#2: The Godfather

In Summary

Where would be without The Godfather? The film that launched the careers of director Francis Ford Coppola and actor Al Pacino, as well as revitalising Marlon Brando's.

The film that made Italian-American mob films mainstream, from Once Upon A Time in America, to Scarface, to about half of everything Martin Scorsese has made.

Would we even have TV shows like The Sopranos, which begat other recent prestige series such as The Wire, Breaking Bad and Mad Men?

The influence this film has is almost inconceivably massive.

What, though, of The Godfather itself?

While the film is set in the world of organised crime, the central threads of The Godfather are family, tradition, and responsibility. The first half hour of the film encapsulates this. Yes, we get to see some of the inner workings of the Corleone organisation, but the wedding party setting allows us to see how large and closely knit the family unit is - which is the heart of The Godfather.

The opening section of the film is also important in establishing characters - in particular, Vito and Michael Corleone. Vito's position as patriarch appears unassailable, people are intimidated to even be in his presence, he's quietly spoken yet immensely authoritative. Michael is the outsider, dressed in military uniform while the rest of the family are in wedding attire, he doesn't belong here.

The rest of the film focuses on how the family dynamic changes through external circumstances. Vito's authority declines, there is a power vacuum into which someone must step up or the family as a whole will be destroyed.

It is into that responsibility that Michael steps. It is a gradual transition, justifying each of the steps of Michael's ascent (or, perhaps, descent) into the role. For a man who had started off seeming so keen to distance himself from his family and its criminal associations, Michael is perhaps more willing to take the reins than it initially seems.

Was it purely down to circumstance, or was it in Michael's inner nature to step into the role vacated by his father?

A Memorable Quote

A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults.

Things You May Not Know

• Sergio Leone - director of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly and Once Upon A Time In The West - was originally offered the film, turning it down to focus on his own crime epic Once Upon A Time In America, which was eventually completed and released 10 years later.
• The role of Michael Corleone wasn't cast until just before shooting. Francis Ford Coppola pushed for Al Pacino, who the studio considered to be too short. Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Ryan O'Neal, Dustin Hoffman, Martin Sheen, and James Caan were all considered for the role before Coppola finally convinced the studio to cast Pacino.
• Marlon Brando didn't memorise any of his lines and had to read from cue cards.

One of the Greatest of All Time?

The Godfather can be a slow watch. It certainly takes its time to establish characters before getting into any kind of action. The action that it is in the film is there to service character development rather than to excite the audience.

There is easily two or three films worth of content packed into the three hours. Had The Godfather been made more recently, it might have been a TV series, where there is much less of a time constraint

However, by making it into a singular story, there is a greater sense of scale to the story. The Godfather has more in common with a Shakespeare play than many of the films that it has inspired.