doesn’t become softheaded. The direction is tenaciously intelligent. Coppola holds on and pulls it all together. The trash novel is there underneath, but he attempts to draw the patterns out of the particulars. It’s amazing how encompassing the view seems to be—what a sense you get of a broad historical perspective, considering that the span is only from 1945 to the mid-fifties, at which time the Corleone family, already forced by competitive pressures into dealing in narcotics, is moving its base of operations to Las Vegas.

The enormous cast is headed by Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone, the “godfather” of a powerful Sicilian-American clan, with James Caan as his hothead son, Sonny, and Al Pacino as the thoughtful, educated son, Michael. Is Brando marvellous? Yes, he is, but then he often is; he was marvellous a few years ago in “Reflections in a Golden Eye,” and he’s shockingly effective as a working-class sadist in a current film, “The Nightcomers,” though the film itself isn’t worth seeing. The role of Don Vito—a patriarch in his early sixties—allows him to release more of the gentleness that was so seductive and unsettling in his braggart roles. Don Vito could be played as a magnificent old warrior, a noble killer, a handsome bull-patriarch, but Brando manages to debanalize him. It’s typical of Brando’s daring that he doesn’t capitalize on his broken-prow profile and the massive, sculptural head that has become the head of Rodin’s Balzac—he doesn’t play for statuesque nobility. The light, cracked voice comes out of a twisted mouth and clenched teeth; he has the battered face of a devious, combative old man, and a pugnacious thrust to his jaw. The rasp in his voice is particularly effective after Don Vito has been wounded; one almost feels that the bullets cracked it, and wishes it hadn’t been cracked before. Brando interiorizes Don Vito’s power, makes him less physically threatening and deeper , hidden within himself.

Brando’s acting has mellowed in recent years; it is less immediately exciting than it used to be, because there’s not the sudden, violent discharge of emotion. His effects are subtler, less showy, and he gives himself over to the material. He appears to have worked his way beyond the self-parody that was turning him into a comic, and that sometimes left the other performers dangling and laid bare the script. He has not acquired the polish of most famous actors; just the opposite—less mannered as he grows older, he seems to draw directly from life, and from himself. His Don is a primitive sacred monster, and the more powerful because he suggests not the strapping sacred monsters of movies (like Anthony Quinn) but actual ones—those old men who carry never-ending grudges and ancient hatreds inside a frail frame, those monsters who remember minute details of old business deals when they can no longer tie their shoelaces. No one has aged better on camera than Brando; he gradually takes Don Vito to the close of his life, when he moves into the sunshine world, a sleepy monster, near to innocence again. The character is all echoes and shadings, and no noise; his strength is in that armor of quiet. Brando has lent Don Vito some of his own mysterious, courtly reserve: the character is not explained; we simply assent to him and believe that, yes, he could become a king of the underworld. Brando doesn’t dominate the movie, yet he gives the story the legendary presence needed to raise it above gang warfare to archetypal tribal warfare.

Brando isn’t the whole show; James Caan is very fine, and so are Robert Duvall and many others in lesser roles. Don Vito’s sons suggest different aspects of Brando—Caan’s Sonny looks like the muscular young Brando but without the redeeming intuitiveness, while as the heir, Michael, Al Pacino comes to resemble him in manner and voice. Pacino creates a quiet, ominous space around himself; his performance—which is marvellous, too, big yet without ostentation—complements Brando’s. Like Brando in this film; Pacino is simple; you don’t catch him acting, yet he manages to change from a small, fresh-faced, darkly handsome college boy into an underworld lord, becoming more intense, smaller, and more isolated at every step. Coppola doesn’t stress the father-and-son links; they are simply there for us to notice when we will. Michael becomes like his father mostly from the inside, but we also get to see how his father’s face was formed (Michael’s mouth gets crooked and his cheeks jowly, like his father’s, after his jaw has been smashed). Pacino has an unusual gift for conveying the divided spirit of a man whose calculations often go against his inclinations. When Michael, warned that at a certain point he must come out shooting, delays, we are left to sense his mixed feelings. As his calculations will always win out, we can see that he will never be at peace. The director levels with almost everybody in the movie. The women’s complicity in their husbands’ activities is kept ambiguous, but it’s naggingly there—you can’t quite ignore it. And Coppola doesn’t make the subsidiary characters lovable; we look at Clemenza (Richard Castellano) as objectively when he is cooking spaghetti as we do when he is garroting a former associate. Many of the actors (and the incidents) carry the resonances of earlier gangster pictures, so that we almost unconsciously place them in the prehistory of this movie. Castellano, with his resemblance to Al Capone and Edward G. Robinson (plus a vagrant streak of Oscar Levant), belongs in this atmosphere; so does Richard Conte (as Barzini), who appeared in many of the predecessors of this movie, including “House of Strangers,” though perhaps Al Lettieri (as Sollozzo) acts too much like a B-picture hood. And perhaps the director goes off key when Sonny is blasted and blood-spattered at a toll booth; the effect is too garish.

