The Godfather is an American crime film from 1972. It was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and won a total of four Academy Awards such as “Best Picture” and “Best Actor” in regards to Marlon Brando (Geeks). The story itself is set in 1945 New York and follows the Corleone family. The Corleone family is made up of quite a few Sicilian mobsters and the dad, Vito Corleone, is the famous “Godfather”.
The opening scene of The Godfather is the day of his daughters wedding, where it’s tradition to not turn down any requests. It shows The Godfather in his office talking to various men about their troubles and really gives you an idea to just how powerful he is. At one point it showed a man sitting by himself during the celebration of The Godfather’s daughter’s wedding and he was just practicing his introduction and thank you to The Godfather over and over; he was so nervous about the meeting that he didn’t seem to even notice the bystanders that were watching him with concern.
At first the protagonist seemed to be The Godfather as that is the title of the movie and that was the focus in the beginning of the film. However, at some point during a feud with another Italian family Vito Corleone is shot and hospitalized. While he is laid up in the hospital, unable to defend himself, another mobster plans an attack on him and orchestrates it with the local police. Michael Corleone, The Godfather’s son, shows up at the hospital just at the right time and saves his father from being murdered. From that point on the protagonist becomes Michael and the plot is about his rise to being the head of the family company as well as a vicious mob boss — arguably more ruthless than his father.
There’s one goal in the movie and that’s power. There are 6 powerful families that are referenced and always seem to be taking pot shots at each other. One family would act, the other would retaliate, wash, rinse, and repeat. While that’s a very basic overview of the goal at hand, there’s a reason the film won the awards that it did, it’s very good.
The production of The Godfather was very interesting to me. Coppola estimated that the first film was made using around 6.5 million dollars. Coppola also said that today a studio probably wouldn’t be willing to take a risk on The Godfather the way they did back in 1972. Another interesting tidbit is that Al Pacino, the actor that played Michael Corleone, wasn’t really wanted for the part. The Paramount studio executive, Bob Evans, didn’t want to use Al Pacino as he felt he was too short for the character. This led to Al Pacino auditioning for the same part over and over because Coppola really wanted him but Bob Evans did not (nofilmschool).
The actors in the movie were both well known stars and lesser known stars. Marlon Brando was already an iconic actor, but that came with some consequences. The president of the studio absolutely did not want Marlon Brando to be a part of the production and in an attempt to dissuade Coppola he said that Brando would have to put up a million dollar bond stating that he wouldn’t cause any problems during the production (nofilmschool). Coppola accepted with no hesitation and didn’t tell Brando about the interesting deal. Brando ended up knocking it out of the park. Al Pacino and Robert Duvall were both somewhat new to Hollywood and The Godfather seemed to launch them into fame (geeks).
The special effects for the movie were pretty cut and dry. I felt like they did a good job with fight scenes or shooting scenes. One interesting thing I found about the film, however, is that they had to make two different sets of prints with varying light levels. When this movie was released it was really popular to go to drive in movie theaters and to prevent the image from being too dark because it’s nighttime during the showing the producers would go overboard and overlight everything. They made the darker films for theaters. I just found it interesting how much thought goes into the little details of the movie. Lighting isn’t something I would normally take into consideration, however, I do know that when a movie’s lighting is off it makes me not want to watch the movie altogether.
The overwhelming majority of reviews of The Godfather all said that the movie was excellent; after watching the film for myself, I can agree with that statement!
https://www.tested.com/art/movies/463501-filming-light-and-dark-side-godfather/
https://geeks.media/the-godfather-film-review-and-analysis
https://nofilmschool.com/2017/05/godfather-production-cast-reunion-panel
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-godfather-1972