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 ...
I think the story ends with the Soprano’s where what’s his name, the consigliere, likes to do the bit about “every time I think I got out they pull me back in again.”
Here’s some trivia - Sophia in the GFIII is also the baby being baptized in GFI.
Kehr nails the appeal and resonances quite well.
Not for me. For me the attraction was the daydream of me being in that position of power.
They were great in only one role.
There is absolutely no accounting for taste!
I thought you were going to say:
1) Pacino looks bad and acts worse, and
2) The plot is sooo stupid.
Pacino was great in Serpico, Dog Day AFternoon, Sea of Love, ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ and many more.
He was very good in Glengarry Glen Ross. I had forgotten about that.
Every thing else I've seen him in reminds me of the terrible "Sent of a Woman".
> There is absolutely no accounting for taste!
(grin!) I take it you didn’t enjoy Godfather III...?
In his later years he’s resorted to schtick. But in the 1970s he was great in a wide range of films. And occasionally these days.
Godfather III would have been A LOT better if Robert Duvall had been in it (Tom Hagan's character was pivotal to Godfather I and the 1950s portion of Godfather II). It also would have been much better received if it hadn't been released at the same time as "Goodfellas."
Godfather III was a very good movie (I enjoy it a little more every time I watch it), but it WAS NOT a great movie like the first two.
FWIW, I've always thought that Godfather II was better than Godfather I.
> 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.
I think it’s that “creepy” bit that makes the movie: we’re reminded that the Corleones are dysfunctional on many, many levels. I mean, if you can kill your own brother, it’s not too big a stretch to imagine that your nephew could be sexually attracted to your daughter...
The other thing that i liked about the movie was the sub-plot involving “Immobliare”, which is a thinly-disguised “Banco Ambrosiano” — complete with thinly disguised characters surrounding the (true) historical melt-down of the Vatican Bank and the assassination of Pope John Paul I / Albino Luciani.
There were alot of creepy things around the Pope’s death and the bank’s melt-down and the deaths that followed that scream either “P2” or Vatican Insiders or — in this case — Mafia involvement.
I particularly liked how Godfather III pegged the Swiss banker “Kreitzig” (sp) to the real-life Roberto Calvi, who was actually found hanging under the Blackfriar’s Bridge in London, in much the same manner as was shown in the movie.
Anyrate, I thought the movie was under-rated. Still do.
I agree, Robert Duval should have been in it — there was no good reason to kill off Tom Hagen.
> FWIW, I’ve always thought that Godfather II was better than Godfather I.
I agree with that, too. Tough choice, tho’.
I had always heard that Duvall refused.
I like Godfather II because I think DeNiro is perfect in showing the evolution of Vito from a scared child, to a small-time operator and finally to a ruthless crime lord who places loyalty to his own family above everything.
I tend to agree. His performance in "Scarface" is another exhibition of scenery chewing excess.
Duval was asked to be in GFIII but refused because he thought it was unfair that Pacino was being offered 5 times more money.
“Scarface” had some incredible scenes, but tended to go over the edge at times.
The biggest problem with “Scarface” is that he played a character who really never existed, i.e. a known cocaine dealer living lavishly among Miami upper class. The characters in the Godfather were primarily based on individual or composites of historical figures.
The plot line by itself might have been OK for showing their dysfunction, although really by the point in the story if you still need to be reminded of that you probably need to drink less. But having the director direct his daughter getting seduced by a fictional “cousin” just elevated the whole thing to way too weird.
The tie ins to reality, or at least apocryphal reality, are a constant high point of the series. From how Johnny Fontaine got out of his contract, through the Havana deal, to the Vatican Bank meltdown those thinly disguised references to reality add to the re-watchability. I swear every time I watch the series I pick up on another thing that really happened.
Duval wanted too much money, same reason Brando wasn’t in II (he was supposed to have a walk on at the end in the birthday party). The budget on III was surprisingly tiny. The benefit of the studio waiting until Coppola had a few tanks to his record before greenlighting the project, he needed them more than they needed him so they gave him a tiny budget.
The remake? I'll just say that De Palma is no Howard Hawks. And the Oliver Stone screenplay is lame.
I didn't like it at all.
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