The people dress in character and live in character—with just the gewgaws that seem right for them. The period details are there—a satin pillow, a modernistic apartment-house lobby, a child’s pasted-together greeting to Grandpa—but Coppola doesn’t turn the viewer into a guided tourist, told what to see. Nor does he go in for a lot of closeups, which are the simplest tool for fixing a director’s attitude. Diane Keaton (who plays Michael’s girlfriend) is seen casually; her attractiveness isn’t labored. The only character who is held in frame for us to see exactly as the character looking at her sees her is Apollonia (played by Simonetta Stefanelli), whom Michael falls in love with in Sicily. She is fixed by the camera as a ripe erotic image, because that is what she means to him, and Coppola, not having wasted his resources, can do it in a few frames. In general, he tries not to fix the images. In “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” John Schlesinger showed a messy knocked-over ashtray being picked up in closeup, so that there was nothing to perceive in the shot but the significance of the messiness. Coppola, I think, would have kept the camera on the room in which the woman bent over to retrieve the ashtray, and the messiness would have been just one element among many to be observed—perhaps the curve of her body could have told us much more than the actual picking-up motion. “The Godfather” keeps so much in front of us all the time that we’re never bored (though the picture runs just two minutes short of three hours)—we keep taking things in. This is a heritage from Jean Renoir—this uncoercive, “open” approach to the movie frame. Like Renoir, Coppola lets the spectator roam around in the images, lets a movie breathe, and this is extremely difficult in a period film, in which every detail must be carefully planted. But the details never look planted: you’re a few minutes into the movie before you’re fully conscious that it’s set in the past.

When one considers the different rates at which people read, it’s miraculous that films can ever solve the problem of a pace at which audiences can “read” a film together. A hack director solves the problem of pacing by making only a few points and making those so emphatically that the audience can hardly help getting them (this is why many of the movies from the studio-system days are unspeakably insulting); the tendency of a clever, careless director is to go too fast, assuming that he’s made everything clear when he hasn’t, and leaving the audience behind. When a film has as much novelistic detail as this one, the problem might seem to be almost insuperable. Yet, full as it is, “The Godfather” goes by evenly, so we don’t feel rushed, or restless, either; there’s classic grandeur to the narrative flow. But Coppola’s attitudes are specifically modern—more so than in many films with a more jagged surface. Renoir’s openness is an expression of an almost pagan love of people and landscape; his style is an embrace. Coppola’s openness is a reflection of an exploratory sense of complexity; he doesn’t feel the need to comment on what he shows us, and he doesn’t want to reduce the meanings in a shot by pushing us this way or that. The assumption behind this film is that complexity will engage the audience.

These gangsters like their life style, while we—seeing it from the outside—are appalled. If the movie gangster once did represent, as Robert Warshow suggested in the late forties, “what we want to be and what we are afraid we may become,” if he expressed “that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life, which rejects ‘Americanism’ itself,” that was the attitude of another era. In “The Godfather” we see organized crime as an obscene symbolic extension of free enterprise and government policy, an extension of the worst in America—its feudal ruthlessness. Organized crime is not a rejection of Americanism, it’s what we fear Americanism to be. It’s our nightmare of the American system. When “Americanism” was a form of cheerful bland official optimism, the gangster used to be destroyed at the end of the movie and our feelings resolved. Now the mood of the whole country has darkened, guiltily; nothing is resolved at the end of “The Godfather,” because the family business goes on. Terry Malloy didn’t clean up the docks at the end of “On the Waterfront;” that was a lie. “The Godfather” is popular melodrama, but it expresses a new tragic realism. ♦

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Harvard Film Archive scholar breaks down ‘The Godfather,’ which is turning 50, to explain its lasting appeal

Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” was an instant hit with fans and critics when it premiered in New York on March 15, 1972. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby called the film, based on Mario Puzo’s mafia novel, “one of the most brutal and moving chronicles of American life ever designed within the limits of popular entertainment.” Now considered a film classic and cultural touchstone, the movie’s lasting appeal is rooted in its groundbreaking visual style and standout performances, says Haden Guest, director of the Harvard Film Archive. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Haden Guest

GAZETTE: Why is this film considered such a classic?

GUEST: The lasting hold of “The Godfather,” and its status as a milestone film, have been lavishly celebrated as it approaches its 50th year. I think it is also important to recognize Coppola’s film as a chapter in the rich and longer history of the American gangster film, a genre that began to capture the popular imagination in the late 1920s. “The Godfather,” in fact, readily acknowledges that history and legacy through a series of allusions to past gangster films such as “The Roaring Twenties” and “Little Caesar,” among many others. Beyond its engagement with the history of genre, “The Godfather” can more broadly be seen as a vital bridge between the classic Hollywood of the studio-era (seen early on in the film during the visit of consigliere Tom Hagen to make the infamous offer that can’t be refused) and the New Hollywood of the 1970s. Coppola draws from the deep well of film history in so many fascinating ways that I think contribute to the film’s continued resonance.

Of course, the performances are absolutely central to the film’s status as a classic. Here too “The Godfather” acknowledges its place in film history by staging a meeting of different generations of performers, most notably embodied in Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, two very different actor’s actors of the Method School now cast as father and son, as if emblematic the passing of the baton. Underscoring this is the presence of other amazing studio-era actors such as Sterling Hayden and Richard Conte, who was a really pivotal figure in two-fisted gangster films in the ’40s and ’50s.

