CHAPTER 19: WHICH VERSION?
Sergio Angelini: Coppola is the master at creating multiple edits of his films (much more so than George Lucas who usually gets the blame for starting the trend). As long as the original cuts remain available in high-quality versions (as in the case of Apocalypse Now and The Outsiders) I have no qualms with this. The TV re-edit of the first two films, The Godfather Saga, seems to me an interesting afterthought with some valuable extra scenes but ultimately fails as it really undermines the careful balance of the second film. The Godfather Part III seems to have become a work-in-progress almost immediately upon its theatrical release and as a result none of the home video versions match what we saw in the cinemas in 1990. It is a highly imperfect work but I have no doubt in my mind that the most recent edit of the film, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, is far and away the most satisfying. The opening of the film, now starting with the terrific barter scene with the bishop, works so much better and the ending, actually crueler than the original, is even more moving.
Lee Pfeiffer: I believe the original cut is the best, just as I think the same of Apocalypse Now. Coppola likes to go back and tinker with his films and the addition of extra scenes are welcome and enjoyable but I think the first cut is the one that most people have in mind when they think of the film. I would like to see Coppola issue the Epic cut that ran only on NBC in the 1970s. He re-edited the first two films in chronological order and included deleted scenes. I’ve been told that Coppola didn’t want to do it but felt he owed Paramount a favor. I’ve also been told by his personal archivist, James Mockoski, that Coppola will never consent to this re-edited version of the films being released again in any format. We shall see.
CHAPTER 20: HOMAGE, PARODY AND RIP-OFFS
Dana Renga (professor of “Mafia Movies” course at The Ohio State University): What brought me to work on Mafia movies was the Super Bowl in 2008 and that amazing Audi commercial that spoofed the famous horsehead scene. It made me think that the Mafia circulates so much within the American imaginary it has replaced the actual horsehead. This came full circle in a more recent Super Bowl commercial with the Sopranos spoof and Jamie-Lynn Sigler driving the first ever electric Chevy Silverado mimicking Tony Soprano’s drive home to New Jersey but with a lollipop replacing a cigar.
Robert Casillo: The Godfather is a tough act to follow, as the writer and director must create at the level of myth, which is not easy. It’s easier to concentrate on the riff-raff. My impression is that quite a few television movies have attempted the mythical approach, and there we do see blatant, clumsy rip-offs of The Godfather. So far as feature movies are concerned, they seem to deal more often with goings on in the street rather than in the Don’s mansion.
Dana Renga: My students fall in love with The Godfather’s legacy because Mafia movies and television pop up everywhere. For example, The Godfather is all over The Sopranos and it’s as if you’re watching the series as an insider. In 2012 I created a course called Mafia Movies at Ohio State and one activity I ask students to do for fun is to find references in pop culture where The Godfather is spoofed or parodied. And it has come up in so many media texts from Modern Family to Brooklyn Nine-Nine to Parks and Recreation to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures to Family Guy to Supernatural… Johnny Oliver… Jersey Shore… Boy Meets World… Breaking Bad. Hannah Montana… Arthur… Mad TV… Schitt’s Creek. How I Met Your Mother…
Alison Martino: I have nothing good to say about The Offer!
Ray Morton: I couldn’t stand The Offer. The story of the making of The Godfather is well known and yet this multi-part Paramount + series either ignores the real-life events and facts or else distorts them beyond recognition to tell a ludicrous fictional tale that is full of hoary mob movie and Hollywood movie clichés. The writing (by a team headed by Michael Tolkin, of all people) is dreadful and the directing isn’t much better. The series turns The Godfather’s producer Albert S. Ruddy into some sort of Steve McQueen-like action hero and gives him and his secretary far more credit than they deserve for the film’s production and artistic successes. The rest of the characters are cartoons. Through a combination of terrible writing and broad emoting, the show's depiction of Francis Ford Coppola as some sort of pretentious nitwit is ridiculous and its portrayal of Mario Puzo as a simpering hack who can never stop eating is so disrespectful to the real man and his accomplishments that I actually found it offensive. The only characterization that works is the show’s version of Paramount studio chief Robert Evans. Evans was a living cartoon anyway, so The Offer’s depiction of him is actually pretty accurate (and Matthew Goode delivers a terrific performance—as far as I’m concerned he’s the only good thing in the show). The series looks cheap (all of the New York scenes are clearly shot on the Paramount backlot and is augmented by a lot of really shitty greenscreen). The hair and costumes are awful (is anyone ever going to figure out how to do the 70s convincingly?). The real story of the making of The Godfather is a fascinating one. It’s a shame they decided not to tell it and to present this bullshit instead. The Godfather and all involved deserve much better than this catastrophe.
