![]() Spoken almost completely in Sicilian dialect, the scene is a masterclass of character development, setting up the early dynamic between the trio, which we had already seen the fruits of in The Godfather. The sequence where Vito, Clemenza, and Tessio, who would grow up to be top members of the family, discuss the plot to kill Don Fannuci over glistening plates of spaghetti Bolognese, is perhaps American cinema at its peak. Coppola is clearly more enamored with world-building than the previous movie. The same visual elements exist from the previous film, however the compositions are more wide-angled, and there is a lot more space to the scenes. His decision to do a simultaneous sequel-prequel, thus juxtaposing the father, Vito, as a young upstart who makes his way to wealth and power and the son, Michael, who is losing his grip on it and lamenting the burden he has taken may be Coppola’s greatest achievement as a filmmaker and storyteller. This ideal is achieved perfectly in The Godfather: Part II, which to me is the best of the series.Ĭoppola was given much more creative control from the studio for this film, and it did wonders. This is not a condemnation, in fact, it’s what makes the Godfather movies so timeless as rewatchable epics. In this sense, it’s better to consider Coppola’s films as a mafia Game of Thrones. It is filled with blood and death and suffering and some sense of politics, but unlike Lucky Luciano, a film which Normal Mailer called the actual “greatest mafia movie every made,” it doesn’t wade into the mafia’s actual greatest achievement – ingratiating itself with the American state apparatus. ![]() It’s also nearly impossible to consider the movie any pure condemnation or valorization of the mafia because it exists self-contained in the world completely apart from a greater American experience. It’s impossible to be anybody from The Godfather, except perhaps Fredo ( John Cazale), who embodies such open fear of inadequacy that it renders him the most relatable character in the series on any realistic human level. It has the structure of a medieval tale of kings and princes, and the heart of a valorous Biblical journey of self-realization and yes, destiny of a chosen son. Both Michael and Vito are perfect fantasy characters, the idealistic versions of what an average American man may consider the ideal version of himself – so perfectly represented by Tony Soprano’s self-assessment as the “the strong silent type.” In the same way, Al Pacino’s equally valorized but perhaps more plain-looking Michael has become the idol of many young men with an irrationally proud sense of self, and, on the other side, the poster-child of everything wrong with toxic masculinity. It’s cloaked in decades of imitation and iconography that make it inseparable from our collective understanding of what a mafia person looks, acts, and thinks like. ![]() Marlon Brando’s immortal performance as Don Vito Corleone has become such a mythical element to the film that to evaluate it in any way is impossible. The result is emphasizing that the world this film depicts is one where no one safe and every decision has high stakes. The intimate camerawork, highlighted by closeups and staging actors as if in a void, creates a sinister edge to every scene. The movie consists of all the things that have become clichés in such type of cinema – a father and son relationship, battered women, family above everything, gambling, cops, gang wars, meetings in Italian restaurants – and creates a fully formed world so secluded from world from the rest of America that it may as well not even really exist. It’s tinged in sepia colored dust and highlighted by shadows indicating that it’s not only a dark tale, but an old one. ![]() Not in the literal genre sense obviously, but in that it indulges itself and us in a magnanimous, exaggerated story of generational angst, wealth, and power. What has become a set of iconic scenes that are impossible to parse from the indelible effect they have had on cinema through the ages, The Godfather is at its heart an epic fantasy. I’m only discussing the first two here because of their proximity to one another and them embodying a 70’s theme and aesthetic that prided on American stories – Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, Patton, Breaking Away, Dog Day Afternoon, and Rocky to name a few – make them distinctly different for what I want to say than the third movie, which seems like a forgotten stepchild of the 90’s. What Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather films portray is a perfect amalgamation of the magical and limiting aspects of Hollywood cinema in a perfectly composed, morally ambiguous fantasy. ![]()
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