GAZETTE: The film has been widely praised for its visual style. Who was really behind the look of the movie?

GUEST: One key to the remarkable look and feel of the film is the work and vision of the director of photography, Gordon Willis, an absolutely brilliant cinematographer. In the very first “I believe in America” shot of “The Godfather,” you have this incredible abstraction of the blackest, deepest blacks against the white of Brando’s tuxedo as he sits in his darkened office hearing the pleas of the father desperate for revenge. Here Willis announces immediately that the film’s exploration of right and wrong, of crime and justice, is going to be complex and difficult, set in different shades than the black-and-white terms through which gangster stories are often imagined. Willis took full advantage of existing technology, of film stocks and lenses that allowed him to created layers of black and shadow never before possible in a color film. He did so by responding to the script and to Coppola, but it was really his decision to go as dark as possible. There are many other shots that are seemingly underlit with deliberate purpose and effect. Willis played a pivotal role in defining the look and feel of key scenes, like the one in the Italian restaurant where Michael himself chooses to enact vengeance and kill Sollozzo.

“One key to the remarkable look and feel of the film is the work and vision of the director of photography, Gordon Willis, an absolutely brilliant cinematographer,” says Haden Guest.

Photo by Marcus Halevi

GAZETTE: Do you have a favorite scene? And can you break it down for us?

GUEST: I think that restaurant scene is one of the best in the film. From the very beginning to the end, from Michael climbing into the huge, glistening car to the moment of hesitation where he forgets to drop the gun, there is a constant building of tension that makes it absolutely riveting. When we enter the restaurant, we know that it is soon going to become a crime scene, and this knowledge ignites our imagination of this modest neighborhood place that is so vividly evoked and depicted. The loud pop of the cork when the waiter opens the wine and the tension while he fills the glasses, and the men wait to speak. Coppola’s fastidious attention to period details and evocative gestures, the tiles on the floor, Sterling Hayden’s napkin tucked high up in his collar — these demand our attention and pull the viewer intensely into the scene, drawing attention to the seemingly smallest detail.

And then the climatic shooting where Pacino shoots a bullet straight into the middle of the policeman’s forehead as he eats his veal scaloppine, that’s an image designed to have maximum impact. Like the broken glasses in Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin.” Of course, we can’t give credit solely to Coppola and Willis. They were working with a team of art directors and designers and as a team they allowed this scene to burn slowly before exploding in a moment of cataclysmic violence, with both the build-up and climax rendered as graphically and tonally impactful, and memorable, as possible.

Embodied in the modest Italian-American neighborhood restaurant is also the world that Michael is saying goodbye to, the quiet life he could have lived as a veteran, and seemed to want at the film’s beginning. When he kills the two men at the dinner table and calmly walks out with all the customers at the other tables staring at him, he is bidding farewell to what could have been, choosing to enter into a life of crime, a decision from which we know there will be no turning back.

GAZETTE: Do you remember when you first saw the film and can you recall your first impressions?

GUEST: I was born shortly before “The Godfather” was released so did not see it until many years later. I watched the film first when I was around 12 years old, too young I’m sure, and it had a huge impact on me less for the violence, although that was certainly disturbing, than for the way it conjured up the historical past with such a richness of detail and luster.

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Why The Godfather, Part II is the Best of the Trilogy

What exactly makes “ The Godfather, Part II ” better than its predecessor?

“The Godfather, Part II” was the first film in the Godfather saga that I saw. This was perhaps a couple of years after it was first released. Knowing then very little about its predecessor and considering that the follow-up constantly jumps between time periods, it didn’t end up making all that much sense to me, but it raised enough curiosity to try to fill the voids, even if the only material available to me at that time was their Mad Magazine parodies. There’s just something about the protagonists of certain movies that makes it hard to shake them off—the Fast Eddie Felsons, the Vincent & Neils, the Red & Andys, and above all, the Corleones. “The Godfather, Part II” deals with the continuing story of that family, as new patriarch Michael tries to expand its many businesses. Director Francis Ford Coppola highlights the professional and personal challenges Michael has to face by contrasting them with those of his father in their very different times and cultures.

It wasn’t until the summer of 1980 that the original “Godfather” made another round in cinemas down here in Mexico. After all these years and dozens of viewings, I still find it to be as great as ever regardless of a few warts, such as the use of a bit too much stock footage (think of Tom Hagen arriving in the 1940s Hollywood, or Paulie, Rocco and Clemenza driving through New York) and the obvious use of stand-ins that don’t look all that much like the actors (like Hagen and Jack Woltz walking by the gardens of the latter’s mansion). Even though its financial success meant that the sequels wouldn’t have to suffer from similar budget limitations, the first Godfather clearly stands above them when it comes to background plot. I’ve always found the hounding of the Corleones by their enemies to be much more interesting than Michael doing business in Cuba just before the 1950s revolution in Part II, or him trying to wipe his family’s past clean by way of a real estate company in Part III. During my annual viewing of the sequel, at the stage of the first half, I invariably find myself missing the departed characters from the first entry during the good old days when the family was under siege from Sollozzo and the other families. In contrast, the discreet actions of Hyman Roth, whose evil intentions we never even get to hear on screen, tend to pale a bit. And yet, strangely enough, once my viewing of both movies concludes, the impact of the sequel is invariably stronger than that of its predecessor, leading me to wonder how it was ever possible for Coppola to be able to improve on the first film’s greatness, especially considering the handicaps he had to cope with.

