CHAPTER 9: THE MUSIC
Jon Burlingame (film music historian, Variety; author, Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks): The battles over The Godfather even extended to the music. Producer Robert Evans wanted Henry Mancini, and director Francis Ford Coppola insisted on Nino Rota, the Italian genius who had given so many Fellini films (from La Dolce Vita to 8 1/2) their tuneful soundtracks and who had recently given Paramount a colossal musical hit in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.
Luckily, Coppola won. Nino Rota—whose other famous scores included War and Peace and The Leopard—lent just the right authentic Sicilian touch to The Godfather. His Godfather Waltz provided an accordion-flavored counterpoint to the shocking violence of the warring families of organized crime; and his love theme conveyed a warm, and ultimately heartrending, feeling to the unexpected and sadly short-lived love story for Michael and Apollonia in Italy.
Of course, Rota wasn't above a bit of self-plagiarism, and that got him into trouble later. No one at the time realized it, but his love theme actually originated as "an amusing, ironic march" (Rota's words) in the 1958 Italian film Fortunella. "I slowed it down, made it more romantic, and it worked," the composer said, for The Godfather.
The Academy was tipped off and Rota's 1972 Oscar nomination for best original score was withdrawn as not being wholly original to the film. (Yet, in another instance of musical irony, Rota was not only nominated, but won, for his score for The Godfather Part II two years later—even though most of the themes were recycled from The Godfather. Observers today think of it as an apology to the veteran composer for yanking the original nomination.)
It's stunning to realize that this renowned Italian composer was only recognized once at the Academy Awards, when you consider such superb work for Fellini (also including Juliet of the Spirits, Roma and Amarcord) and films for Luchino Visconti, Zeffirelli and Lina Wertmuller. But at least he was rewarded for a Godfather film.
CHAPTER 10: THE SOUND
Steve Lee (The Hollywood Sound Museum): Everyone on the crew was at the top of their game in The Godfather, but as the founder of The Hollywood Sound Museum, I am especially appreciative of the movie's sound design—created by the always brilliant Walter Murch. The scene where Michael Corleone shoots the two mobsters in the restaurant is a great example. That incredibly tense moment has no music score at all—the emotion is created with the sound of a screeching elevated train. You hear it when Corleone is looking for the hidden gun to carry out the deed... and the sound comes and goes, building in intensity. Murch himself has called it the sound of "Michael's neurons rubbing against each other" as he anguishes over his job of shooting the two guys. Other films might have had music help fill-in the desired emotion... but it's all done effectively with sound effects. Music doesn't start until he's left the building. It's just brilliant, it's a real testament to what really good sound design can do to tell the story. And that's just one example in that classic film.
CHAPTER 11: THE MARKETING
Tom Santopietro: The Godfather changed the way Hollywood did business because when it became clear that the film [would be] a phenomenon, there was a nationwide roll out much more quickly than had been the norm previously. This was three years before Jaws was released.
CHAPTER 12: FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Robert Casillo: When I first heard that Paramount was making The Godfather, I expected that it would be an ordinary potboiler melodrama. I had not yet read the novel, and was unaware of the enormous cinematic possibilities contained within it—the gold that Coppola and Puzo were able to extract from the dross. But then a person whose judgment I respect and who had looked into the making of the film suggested that it was to be more than just another gangster film. I was highly impressed by the film when I first saw The Godfather at the Merritt Theater in Bridgeport, Connecticut. So was the audience, including my Italian American relatives. To be sure, there were probably few if any Mafiosi in attendance, but even while focusing on an Italian American criminal organization by no means representative of the group as a whole Coppola succeeded in presenting certain characteristic features of Italian American culture with a degree of knowledge and understanding never before seen in American film.
Beverly Gray (author, Seduced by Mrs. Robinson: How ‘The Graduate’ Became the Touchstone of a Generation): I was struck by the film’s commentary on leadership. When Marlon Brando’s courtly Don Vito Corleone sends his henchmen to commit nefarious acts, he apologetically explains that there’s nothing personal about it: business is business. The movie, though, gives the lie to such rationalizations. Don Vito wants to make money, but above all he wants respect, even fealty. And this attitude transfers to the son, Michael who ultimately takes over Don Vito’s crime empire. Michael, who at the start of the film has seemed to reject his father’s approach to life, ends up running the show precisely as Don Vito had done. Why, given his American education and his status as a war hero, does he fall back into the old ways? Money? A sense of obligation to continue the family legacy? Yes, but also a playing out of his resentment against his older brothers and the adoptive son (Robert Duvall) with whom he had to share his father’s love. Ironically, Don Vito had wanted Michael to stay clean—to have a future as a senator or maybe even President. Gangsters spawning politicians? Hmmmm.
