CHAPTER 13: MEMORABLE SCENES
Raymond Benson: All of them. The opening wedding sequence lays it all out and introduces the characters, taking us back to 1945 and this world of a powerful man, his family, and the opulent and subtly sinister milieu around him. The bit in Hollywood with John Marley and the horse’s head… the gunning down of Vito in the street… the depiction of war between rival Mafia families… the Sicilian sequences and Michael’s romance with Apollonia… the climactic “cleaning up” of Michael’s rivals during his nephew’s baptism in an ingenious counterpoint of cross-editing… But the pivotal scene is the one in the restaurant, in which Michael shoots Sollozzo and McCluskey. Oh my God, this is a masterful lesson in tension-building, pacing, and acting. It is so well directed that I can’t imagine it any better.
Sergio Angelini: We all have our favorites but in truth there are almost too many to enumerate. In many ways this points to the film’s greatness, in that its celebrated set-pieces always feel so seamlessly and organically integrated into its narrative fabric, very different from what you would find say in a Hitchcock movie. While the extreme violence still packs a wallop, it’s the more familial material that stands out for me. In particular, scenes like Clemenza teaching Michael how to cook, the little girl learning to dance in the wedding sequence or Fredo and his father shopping for oranges that stick out in my mind, just as vividly as more spectacular moments like the discovery of the horse’s head or the high pitch of suspense in the scene in which Michael shoots McCluskey and Sollozzo.
Jon Lewis: The baptism/murder montage is among the most famous. My favorites are the so-called garden scene during which Vito talks about how he had hoped for a different/legit future for Michael (“Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone”), which is an obvious choice, and the scene in a trailer with Sollozzo and Tom (which is so eccentric).
Ray Morton: The movie is filled with incredible and memorable moments: The opening wedding; the horse’s head; the strangling of Luca Brasi; the shooting of Vito Corleone; the killing of McCluskey and Sollozzo; Michael’s Sicilian wedding; the tollbooth assassination of Sonny; the death of Apolonia; Michael’s warning to Fredo; the final conversation between Michael and Vito; the death of the Godfather; the baptism-framed murders of the heads of the Five Families (and Moe Green); and the final closing of the door in Kay’s face.
Lee Pfeiffer: There are so many it’s probably easier to list those that aren’t standout scenes. But for me, perhaps the most poignant is the scene in which Michael and the aging, feeble Don Vito sit in his garden and discuss Michael’s strategies as the new Don. Vito’s memory fails him at times, but he dispenses vital advice to Michael that will ultimately save him from being murdered by a traitor. It’s a moving and sentimental scene. I also like the scene in which Michael murders the corrupt police captain and a rival gang boss during a seemingly benign dinner engagement. Michael has now crossed the Rubicon and become a wanted murderer—but he has avenged his family. It’s a superbly realized scene, filled with tension and brilliantly enacted and directed. Equally memorable is the climatic montage of Michael exacting revenge on the rival gang bosses intercut with scenes of a baptism. Sheer brilliance.
CHAPTER 14: SUCCESS!
Scott Mendelson (box office analyst, Forbes): The Godfather was not the first film to gross over $100 million in North America. That was The Sound of Music. However. Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning mob drama was the fastest such film at that point in history. Moreover, the sprawling, old-fashioned family melodrama, with of-the-moment filmmaking and brutal genre-appropriate violence, served as a skewed kind of bridge between the Oscar-winning musical and Steven Spielberg’s $200 million-plus juggernaut Jaws in 1975. There’s a case to be made that The Godfather was a definitive melding of late-1960s American New Wave filmmaking and old-school Hollywood formality, so it makes sense that it would become one of Hollywood’s biggest grossing movies amid a massive cultural transition. Fifty years later, it is often considered the greatest American movie ever made, and a definitive piece of “Hollywood art” that became a blockbuster partially because it was good.
Ray Morton: The popular and financial success of The Godfather, as well as the extreme quality of its filmmaking, made Francis Ford Coppola the most significant and highly-lauded director of the 1970s. The film’s popularity and influence gave Coppola the clout and the financing to make any film he wanted as both director and producer. The results were some of the best films of the decade: The Conversation, American Graffiti, The Godfather Part II, The Black Stallion, and Apocalypse Now. Not bad for a movie the director only took because he needed the money.
Gary Leva: As extraordinary as The Godfather is, what makes it even more remarkable is the fact that, while he was making the film, Francis was dealing with the fear—the very real possibility—that he was about to be replaced as the director. Several other directors were approached to take over what the studio—and at times Robert Evans—viewed as a possible disaster. And despite this, Francis held to his vision and delivered a cinematic masterpiece.