The first factor, I believe, is that the director somehow managed to turn Part II’s weakness into strengths. For instance, few film series by nature have lost as many characters during their first entry. This list includes just about all of the family’s enemies along with Sonny, Tessio, Carlo, Paulie, Luca Brasi and above all, the central figure of Brando’s Vito Corleone. The latter was originally supposed to appear in the final reminiscing scene but somehow by that point, there’s a feeling that he has been present all along anyway. Perhaps this had to do with how Robert DeNiro was able to play the Brando character without missing a beat. The same problem should have applied in the sequel to the missing character Clemenza, whose part was basically taken over by Michael Gazzo’s Frank Pentangelli. He was even given the Don’s old home and was made to be a history buff just like Clemenza, though his absence from the decade long events of Part I is more than a little hard to buy. At the end, Gazzo’s Frankie “Five Angels” turned out to be just as memorable as his predecessor. His (on the surface) unremarkable conversation with Hagen that ends with the latter bidding him “Addio” (quite literally, as it turns out) is clearly one of the best moments of the series. Would it have helped if Brando had made his appearance in the end’s family reunion scene? Would the sight of Vito’s old caporegime at the Mafia Hearings, or dead in the bathtub have brought a feeling of full circle to the defeat of the family’s enemies? It’s hard to imagine otherwise in both cases but their substitutes turned out so well, we don’t end up longing for these alternatives all that much.

Still, when trying to assign each of these films their rightful place, the most important factor to consider is that they tend to be even more interesting when looking towards the interior of the family as opposed to when looking outside, and Part II comes second to none in this regard. The Cuba plot basically serves as a framework for the Corleone’s own conflicts and those conveyed in the sequel include much more interesting contrasts and facets. Down deep what makes the “Godfather” trilogy sublime are the unique bonds and occasional deep hate that can only fully take place between parents/children and their siblings, and no filmmaker before or since has been able to convey this with as much truth and resonance as Coppola (with Scorsese in “ Raging Bull ” coming second). This is one of the main reasons why the audience ended up seeing this particular family as their very own and it is also why the increasingly decaying Michael Corleone, perhaps even against Coppola’s best intentions, kept the audience’s sympathy until the very end of the series when he dropped dead in that Sicilian garden. Part I’s main focus was Vito’s extraordinary ability to deal with his enemies and how the most unexpected of his sons inherited such. The second movie went even further by conveying how Michael’s intelligence was not enough when it came to the inner workings of his own crumbling family.

Generally speaking, the first “Godfather” film can be considered flashier than the second, but when it comes to some of the series’ most valuable traits such as its stirring revelations, the impact of Michael listening to Fredo reveal himself accidentally as the family traitor in Part II is by no means any less shocking than that of the Don realizing who his true enemy had been all along in Part I. When it comes to unforgettable knowing glances, not even Kay’s realization that Michael has lied to her face at the end of Part I can match the seemingly conciliatory embrace that Michael gives Fredo, followed by the slightest of knowing nods at his bodyguard in what is clearly one of the great moments in movie history. Even Camine Coppola’s arrangements of Nino Rota ’s music manage to improve the original film’s themes, resulting in what is my very favorite film soundtrack.

It is by considering another key problem with the controversial Part III that we can further appreciate what made Part II the best entry in the series. The characters we see early on the third “Godfather” barely reflect the logical evolution of those we left at the end of the second. For instance, what exactly prompted Michael to forgive Kay and seek a reconciliation (which ended up feeling so forced)? How could Connie accept the silly “drowning” excuse about Fredo “drowning” death? The answers to these questions seem to have been based more on casting choices and actor availabilities than on how their stories should have naturally played out. In contrast, this is one of the Part II’s greatest strengths. While watching such sequences as the superb conversation between Michael and Hagen about their bonds and life lessons (the “there’s a lot I can’t tell you Tom” dialogue) or by witnessing such seemingly small details as Vito going back to help the wounded friend who assisted him in his revenge plot, we come to better appreciate the roots of their deep loyalties. Additionally, the initial musings in the first movie about Michael promising Kay to eventually change and his warning of Fredo to never take sides against the family again, are followed through in the sequel to their full extent, in the latter case taking the series into fratricidal territory that not even the first movie could have ever imagined, proving that a sequel to “ The Godfather ” was something truly necessary. At the end of the day “The Godfather Part II” enhances our understanding and appreciation of the legendary characters presented in the original film. It surpasses it, in part, because it manages to make its predecessor even better.

Gerardo Valero

Gerardo Valero is lives in Mexico City with his wife Monica. Since 2011 he’s been writing a daily blog about film clichés and flubs (in Spanish) on Mexico’s Cine-Premiere Magazine . His contributions to “Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary” were included in the last twelve editions of “Roger Ebert’s Movie Yearbook.”