Harlan Lebo: The story of the making of the film is a fascinating story, involving Hollywood conflict, tremendous personality clashes, and real-life issues of crime, violence, and the underworld in America. It is a story that deserved to be told.
Robert Casillo: Coppola’s gangsters would not have evoked so sympathetic an audience identification had he not already invested them, for all their faults, with a highly attractive mystique, a solemnity and seriousness, a larger-than-life and even heroic appeal which is on the whole missing from the portrayal of gangland types in the films of Martin Scorsese, Coppola’s chief rival in the genre of the gangster film. Unlike Coppola, Scorsese is much less the mythifier and more the realist (his debt to Italian neo-realism is patent), and so he presents the Mafia from a down in the trenches perspective, concentrating on members of the rank and file, the workers, soldiers, and associates, in contrast with Coppola’s pronounced concern with the upper echelons of the mob families, Scorsese is fascinated by the low-lifes and riff-raff, their quotidian scrounging and lounging, their less than heroic preoccupation with food and drink, their undignified and grotesque sense of humor, often rendered in an ironic and black comedic register. Further contributing to the audience’s greater sense of detached objectivity is Scorsese’s preferred narrative focus on mob wannabes like Charlie in Mean Streets, Henry Hill in GoodFellas, and Ace Rothstein in Casino, whose betwixt-and-between situation vis-à-vis the mob militates against audience identification in providing a somewhat distanced perspective on the Mafia. In general, the Scorsesean style in treating the mob has won out over that of Coppola, as witness such films as Donnie Brasco, the television series The Sopranos, and so many other examples.
CHAPTER 21: THE UNINITIATED
Lee Pfeiffer: In my profession—film criticism—it’s hard to imagine anyone who hasn’t seen The Godfather, but of course they are out there. Young people today seem to have little interest in films they didn’t grow up with. That’s a bit different from my generation, where we grew up revering older films and stars. At the last Oscars, there was an attempt to appeal to young people by having them vote for “Fan Favorites,” a dumb idea if ever there was one. It’s all you need to know that the “winners” were largely from the last decade and the majority of them were superhero flicks. I suppose those are the people who should be enticed to watch The Godfather.
Sergio Angelini: If I had to try and convince as many people as possible at one time, I would say: The Godfather is a great saga about Italian immigrants, an exciting thriller about the Mafia and a dissection of power and corruption in post-war America.
Raymond Benson: The Godfather is an epic family drama about the Mafia in New York during the late 1940s and early 50s. It is a masterfully written, directed, and designed picture with some of the best acting performances you’ll ever see, and it begins a saga that continues in two more grand movies.
Robert Casillo: I would describe it as a complete immersion in a fully detailed and realized ethnic world, in which universal human emotions of a primordial character—kinship, love, loyalty, ambition, rivalry, vengeance—are portrayed with extraordinary conviction and intensity. I would also advise the first-time viewer that he or she must expect to be drained and exhausted by the end of the film.
Bill Hunt: As editor of The Digital Bits, I’ve seen first-hand that—every five or six years—there’s a new young crop of movie enthusiasts just starting to discover the greater world of cinema. And while it’s true that some have little interest in watching movies made before they were born, the smart ones quickly realize that there’s nothing new under the sun. The movies they love now are part of a continuum of creativity, often directly influenced by or filled with references to those older works. While it might take a little convincing to get them to set aside their cell phones and find the right frame of mind for it, I’ve never shown someone The Godfather who failed to be impressed by it. What almost inevitably follows is a craving for more such experiences, and a whole new awareness of the wide world of classic cinema. And that’s very encouraging.
