Tom Jolliffe looks back at The Godfather as it turns 50…
In 1967, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde began a solid decade of a mature, intense and gritty American cinema. Though Penn was fairly experienced by this point, he was unknowingly going to help forge a path that a new wave of (future) iconic directors were going to blaze across. Many of these, like Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola, would begin in B pictures, before breaking out in mainstream. In comparison to today, the equivalent is the indie directors who leap up to the MCU studio pictures. It’s oddly a strange reversal, where a Scorsese might start in the Roger Corman B-picture world and end up doing great, emotionally resonant cinema, it seems like the leap to big budget studio nowadays sees the light hearted B movie material come afterwards. Bonnie and Clyde is this amalgamation of old fashioned style and aesthetics with more morally obtuse themes, complexity and a level of violence that American cinema was just becoming used to. The infamous final act sees the titular duo torn to shreds by gunfire with squibs erupting everywhere. Until Star Wars changed that landscape 10 years later, American movies were laced with pessimism, anti-heroes and downbeat endings. It was fucking amazing.
So we’re at 1972. One of the best selling novels was Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. A big studio picture is to be made and the director tasked with bringing it to life? Francis Ford Coppola. He’d cut his teeth with B pictures, and prior to The Godfather, had a small intimate drama (starring James Caan) called Rain People. If modern movie studios seem more open to giving fairly unknown directors a shot at huge movies, then it was a trend first started in the 70’s, and Coppola being brought onto direct The Godfather is one of the great examples (you could of course go further back to Orson Welles and Citizen Kane too).
Puzo and Coppola would write the adapted screenplay together. The story follows the Corleone family. Vito (Marlon Brando) is the head of the crime family who run the show, but he’s aging and looking ahead to succession. Within the family are siblings Sonny (James Caan), Fredo (John Cazale) and Michael (Al Pacino. It’s got very definite Shakespearean ideas, as many family based dramas tend to. Very distinct shades of King Lear, that arc through the first two films particularly. Michael is the youngest sibling and the one who wants to kind of break away from the family business. He’s a recently returned soldier, intelligent (where Sonny is about unrestrained masculinity and Fredo is naïve) and ambitious (initially at least to find his own way). Vito doesn’t particularly want Michael to take on the family business, but his desire to see the empire continue supersedes what he wants for Michael, who ultimately, is the only suitable choice. The complexity of these push pull dynamics constantly enthrall throughout the films weighty run-time (just shy of 3 hours).
By the time Vito’s position has been violently challenged and Michael is thrust into the center of the family empire, the film is shifting into darker territory. Michael’s slow descent is triggered into a headlong slalom in the infamous restaurant scene. The Michael up to this point might have wanted to compromise and deal with the rivals pushing for power and territory, to be pragmatic and realise that the family grip might have loosened. However, he decides decisive retributive action must be taken and he will do that himself (given that he wouldn’t be suspected). Though Michael, as a soldier will have inevitably killed, this is an entirely different situation, which takes away the impersonal nature of war. He’s up close and personal. A lingering shot as Michael sits silently, mulling this act prior to carrying out is ruthlessly simple in execution but still one of the greatest scenes ever committed to celluloid. It’s thus the birth of the more brutal, ruthless Michael Corleone. The Michael Corleone who could order the assassination of his own brother (in Part 2).
As one would imagine, a cast which includes Brando, Pacino, Caan, Cazale, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire and Robert Duvall, is absolutely jam packed with exceptional performances. This was, Brando aside, a cast of upcoming trailblazers for an evolution in the method style which Brando really revolutionised in the 50’s. Brando had been seen as a has-been prior to this role. A troublesome ego, more trouble than he was worth, with a run of underwhelming performances and even worse box office. Brando was to be the marquee name, and it became something of a point of contention with the studio who worried that the box office rested on the star name, and Brando’s had faded. With the infamous cotton balls in cheeks approach to the role, one which has become iconic as a go to impression almost everyone can do, Brando was back to his best. He won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role. This was somewhat contentious, if only because Vito’s screen time becomes limited from a third of the way in, and he feels more like a supporting part in Michael’s story. Pacino in fact, boycotted the awards because of this fact (Brando additionally, for different reasons, didn’t attend to collect his award).
The film, as well as being a financial success (making a sequel inevitable) was a critical darling. The awards season was prolific (a best picture Oscar was almost without any competition. Wholly inevitable). The legacy beyond, for the passing half century remains the same. The Godfather to many is the most assured and impeccably delivered piece of cinema ever made. It’s the art and work of a master director, in the process of mastering his craft, as yet unhindered by over indulgence. It’s a great example of an exceptional screenplay, written by a young upstart, and the novels original writer. Puzo famously once said he knew almost nothing about screenwriting. He wanted to study it after writing this first great masterwork. A suggestion he got? “Watch The Godfather.” Not confined by convention and rules, Puzo and Coppola swirled the story with a careful Novel-esque pace that worked for this complex story of family dynamics. Coppola used much of his own Italian American background to brush stroke the family and make it feel authentic, away from all the mobster elements. The fact it feels so authentic as a family unit, makes the dramatic aspects of the guns and gangsters world, all the more enthralling and impactful.
So still, 50 years on, The Godfather is a benchmark that very few Hollywood films have come close to. The gangster genre has had a handful which came within a country mile, and the closest would be Part 2, which matches the first films impact and has the dual plot strands in past and present that make the film feel like its own entity and not merely a retread. Furthermore, it’s one of the few examples in cinema where a runtime that hefty feels completely and utterly warranted. Nothing feels superfluous. Seeing the film again, watching it pick up a new audience, spruced up by recent 4K treatment is wonderful, and from the moment the iconic theme plays, to the closing of the door on Diane Keaton, The Godfather remains one of a select few, ‘perfect’ films.
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Tom Jolliffe is an award winning screenwriter and passionate cinephile. He has a number of films out on DVD/VOD around the world and several releases due out in 2021/2022, including, Renegades (Lee Majors, Danny Trejo, Michael Pare, Tiny Lister, Nick Moran, Patsy Kensit, Ian Ogilvy and Billy Murray), Crackdown, When Darkness Falls and War of The Worlds: The Attack (Vincent Regan). Find more info at the best personal site you’ll ever see here.