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There is really no cinematic moment more iconic than Francis Ford Coppola 's trilogy. T he Godfather has become one of the most iconic of film franchises and one that fans continue to come back to. Based on the novel by Mario Puzo , there have been multiple movies, television shows, and more all based on Coppola's films. The show The Offer was about the production of the movie! Now, you can experience the entire franchise on Pluto TV ! And just in time to spend the holidays warm and in your home (hopefully without the head of a horse in your bed though).

The Godfather was released in 1972 and introduced the world to Don Corleone ( Marlon Brando ) and, in a lot of ways, kicked off the obsession with mafia stories as we've come to know them. It introduced the world to a young Al Pacino and even had Robert de Niro make an appearance in The Godfather: Part II . It is a staple of cinema history for a good reason. While we now know Coppola to be one of the most influential directors of our time, it was his work on this franchise that made it so.

Without The Godfather , we wouldn't have movies like Coppola's adaptation of The Outsiders . His career started with Dementia 13 in 1963 but it was his persistence to adapt The Godfather that made him an iconic filmmaker. What better way to head into October than to watch Michael Corleone's story and experience the magic of Coppola's work? It is, after all, so iconic that other movies reference its importance.

Even 'Barbie' Had a Joke About 'The Godfather'

One of the funniest moments of the Greta Gerwig film Barbie came when the Kens took over Barbieland and forced all the Barbies to listen to them because of the patriarchy. The joke comes when President Barbie ( Issa Rae ) remembers who she is and she is trying to distract the Kens to free another Barbie. She asks if they are watching The Godfather, and it ushers in the Kens mansplaining the franchise to her. While women do love The Godfather , the joke is more about how t he film has taken on a new meaning in "film bro" circles, with many over-explaining its brilliance. Which all leads to the same point: These movies are just that good that everyone wants to talk about why they are so.

So you can be like the Kens in Barbieland (or Kendom) and watch The Godfather now that the entire franchise is streaming on Pluto TV in October!

The Godfather

Don Vito Corleone, head of a mafia family, decides to hand over his empire to his youngest son, Michael. However, his decision unintentionally puts the lives of his loved ones in grave danger.

Francis Ford Coppola

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Movie Reviews

Whatever you’ve heard about 'megalopolis,' see this gutsy coppola film for yourself.

Justin Chang

Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia Cicero and Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina in Megalopolis. Photo Credit:

Nathalie Emmanuel and Adam Driver star as Julia and Cesar in Megalopolis . Courtesy of Lionsgate/Courtesy of Lionsgate/Courtesy of Lionsgate hide caption

In the early 1980s, Francis Ford Coppola , with classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now under his belt, set his sights on his next magnum opus: an ambitious, fable-like drama that would draw parallels between the U.S. and ancient Rome.

But after the costly flop of his 1982 musical, One From the Heart , Coppola wasn’t able to get another big-budget labor of love off the ground, and Megalopolis languished for decades. It was only a few years ago that he returned to the project, selling off part of his wine business and putting up $120 million of his own money. Even after production wrapped, setbacks continued, from challenges finding theatrical distribution to reports that Coppola had behaved inappropriately with women on the set, which the director has denied.

Now, against considerable odds, Megalopolis has arrived, and whatever you have or haven’t heard about it, I urge you to see it for yourself. You might conclude, like some of the critics at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, that Megalopolis is an unholy mess, full of disjointed plot points, didactic ideas and muddled historical allusions — an epic folly from a once-great filmmaker who long ago lost his mojo and possibly his mind. To which I can only say that every folly should have as much guts and passion as Megalopolis . I’ve seen it twice now, and both times I’ve come away dazzled by its beauty, its conviction, and its moments of brilliance.

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To make 'the godfather' his way, francis ford coppola waged a studio battle.

The story takes place in a city called New Rome, which looks a lot like New York, but with Roman flourishes, from the classical architecture to the bacchanalian parties and even a Colosseum-style sports arena. The plot essentially updates a famous Roman power struggle from 63 B.C.

Adam Driver plays Cesar Catilina, an architect and designer who longs to transform New Rome into a dazzling futuristic utopia. But Cesar is challenged by the cynical mayor, Franklyn Cicero — that’s Giancarlo Esposito — who sees Cesar as a delusional dreamer. Furthering the conflict is Cicero’s daughter, Julia, a hard-partying medical-school dropout played by Nathalie Emmanuel, who asks Cesar for a job.

Director Francis Ford Coppola at the 94th Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. on March 27, 2022.

Lionsgate apologizes to Coppola for now-pulled 'Megalopolis’ trailer

There’s a speechy stiffness to Coppola’s dialogue that takes some getting used to. But the story itself is a fairly straightforward mix of romance, sci-fi noir and political thriller. Cesar does hire Julia as an assistant, and they become lovers. But many complications ensue.

There’s the mystery of Cesar’s late wife, who died years ago under strange circumstances. There’s also much dysfunctional-family drama involving Cesar’s filthy-rich banker uncle, played by Jon Voight, and a ne’er-do-well cousin — that’s Shia LaBeouf. Both men have their own sinister designs on the city’s future. And in the borderline-cliché role of an unscrupulous TV reporter, Aubrey Plaza steals every scene, as Plaza usually does.