John Cork: The Godfather became the first R-rated “event film” of the modern era. There had been R-rated hits, certainly. MASH, Dirty Harry, A Clockwork Orange, and The French Connection were all big hits with audiences and critics, but no one believed one could make an R-rated film that would attract audiences on the scale of, say, Mary Poppins or Thunderball. The Godfather did just that. It became a must-see phenomenon. It proved that adult audiences would flock to a film that shocked and entertained them in equal measure.
Sheldon Hall (co-author, Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History): The Godfather was very successful in the United Kingdom but not quite as big as it was in the United States. It ran neck and neck with Diamonds are Forever in the box office charts.
Ray Morton: It’s the best American film of the post-studio system era. The best film produced by the studio system was Casablanca. That classic film told a tale that reflected a vision of the United States the country held of itself at the time—tough and cynical on the surface, idealistic underneath, and always willing to fight the good fight—and did so with all of the contracted resources of the era—staff writers, a staff direction, and staff craftspeople all under the guidance of a strong producer. The Godfather did the same with the best of New Hollywood: a powerful studio willing to fund the vision of an auteurist director and an assemblage of the best freelance actors and craftspeople to present a vision of the country very much in step with the more cynical 1970s by telling the story of good person gradually ensnared by an amoral system until he himself becomes irredeemably corrupt.
CHAPTER 15: SIGNIFICANCE AND INFLUENCE
Beverly Gray: It's remarkable to me how The Godfather has influenced our language. For the subtitle of my first book, a biography of my former boss Roger Corman, I was inspired to suggest that Roger be called the Godfather of Indie Filmmaking. (My publisher had suggested the much more somber word “Patriarch.”) And who can forget phrases like “go to the mattresses” and “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”?
Tom Santopietro: I think The Godfather is significant for a multitude of reasons. It’s a great piece of filmmaking that works on the most elemental level of “what happens next,” but also works on sub-textual levels as well. Every time I watch the film I’m aware once again of how smart Coppola’s vision for the film remains: he viewed the Mob as a metaphor for American big business run amok: both share the control of pricing and the control of territory.
Harlan Lebo: The Godfather is one of those rarest of films (along with films such as Citizen Kane and Lawrence of Arabia) that illustrates the use and abuse of power. It also masterfully illustrates the personal conflict that can occur when a character tries to resist the horrors of a specific path in life, becomes drawn into that life, and becomes more terrifying and violent than those who preceded him.
Kimberly Peirce (director, Boys Don’t Cry, Stop-Loss): It showed me that I can take that love of the gangster movie and I can screen it through a family drama. In my movies family is really important, violence is important. I’m really interested in the psychological and the authentic portrayal of violence—particularly violence that comes out of emotions. Before The Godfather, I don’t know that you could have such a violent psychological film that was that broadly entertaining.
Robert Casillo: The release of The Godfather and the public acclaim it received marked an important moment in the emergence of a widespread ethnic consciousness among European American immigrant groups in the 1970s. This development owed quite a bit to the example of the civil rights movement, and in its basic assumptions called in question the ideals of assimilation and the “melting pot” such as had prevailed in social theory for many decades. Something of the spirit of the movement is captured In Michael Novak’s Unmeltable Ethnics and perhaps to an even greater degree in Glazer and Moynihan’s earlier Beyond the Melting Pot. Certainly the ethnic identity movement gained in dignity and prestige in having two distinguished works of art, Godfathers I and II, associated with it. On the other hand, a certain unintended pathos now attaches to the Godfather films, for notwithstanding their powerful assertion of ethnic consciousness and identity, Italian Americans (like Irish Americans before them) have undergone what sociologist Richard Alba has described as the “twilight of ethnicity,” meaning that they have largely assimilated to mainstream America and more particularly mingled with other white ethnic groups to form what Alba and Mary Waters characterize as European America—a new social formation of immense political potential.
Lee Pfeiffer: As I mentioned before, it gave a prime showcase for important, emerging talents. But it also revived the crime movie genre, which had been suffering. In fact, Paramount had spent a lot of money on the Kirk Douglas-Alex Cord crime flick The Brotherhood, which was released in 1968. I just saw it recently to record the commentary track for Via Vision’s forthcoming Blu-ray release. It’s a very good film but it failed at the box office and gave Paramount cold feet about doing The Godfather. They ultimately did so, but envisioned the movie as a rather standard crime movie that would make some money based on the success of Mario Puzo’s bestseller. But they were very hesitant to fork over the $6 million the picture ultimately cost. Of course, after the fact, the studio people looked like prophets. The film was significant on another level, besides becoming the highest grossing movie in history. Namely, it revived the career of Marlon Brando after his ”lost decade” of box office flops. In fact, he made some daring films during this period and gave some of his best performances, but they were overlooked by critics and the public. The Godfather made him arguably the world’s biggest movie star once again.
