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Posted on 09/24/2008 9:39:24 AM PDT by Borges
The “Godfather” films remain the 20th-century answer to Shakespeare’s plays of royal succession, with the twist that here Prince Hal grows up, not into Henry V, but Richard III.
Watching the first film, you are struck again by how little screen time Marlon Brando actually occupies. Most of his work is done in the 20-minute opening sequence, as the Godfather sits in his study, receiving supplicants on the day of his daughter’s wedding. This is a piece of superbly efficient expository writing, setting out an exotic milieu, describing its rules and moral configuration, and establishing the larger-than-life figure who presides over and protects it.
Like another venerated American epic, “Gone With the Wind,” the first “Godfather” film is essentially a study in vanishing feudalism: the old, aristocratic masters who made their empires out of sweat and blood are fading into the background, to be replaced by the middle-class, mercantile interests represented in “Gone With the Wind” by the blockade runner Rhett Butler and in the first “Godfather” by the drug-dealing upstart Sollozzo.
Part II takes place in a more modern world, where capitalism is king, and it is difficult to tell where gangsterism leaves off, and normal business procedures begin. The action shifts to a global scale, as the Corleones conquer Nevada and, very nearly, Cuba — and Mr. Coppola rises to the occasion with a sense of physical scale and epic conflict that no amount of computer-generated-imagery enhancement has yet been able to reproduce.
At the center of it all, of course, remains the family drama. In an increasingly rootless country American audiences envied the Corleones for their powerful sense of ethnic and family identity, the privilege of belonging to an extended, self-reliant and self-protecting group.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The History Plays comparison seems apt.
When I finally get a Blu-Ray player, this will be the first DVD I get.
Hopefully you will get it on Blu-ray disc and not DVD. ;)
I just wish Part III had been better.
Blu-Ray it is!
didn’t obama just say godfather was his favorite movie
I dunno why Godfather III was not-so-well received. I thought it was a brilliant climax to the trilogy.
And, as an added bonus, my favorite Italian mini-Opera, “La Cavalleria Rusticana” (usually backed up as a double bill with “I Pagliacci”) — it surely gets no better than this!
And Andy Garcia is a brilliant Vincent Corleone.
It shouldn’t have been a trilogy. That story was finished at the end of Part II.
I thought III was a bit tedious and predictable compared to the first two. Garcia was good. The storyline was weak.
My dream is that they’ll make Part III.2 and just pretend that the original III never happened.
ZA ZA!
Until you realize that the film is about Michael, not Vito. It's about Michael's fall from grace and the title refers to Michael.
GFIII has 2 major problems with critics and viewers. 1 of which can’t be helped, the other 1 of which was just a horribly stupid idea.
The first problem is that being #3 in probably the greatest movie series ever and given the time it took to finally make it there was a bar set that simply could never be achieved. III had to be not only as good as I and II it had to be as good as their legend.
The other problem is the incest plot. Just plain creepy and weird as plot lines go, and made more creepy and weird by the fact that the female was the director’s daughter. There are significant portions of the movie that just leave a person feeling unclean.
Now all that being said III is a good movie. I really enjoy watching Vincent transform emotionally from Sony’s kid (hot headed, ill tempered and unwilling to think things through) to Micheal’s kid (incredibly ruthless, super calculating, completely masked). And all that happening while Micheal pays the physical and mental price is amazing story telling. And I really like that they finally killed the don responsible for the death of Micheal’s first wife, the long arm and memory of vengeance.
But man that incest plot is just creepy. I’ve gotten really good over the years at ignoring those scenes.
The story was finished in Godfather II, but the Man, Michael Coreleone, was completed in the third film.
It was about his search for redemption, the man who looked back on his youth and his initial resistence to the family business, and the regret and frustration at his choices which pulled him into evil.
I thought the film, and its final scene, was brilliant.
III would be a good film if they simply took out any scene with Sophia Coppola in it. (I won’t put in any spoilers in case people haven’t seen III yet), but I think it isn’t a bad film by itself, it just had a tough standard to meet.
III isn't a bad film, it just pales badly in comparison with its predecessors.
Dunno, but Godfather was Saddam Hussein's favorite.
Must be something there that appeals to Husseins.
Well that’s $125 I’m going to have to spend. I’m content to watch most movies on regular DVD with upsampling, but of the movies that deserve to be watched on true HD, The Godfather is near the top.
I would add that Copeland's daughter cannot act. She was not just bad, she was horrible. You could not believe how she could be even remotely attractive to her cousin, Michael's heir. That portion of the story line just fell flat.
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