'The Godfather' bridged old and new Hollywood to save American moviegoing

There’s more, much more: horse-drawn chariots and nightclub unicorns, Old Hollywood-style film techniques and kaleidoscopic visual effects, wild sex and startling violence. There are also references to Pygmalion, Marcus Aurelius, Sapphic poetry and Hamlet , whose “to be or not to be” soliloquy Cesar at one point performs. He’s in the throes of an existential crisis, fearful that humanity’s time may be running out.

And if Megalopolis has one subject, it’s time. The characters talk about time constantly. The trippy production design is full of clocks and sundials. Cesar has the supernatural ability to briefly freeze time in its tracks, but even he cannot halt its forward march for long. Watching the movie, I couldn’t stop thinking about Coppola, who’s now 85, and his own battle with time, including the four decades he spent trying to get Megalopolis made.

But whatever resentment Coppola may feel toward an industry that has both honored and shunned him over the years, there isn’t a trace of bitterness in the movie. Cesar believes in the future, and so does Coppola. Just because Rome fell, he seems to say, doesn’t mean the world has to. Wars can end, the planet can be saved and people can choose to live in a more inclusive and equitable society.

Most of all, Coppola clearly believes in the future of movies, and that, in a medium overrun with franchises, streaming junk and AI technology, there’s still room for a big-screen work of art as grandly improbable and deeply human as Megalopolis . Like so many of Francis Ford Coppola’s movies, it truly is one from the heart.

Clockwise from left: Wicked, Here, Emilia Pérez, A Real Pain, Piece by Piece and Blitz.

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A behind the scenes look at "The Godfather" from 1971.

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Godfather In The USA – Not-so-Encouraging?

Article by Shree Ram Published by GulteDesk --> Published on: 2:43 pm, 4 October 2022

Megastar Chiranjeevi is currently waiting for the result of his new film Godfather. Directed by Mohan Raja, the film is creating a positive buzz in film circles.

The movie is heading for a grand release tomorrow across the world. The makers are planning for a big release in Overseas as well. However, the trade experts say that the USA release is disappointing.

As of now, the advance bookings hint to us at below-par premieres in the USA. The main reason behind this is the lack of a proper plan to release the film in overseas.

In fact, the trade was expecting at least a $500K start given the internal business being done and the added advantage of Salman Khan. But, it looks like it is not going to happen, considering the poor buzz in the USA.

With Ponniyin Selvan performing extremely well in the USA, it is a clear indication that the audiences are ready to watch a film with good content. The presence of Nayanthara may also help Godfather in a big way.

Directed by Mohan Raja, the film is the official remake of the Malayalam hit Lucifer.

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Entertainment | hurricane helene: central florida under tornado watch until 6 a.m. friday, things to do, entertainment | movie review: francis ford coppola’s ‘megalopolis’ is a wild fever dream of excess and idealism.

This image released by Lionsgate shows Giancarlo Esposito as Mayor Cicero in a scene from “Megalopolis.” (Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows a scene from “Megalopolis.” (Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Adam Driver in a scene from “Megalopolis.” (Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Nathalie Emmanuel in a scene from “Megalopolis.” (Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Aubrey Plaza in a scene from “Megalopolis.” (Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Shia LaBeouf, as Clodio Pulcher, in a scene from “Megalopolis.” (Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows writer/director Francis Ford Coppola, left, and actor Adam Driver on the set of “Megalopolis.” (Phil Caruso/Lionsgate via AP)

If anything is clear about “Megalopolis,” it’s that Francis Ford Coppola has a lot on his mind.

The legendary filmmaker spent decades on this Roman-style epic, set in the present day, about a civilization on the brink of collapse. A wealthy and powerful few of the old guard are running the gilded city of New Rome into the ground, a new generation is embroiled in a stalemate of a culture war between hedonists and puritans and a visionary architect caught in the middle is dreaming up a different future.

But none of that captures the wild experience of actually watching “Megalopolis,” a sprawling, operatic, clumsy and fascinating film that should inspire discussions for many years to come.

“Megalopolis” is not a disaster, but it’s far from a success. It’s a bacchanalia that’s bursting with so many ideas, so many characters, so many great lines and truly terrible ones as well that it’s nearly impossible to digest in a single, baffling viewing.

If there is a center to this story it’s Adam Driver’s Caesar Catilina, an artist who can stop time and who believes that a substance called Megalon, a shimmering people mover that can be used to make a translucent (but not naked) dress or reconstruct a face mangled by a gunshot, is the way to a utopia. Driver is a great actor who is utterly misused here as a grief-stricken, alcoholic, “Hamlet”-quoting megalomaniac aristocrat who spends his days in an art deco ivory tower (the Chrysler Building) fretting about time and what the corrupt Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) is doing to the city.

We’re supposed to believe that Caesar is a widely desired catch who would attract the mayor’s beautiful daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) to his side. But Kylo Ren had more charisma than Caesar. The story’s ability to sell Caesar as something special is not helped by Julia, more symbol than character despite plentiful screentime, whose leaden dialogue is not given any life or spark by Emmanuel.