Tom Santopietro: I think the movie also represented a sea change in Hollywood’s depiction of Italian-Americans. Until The Godfather, all of the films were made by non-Italians and were filled with cringe worthy stereotypes—just watch the original Scarface—Italians were depicted with stereotypical accents or else as organ grinders with monkeys. In The Godfather, however, no one speaks with an accent—these men were in control of their destinies.
Raymond Benson: The Godfather brought Al Pacino into our awareness, and for that alone it deserves recognition! Then there is Robert Duvall, whom we’d seen before, but this was the picture that shot him into the A-list. James Caan, Talia Shire, John Cazale, Diane Keaton—all became big names (albeit Keaton was just beginning her appearances with Woody Allen around the same time, which also helped her). Finally… Marlon Brando, who had experienced a rather rough decade in the 1960s for whatever reason… his “stock” had diminished in Hollywood, but The Godfather brought him a whole new lease of life in pictures. And those are just the actors! Francis Ford Coppola, who had already won an Oscar for co-writing Patton, was not particularly well known as a director until the juggernaut that was The Godfather. Now let’s talk about the movie’s place in pop culture. How many lines of dialogue do you know off the top of your head? “Make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.” The film became a part of mainstream consciousness and was among the first of the 1970s “blockbusters” that changed Hollywood’s economics. Film historians cite The Godfather, along with Airport, The Exorcist, Jaws, and Star Wars as the megahits that transformed Hollywood’s philosophy on how to make and market movies.
Tom Santopietro: This was, significantly, a film about Italian-Americans made by Italian-Americans. When I give talks about The Godfather I always say that Francis Ford Coppola was the only man who, when it came time to film Brando’s death scene in the garden with his grandson, would have said: “Make sure that garden is planted with Italian plum tomatoes.” The culture, the language, the expressions, the music—it was all in his bones—and Mario Puzo’s as well.
Jon Lewis: The Godfather was a turning point in the New Hollywood.
Tom Santopietro: The depiction of Italian-Americans in films always made me turn away—the men and women were walking stereotypes. But when I saw The Godfather Part II it literally changed my life. There’s a moment exactly ten minutes into the film when the young Don Corleone sails past the Statue of Liberty when he comes to America; I watched that and all of a sudden it hit me: “That’s my grandfather, Orazio Santopietro, coming to America at age fourteen, twenty lira in his pocket, not speaking English—and he made my life possible.” It changed everything for me—but great films, great pop culture, can do that.
Harlan Lebo: I think the biggest effect the film had on the movie industry was it proved that a major blockbuster film can also be one of the great achievements in cinema.
Tom Santopietro: I started out wanting to write about the three Godfather books—especially because Part II is my favorite film of all time, and for me, the greatest film of all time—that’s an argument I love to have with people! But as I started writing, the book turned into something else: I began to also write about my own family and about how I had experienced the push-pull of two different cultures in my own life—I’m Italian on my father’s side, and English on my mother’s side. I wanted to examine the films, my own life, and the depiction of Italian-Americans in film. Popular culture has an enormous impact on how all of us view our surroundings and our own lives. Frank Sinatra, the most famous Italian-American of all, talked about how he listened to a radio show called Life with Luigi, starring the very non-Italian J. Carrol Naish. Luigi spoke with one of those stereotypical accents and Sinatra said: “I would listen to the show, laugh my head off, and then hate myself for laughing.” Complicated.
Robert Casillo: Coppola’s gangster films largely treat the upper echelons of the Mafia families rather than the rank and file while investing the leaders of Corleone family in particular with a certain mythical grandeur, dignity, and charisma. One would probably never deduce from The Godfather that Mafia families do not in their totality actually constitute kinship groups such as the Corleones but are rather created only artificially by means of initiation rites on the model of blood relations, and that leadership of a typical Mafia family is not passed down from the head of the organization to his son, as in the case of a genuine dynastic family arrangement, but is usually determined on the basis of ability rather than blood ties, since so much is at stake, business-wise, in the succession. Nonetheless, the Godfather series focuses on the actual Corleone family, the kinship group, as the indispensable dynastic core of the criminal organization, and indeed the appeal of the Corleones to audiences has always had much to do with the fact that, at a time when the American family was believed to have declined through an increasing divorce rate and other atomizing factors, the Corleones and Italian Americans were seen to stand for family values, solidarity, loyalty, etc. Indeed, notwithstanding Coppola’s professed intention of portraying Michael Corleone as damned at the conclusion of the first Godfather his damnation being the result of his choice of a criminal career, the director was flabbergasted upon realizing that, in viewing the film’s final scenes of damnation, audiences had so thoroughly identified with the Corleones that they were cheering for Michael and his blood family against their mob rivals. It was at this point that Coppola realized that he needed to make Godfather II in order to render Michael’s damnation unmistakable.
