The Godfather - maybe you've heard of it?
50 years on and better than ever, the remastered masterpiece worth every minute of the runtime
Fifty years on from its cinematic release, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is back in theatres, remastered and still masterful.
It is difficult to overestimate the cultural significance of The Godfather. It might be the single most important piece of popular media of the 20th century. Its impact on film-making, acting, television, narrative storytelling, the Mafia, and even our day to day lexicon is remarkable. If you haven’t seen the movie, you probably still know the horse’s head, or sleeping with the fishes, or the gun behind the toilet, or an offer he can’t refuse. It is routinely considered one of the best and one of the most important films ever made, to the extent that many people of my generation are loathe to watch it in case it fails to live up to its lofty expectations. And yet it does, every single time.
The movie is characterised by choices - directorial, editorial, cinematographic, acting - which shouldn’t work, but somehow coalesce into something magnificent, enduring and infinitely re-watchable. Brando is perhaps the most infamous example, with a farcically wheezy Don Corleone voice, and cotton-balls in his cheeks. But other choices, like Gordon Willis’ light vs. dark aesthetic, mirroring the most important theme in the story, and Pacino’s willingness to actually have his jaw wired shut in the scene after having had it ‘broken’, are genius in hindsight. The movie starts with a near 30 minute wedding and wedding-adjacent set piece - which feels incredibly brave now, but on reflection works beautifully - deft narrative storytelling without which we’d never have learned so much, so quickly and so cleverly about the protagonists.
The Godfather remains perhaps the single best cinematic example of ‘bigger than the sum of its parts’. Which sounds ridiculous, really, given the parts on offer: Coppola, Brando, Duvall, Pacino, Keaton, Caan, and of course Mario Puzo’s source material, considered by some critics as pop-trash but nevertheless one of the most successful novels of all time prior to the screen adaptation. But as we well know, movies with stellar casts and popular source material aren’t always a home-run. They usually strikeout. The Godfather is, again, unique in this respect - the first two films* improve significantly on the novel. The biggest actors, on the biggest stage, deliver.
But, like Michael’s rise to the head of the Corleone family, it wasn’t all pre-determined. The phrase ‘troubled production’ sends alarm bells ringing nowadays, and The Godfather is up there as perhaps the most troubled one could imagine. Even before the book was written, it seemed like it would never come to pass. Puzo wrote it quickly, desperately, being in to bookies for 10 grand, a substantial sum in 1960s New York. Paramount bought the rights cheaply, and, truthfully, never expected to hear about it again. But it was a hit. Published in 1969, The Godfather spent 67 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Even then, Paramount was reticent to make a mob movie. The most recent example, The Brotherhood, was a box-office flop, in spite of starring Kirk Douglas. Or perhaps because of starring Kirk Douglas, who’s about as Sicilian as me. Evans was convinced the screen adaption of Puzo’s novel could work, as long as audiences could “smell the spaghetti”.
Coppola was famously the 7th or 8th choice director, depending on who you believe, and survived a mid-shoot insurrection by Paramount, who sent Elia Kazan in to ostensibly ‘learn from’ Coppola, as they were wary of the director’s style and insistence on certain character archetypes, especially that of Michael. Producer Evans never wanted Brando, who he saw as a short tempered hot-head on a downward trajectory, in spite of such a storied filmography. The initial plan was also to set the piece in the 70s, because the original budget was only $2.5m, and period pieces were expensive. A 1970s Godfather, starring Burt Lancaster as Vito, and directed by Elia Kazan?
Brando wasn’t the only casting ‘what if’. De Niro, who would go on to play the young Vito so magnificently in Part II, auditioned for the role of Sonny - a sliding doors moment for cinema.
What more can be said that hasn’t already about the movie? It has been parodied beyond parody, at this point, but remains remarkably immune to it compared to other great works. Take Downfall, for example - it’s impossible to watch it now without thinking about all of the best YouTube lampoons of the bunker scene. But with The Godfather, you maintain focus and entrancement through every minute of the near 3 hour runtime, and it’s only after that you remember Family Guy, or Saturday Night Live or any of the other retreads.
It survives, much like Vito throughout the movie, many mistakes. Sonny’s punch which lands in a different NY borough, and Clemenza’s unnecessary pluralisation of ‘leave the gun, take the Cannolis’ in perhaps one of the greatest ad-libbed lines ever, by Richard Castellano? Neither matter. Brando’s infamous use of cue cards, in one instance stuck to Duvall’s chest during takes? Doesn’t matter. The irony of the most successful and most retold Mafia story getting so much about the mob wrong (it should be Don Vito, not Don Corleone), because Puzo was actually relatively ignorant of the subject matter? Doesn’t matter.
Beyond the technical brilliance of the film, the everlasting appeal of the narrative is difficult to distill into anything resembling distinct reasons. Many have written, more eloquently than here, about King Lear, or Titus Andronicus. To me, one element stands out: the ease with which viewers feel an affinity with, and even care for, Vito and Michael. Unlike The Sopranos, the modern mob masterpiece in which characters have little to no redeeming qualities (or at least, they shouldn’t to most rational viewers), the Corleone family is much harder to dislike in The Godfather.
Vito is a mob boss - extorting, threatening, most likely ordering hits (we learn early on that he is willing to use violence to satisfy ‘just’ ends). And yet within that world, within the confines of La Cosa Nostra, Vito seems moral, measured - a family man protecting his interests above all else. He abhors the idea of getting into drugs (‘A dirty business’) to the extent that he endangers himself by not facilitating Sollozo’s ambitious attempts to profit from heroin in New York (‘Don Corleone, I need a man who has powerful friends. I need a million dollars in cash. I need, Don Corleone, those politicians you carry in your pocket, like so many nickels and dimes.’). And of course, as he opines shortly before his death, he never wanted this for Michael.
The second I hear the Nino Rota score, the melodic trumpet line which permeates the black screen and then the title sequence, I am once again under the film’s spell. I think I still am.
Cent'Anni.
Josh Edwards
*Part II is out in a week or so’s time. It was difficult not to talk about it more here, especially as II is, remarkably, a better film. I am sure I will be inspired to write something on II once I go and see it in the theatre