Their Romeo-and-Juliet love story is labored, to say the least, despite some stunning shots that might suggest otherwise. It’s a problem with much of the conflicts and connections in the film, which all sound great on paper — they should, as much of it is drawn from juicy Roman history — but fumble in execution.

That’s not to say that all the actors wither under the excess. The great Talia Shire, as Caesar’s cold mother, does more than either Driver or Emmanuel, with just a handful of lines and scenes. Aubrey Plaza, too, seems to have understood exactly what “Megalopolis” needed from a character named Wow Platinum, a social-climbing broadcast journalist who marries Jon Voight’s bank scion Hamilton Crassus III: a high dose of camp. She embraces the silliness of her dialogue, seeing the comedic potential in every ridiculous moment.

It’s hard to stress just how much there is stuffed into two hours and 18 minutes. Shia LaBeouf is Clodio Pulcher, the rich kid son of Crassus, who has Mae West eyebrows and long feral hair. He is in love with Julia, jealous of Caesar and may be having an incestuous relationship with his party girl socialite sister Clodia (Chloe Fineman). He attempts his own political bid, preying on the city’s desperate peasant class. Laurence Fishburne is Caesar’s driver (and the narrator of the film). Dustin Hoffman is a fixer. Jason Schwartzman is around (and delightful, as always). There’s a pop star named Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal) who has taken a virginity pledge. Even Romy Mars plays a teen reporter!

“Megalopolis” shines brightest with its crafts, including Milena Canonero’s decadent Roman-inspired frocks, Osvaldo Golijov’s sweeping, romantic score and Mihai Mălaimare Jr.’s golden cinematography that makes the feast of the production design glow lovingly.

But this is a film that I can only in good conscience recommend fully to cinephiles, who were most certainly going to see it regardless. It’s Coppola’s first in 13 years, after all, and one that he boldly and admirably self-financed. I hope that it’s the movie he wanted to make. For anyone else, it’s a tougher sell — not unworthy of someone’s time and money, but also not guaranteed to be especially rewarding or satisfying for anyone hoping that he’s made another “Godfather” (and who hasn’t watched “Twixt” or “Tetro”).

Coppola is an artist whose films sometimes take time to find their place in audiences’ hearts and minds. No one understands that as pointedly as he does. Whether or not there’s a drastic reappraisal somewhere down the line, “Megalopolis” will forever be a fascination.

“Megalopolis,” a Lionsgate release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “sexual content, nudity, drug use, language and some violence.” Running time: 138 minutes. Two stars out of four.