Tom Santopietro: I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen the film—I own it, know most of the dialogue by heart, and when it was recently re-released in theaters in that beautiful restoration, instantly had to see it again on the big screen. That said, what I remember about the first time is that I was 18 and saw the movie on Easter Sunday with my parents—church, a big Italian Easter dinner, and then the movie! My father and I loved the movie but my mother did not—she didn’t like violence and wanted the movie to end. I still remember her whispering to me: “How much longer?” and my reply: “Shhh—Michael’s about to kill McCloskey!” Pretty funny.
Lee Pfeiffer: I was 15 when the film opened in March of 1972. In those days, big pictures opened in a limited number of theaters to build word-of-mouth. It’s the exact opposite of the strategy today, which is to open simultaneously on thousands of screens. As the studio had hoped, it instantly became a “must-see” and lines wrapped around the block at the Loews State in Times Square. This afforded Paramount to take out full-page ads in the trades showing the customers queueing up for tickets. In fact, I couldn’t get tickets at first. It took me three attempts over as many weeks. When my friend and I got two tickets, the usher told us that they had oversold the performance and we would get tickets for a future showing. We told him to drop dead. After three weeks, we weren’t about to come back a fourth time. We promptly sat down on the stairs in the balcony and said we’d watch the film from there. We were told that violated fire codes but we didn’t move. Soon, they miraculously found two seats in the last row of the balcony. It was like watching the movie from Mount Everest, but we were happy to be there. Seeing the film gave us some bragging rights, as no one else we knew had managed this coup.
Roy H. Wagner, ASC, FRPS: I didn’t know what to think of The Godfather the first time I saw it. I could not find any common ground based upon the films I had seen before. Most films used common visual and storytelling grammar that allows the viewer to somewhat be in on the “joke.” Just like The Exorcist and The French Connection the audience was free falling through the film not knowing if the cinematic structure we had grown accustomed to would deliver us safely at the end. It took several viewings to understand the new language of filmmaking that we were being driven through.
Raymond Benson: I saw it in late spring 1972, not long after it had opened. It didn’t open immediately in my small-town hometown in Texas, but I happened to be in Austin in early May of that year and saw it there on the big screen.
Chris Chiarella (home media journalist): I remember when I first saw it: The famous NBC “Novel for Television” version that was (1) censored and (2) extensively re-edited/re-sequenced and with deleted scenes reinstated. I adored it immediately.
John Cork: My wonderful aunt Lois took me to see The Godfather in Norfolk, Virginia, when I was only ten years old. I had begged my family to get me in, and, with my aunt, it worked. She was great at giving me context about the film, but, of course, what I loved was the feeling of horror at the horse head in the bed, the brutal shooting of Sonny at the toll booths, and the vicious assassinations at the film’s close. I also recall believing it was the pesticides that the kid is spraying that killed Don Vito, not just a heart attack (as in the novel). It wasn’t until a decade later that I finally appreciated just how brilliant the movie was on so many levels.
Jon Lewis: I saw the film in a theater—as I recall in the summer of 1972, the summer before my senior year of High School, in New York someplace, I don’t recall where. It was not a momentous filmgoing experience, at least I did not recognize it as such. I remember far better seeing two other films as a teenager that had a bigger impact: MASH and Klute. As a teenager, the sudden advent of explicit content was a bigger deal. That I would someday write a lot about the film, its sequel, and Coppola seemed hardly in the cards.
Harlan Lebo: I did not see The Godfather until it was on television in November 1974, but I had (of course) heard much about it. I recall realizing that I was witnessing something very, very special—an opinion that grew with each successive viewing.
Sergio Angelini: I was ten years old when I first saw The Godfather, on British TV. I was clearly too young but it was a special occasion as my parents loved the movie as well as the book so they let me stay up. I stayed awake for the whole thing and it made a huge impression on me, not least for its extreme violence and sex and nudity of course! Looking back now though I can also see how much deeper it got its hooks into me for the way it represented (non-criminal and non-violent) Italian family dynamics in a way that I was extremely familiar with at home. I was maybe 14 when I saw it for the second time, this time in Rome and dubbed into Italian, and enjoyed it even more. Not just because I understood some of the content much better by then but also because I didn’t have to put up with listening to Al Pacino’s horrible attempts at speaking Italian! Of course, the downside was that you couldn’t tell when any of the characters slipped from English into Italian, a crucial way in which to keep secrets and exclude outsiders and which is even more important in The Godfather Part II.
