ping
Pacino beat out over a dozen actors for the lead role. Actors like Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro, and he was a relative newbie.
I think Pacino did a lot of great work. Almost all of it before “Scarface”. Don’t know what happened to him after “Scarface”. Rarely good after that, IMO.
Read the book, only saw part three, which I bought the soundtrack for, I saw Brando in person years ago...my favorite of his was in Guys ad Dolls.
Most over rated movies I’ve ever seen. Good, but not the “most important and influential movies ever made” IMO.
And tying the Corleone's family saga in with the Vatican politics circa late Seventies was a nice touch. Overlook Sofia Coppola's presence (it really should have been Winona Ryder as Mary) and it holds its own remarkably well.
love that movie trilogy. I always hated Keaton in the role of Kay, though.
If De Niro doesn’t spout off his political views, I’ll watch it. One and two are my top favorite movies. He hasn’t yet learned that his sole purpose in life is to pretend to be other people for my pleasure.
Hard to get a chemistry like that, especially (or maybe because) of such a young director.
Coppola was so afraid that the studio would voce him to use a big name like Robert Redford, Coppola shot most of Michael’s scenes firs so it would be too expensive to shot and the studio would have to go with Pacino as Michael. Robert Redford - I don’t think so.
The one person I think was believable in #1, but was very disappointing #2 was Diane Keaton. After #1, she just seemed wooden. Last year, I read a copy of the original screen play of #2, and in that version she takes the kids and goes to New Hampshire and Hagel has to go and get her to come back to Nevada - hence what’s missing in the movie - if she was to the compound, how did she have an abortion - plot flaw in #2 that bother me for years.
MHO - FWIW
I’ve seen Parts 1 & 2 a few dozen times each (I never cared for Part 3.) After all these years, I still don’t understand what specifically Fredo did in Part 2 to betray Michael. Yes, I know he talked to Roth and Johnny Ola, then later denied that he had ever met them. However, I still have a few questions: Who opened the curtains in Michael’s bedroom just before the attempted hit? Fredo? Who found the two gunmen so quickly afterwards and killed them both? Fredo? That seems unlikely to me when you consider how bumbling and useless Fredo was in Part 1 when Vito was gunned down at the fruit stand. Also, how did he elude all of the men and dogs who were searching the compound immediately after the attempted hit?