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COMMENTS

Godfather Movie Review
Godfather Movie Review. Megastar Chiranjeevi's Godfather is the official remake of the Malayalam blockbuster Lucifer, starring Mohanlal and Prithviraj. The trailer of Godfather garnered a decent response. The starcast of Godfather is interesting with the very talented Nayanthara and Sathya Dev joining Chiru for this political action drama.
Devara Movie Review
The cliffhanger in Devara Part 1 could be the director's weakest thought. 'Why Kattappa Killed Baahubali' was a sensation back then with Baahubali and Koratala Siva using a similar one for another star hero movie like Devara is unimaginable. Overall, Devara is not a great film but not a poor film either.
Koratala's Sudden Change Is A Bonus For Devara
The director's ability to build excitement is seen as a bonus for the film, as it prepares to hit theaters tomorrow. Koratala's previous works have set high expectations for Devara, with Acharya ignored, and his current promotional strategy suggests that the Jr NTR starrer will deliver an engaging cinematic experience.
The Godfather movie review & film summary (1972)
March 16, 1997. 7 min read. A Corleone family portrait. "The Godfather" is told entirely within a closed world. That's why we sympathize with characters who are essentially evil. The story by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola is a brilliant conjuring act, inviting us to consider the Mafia entirely on its own terms.
The Godfather movie review & film summary (1972)
Roger Ebert. January 1, 1972. 4 min read. We know from Gay Talese's book Honor Thy Father that being a professional mobster isn't all sunshine and roses. More often, it's the boredom of stuffy rooms and a bad diet of carry-out food, punctuated by brief, terrible bursts of violence. This is exactly the feel of "The Godfather," which ...
From 1972: 'The Godfather' is a film 'close to the soul of modern man'
From 1972: 'The Godfather' is a film 'close to the soul of modern man'. Richard A. Blake March 11, 2022. Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone in 'The Godfather' (IMDB) Editor's note: "The ...
The Godfather
A woman is killed by a car bomb that was meant for her husband. After a man is gunned down, one of his assailants kicks his corpse. A man falls to the ground, dead from natural causes, as he plays with his grandson. A few characters are roughed around a bit. Michael gets his jaw broken by a corrupt police officer.
The Godfather Movie Review
Language 4/10 - It has extremely tame language for an R rated film. 7 uses of "bitch", 5 uses of "ass", 1 use of "dick" and some ethnic slurs include one use of the n-word, and many slurs against Italians. Sex/Nudity 5/10 - In one scene two characters are walked in on while having sex (Their clothed and it stops almost instantly), a ...
The Godfather
The Godfather. TRAILER. List. NEW. Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, this mob drama, based on Mario Puzo's novel of the same name, focuses on the powerful Italian-American ...
Godfather, The
U.S. Release Date: 1972-03-24. MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Profanity, Sexual Situations, Nudity) Genre: DRAMA. Subtitles: none. Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1. Rarely can it be said that a film has defined a genre, but never is that more true than in the case of The Godfather. Since the release of the 1972 epic (which garnered ten Academy ...
The New York Times: Best Pictures
REVIEW | 'THE GODFATHER' Moving and Brutal 'Godfather' Bows. By VINCENT CANBY. ... "The Godfather," which opened at five theaters here yesterday, is a superb Hollywood movie that was photographed mostly in New York (with locations in Las Vegas, Sicily and Hollywood). It's the gangster melodrama come-of-age, truly sorrowful and truly exciting ...
The Godfather
The Godfather is the most memorable, most influential, most quoted, most beloved, most discussed, most imitated, most revered and most entertaining American movie ever made. Full Review | Feb 23, 2022
The Godfather (1972)
With this movie Brando was able to bring himself back into the limelight. His performance as the godfather alone is iconic. His character has been recreated so much in films that it has almost if it has not already become a cliché. His performance though was not a cliché. His performance was subtle and breathtaking.
₹300 Cr Worth Salman Khan Didn't Help Godfather?
Though Megastar hasn't promoted the film big time in Bollywood, the film should open to huge numbers owing to the fact that Superstar Salman Khan has played a guest role in it. Trade pundits indicated that "Godfather" hasn't even touched ₹1 crore nett collection on its release day in Hindi areas though the film got released on more ...
The Godfather: Have we misunderstood America's greatest film?
Fifty years on from its release in March 1972, it stands as the defining US artwork not just on organised crime, but on immigration, capitalism and corruption. Even people who aren't familiar with ...
THE GODFATHER
Mob movies had been made before in the past, but no movie painted such a clear picture of how the mob operated. One of the most talked-about aspects of this movie is the special effects make-up applied to a 47 year-old Marlon Brando to make him appear in his 60's. His persona and voice characterizations have been imitated in parody ever since.
The Godfather Reviews
Daki1105. Sep 12, 2024. The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and released in 1972, is often hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. Its narrative depth, complex characters, and masterful direction set a benchmark for cinematic storytelling. The film's portrayal of the Corleone family, led by the iconic Vito Corleone, played by ...
Pauline Kael Reviews "The Godfather"
Pauline Kael's 1972 review of Francis Ford Coppola's classic mob movie, based on the Mario Puzo book and starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Diane Keaton, and Robert Duvall.
Film scholar explains why 'The Godfather' has lasting appeal
Harvard Film Archive scholar breaks down 'The Godfather,' which is turning 50, to explain its lasting appeal. Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather," was an instant hit with fans and critics when it premiered in New York on March 15, 1972. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby called the film, based on Mario Puzo's ...
Why The Godfather, Part II is the Best of the Trilogy
At the end of the day "The Godfather Part II" enhances our understanding and appreciation of the legendary characters presented in the original film. It surpasses it, in part, because it manages to make its predecessor even better. Gerardo Valero. Gerardo Valero is lives in Mexico City with his wife Monica.
Godfather First Look: Chiranjeevi Rocks It
Satya Dev is also playing a full-length role in the movie. Cinematographer Nirav Shah cranks the camera, while Suresh Selvarajan is the art director. The film is produced jointly by RB Choudary and NV Prasad, while Konidela Surekha is presenting it under Konidela Production Company and Super Good Films. The makers have locked Dasara 2022 release.
The Entire Godfather Saga Will Stream For Free Soon
One of the funniest moments of the Greta Gerwig film Barbie came when the Kens took over Barbieland and forced all the Barbies to listen to them because of the patriarchy. The joke comes when ...
Whatever you've heard about 'Megalopolis,' see this gutsy Coppola film
Francis Ford Coppola's epic draws parallels between the U.S. and ancient Rome. Forty-some years in the making, it's got wild sex, startling violence, horse-drawn chariots and even nightclub unicorns.
The Godfather: Behind the Scenes
Check out the exclusive TV Guide movie review and see our movie rating for The Godfather: Behind the Scenes
Godfather In The USA
With Ponniyin Selvan performing extremely well in the USA, it is a clear indication that the audiences are ready to watch a film with good content. The presence of Nayanthara may also help Godfather in a big way. Directed by Mohan Raja, the film is the official remake of the Malayalam hit Lucifer. Tags Chiranjeevi Godfather
What to Know About Francis Ford Coppola and 'Megalopolis'
The mixed reviews out of Cannes, coupled with Coppola's financial demands, meant the film struggled to find a distributor. Lionsgate finally acquired the domestic rights in June after Coppola ...
Movie Review: Francis Ford Coppola's 'Megalopolis' is a wild fever
By LINDSEY BAHR If anything is clear about "Megalopolis," it's that Francis Ford Coppola has a lot on his mind. The legendary filmmaker spent decades on this Roman-style epic, set…