The Godfather (1972)

It’s hard to think that there was a time before The Godfather. Today, Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic gangster movie is treated as though it’s always existed. The Godfather has become a pop cultural landmark, a bundle of quotes and a collection of timeless images. Read about it, and you might think you’re poring over a description of a divine blessing or a mysterious force of nature. It’s on every list of the greatest films ever made and its title carries an intimidating, prestigious weight. I think it’s important to remember that The Godfather was crafted by fallible human hands a little over fifty years ago. It’s a quintessential New Hollywood creation, a fusion of the style of European arthouse cinema and the grit and guts of Old Hollywood. Incredible care and thought is put into every last detail by a creative team united in their vision of classical grandeur.

The story is a tragic family drama, a tale of war and succession. Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) has been the head of the Corleone crime family for decades. He’s a man of great power and influence, but he’s growing old and struggling to adapt to the changing landscape of crime in post-WW2 New York. After dismissing a rising drug baron, the Don is critically injured. A war between New York’s crime families erupts, and the Don’s sons struggle to defend their family, win the war and expand their power. Fredo (John Cazale) is slow-witted and easily led into temptation. Sonny (James Caan) is violent, stubborn and uncontrollable. Neither of these two sons is an acceptable successor. The third might be. Michael (Al Pacino) is principled, calculating and steadfastly loyal. Though he commits himself to escaping his family’s violent and wicked empire, he finds himself climbing the ranks step by step.

Coppola and writer Mario Puzo introduce the Corleone family as though they were an established political dynasty. In some sense, they are. Consider the way that the film begins. It doesn’t start with Michael, the film’s protagonist, and it doesn’t start with a scene of violence or racketeering. It begins with a contract. In a darkened room, the kinglike Don Vito Corleone listens to a petitioner. The power and authority of the Don is established instantly. Vito Corleone is an extra-legal dispenser of justice, a criminal overlord and a kind of robin hood figure for New York’s Italian-Americans. He has his own rule of law and he sticks to it. It’s crucial to the effect of these intimidating study scenes that Brando plays the part with weariness. Vito has been through this routine too many times, and times are changing. He still has power and wisdom, but he isn’t getting any satisfaction from his work.

The Godfather was an important comeback for Brando, an actor who had a patchy 1960s after a stellar 1950s. Though he was only 47 when he played the Don, Dick Smith’s superb make-up transformed Brando into a grandfather of about 70: a man with years of experience, pain and fortitude etched into the wrinkles of his face. It’s probably the greatest work of cosmetic ageing in the history of cinema, and it has the effect of physically transforming Brando into an elder statesman of the acting profession. He plays Pacino and Caan’s father, and in a figurative sense he was the father of their approach to performing. Consider The Godfather without Brando in the title role. Ernest Borgnine and Laurence Olivier were considered for the part. Brando is obviously the superior choice, radiating authority and importance with every movement of his body. With a flick of a hand and a tilt of the head, he tells a story. He is the movie. When he isn’t onscreen his presence is still felt.

The Godfather is the film that introduced mass audiences to a young, intense actor named Al Pacino. Pacino had previously appeared in Jerry Schatzberg’s excellent addiction drama The Panic in Needle Park, but he was a virtual unknown when cast by Coppola. I think that Pacino’s very greatest performance is given in The Godfather Part II, but he’s absolutely captivating from the moment that he first appears as Michael Corleone. From Scarface onwards, Pacino has tended to give loud, bombastic performances, but he’s all the more effective for his quietness and cunning in this early role. In scenes with his partner Kay (Diane Keaton), Michael is disarmingly sweet and charming. As the film progresses, Michael grows brittle, vengeful and psychopathic. The iconic baptism sequence is made all the more chilling by Pacino’s low-key, restrained performance and quiet response to the news of the killings.

The Godfather’s production design, direction and photography are a miracle of American cinema. If the film has an unsung hero, his name is Dean Tavoularis. On a relatively small budget, Tavoularis authentically recreates the streets, gardens, hospitals and houses of 1940s New York. Notice the advertisement for a Jake LaMotta bout, the posters for Thomas Dewey’s 1948 election campaign and the period appropriate cars, clothing, fruit stands and shopfront typefaces. It’s a work of richly detailed excellence. Cinematographer Gordon Willis, who would go on to form a close partnership with Woody Allen, works utter wonders with every image. The film is tinged in a light gold colour that suggests a silent film sepia-tone and a nostalgic longing for old New York. Coppola basks in the excellence of his talented crew, using languorous wide shots to slowly explore and document the city streets, overhead railways and all-night family restaurants.

Almost every other gangster film has a sense of tackiness. From Scarface to Goodfellas (and everything in between), bling, plastic mansions, Hawaiian shirts and hideous combovers dominate the screen. The Godfather is always classy, always sumptuous and always elegant. Scorsese and De Palma use pop hits, rock music or electronic sounds to evoke a fast-paced, hard-living atmosphere in their worlds of crime, but Coppola favours Nino Rota’s mournful score. The film’s theme seems to echo the state of Vito Corleone’s mind: it’s weary, a little sad and it seems to come from an older time and a different place. Rota provided many memorable scores for Federico Fellini, and his music contributes greatly to The Godfather’s European feel. The film is the ultimate story of America, the penniless immigrant ascending to wealth and power, but it retains the style and texture of a classical European drama.

The film carefully rations out its light and shadow. In The Godfather’s study, faces loom out of the darkness, disconnected from their bodies, floating on the grain in the air. The Corleone family put on performances in light and are only themselves when hiding indoors, sheltering in the shadows. The streets are dangerous. Shootings and kidnappings take place outdoors, and its when they’re outside that treacherous family members are ushered away to certain death. The family uses its wealth to separate itself from the wider world, using their palatial home as a securely guarded sanctuary. They venture outside at their own risk, often when there’s dirty work to be done. It’s a rare thing for the majority of an epic to take place indoors, but Coppola makes a point of it. The family is powerful but constantly at the mercy of their bitter rivals.

I tend to think of Coppola as a lavish, expressive director because of his later films. Apocalypse Now, Rumblefish and One from the Heart are bold, extravagant films full of flashy visual tricks. The Godfather is slower, more stately and considered. Close-up shots are used sparingly, leaving most of the film as a collection of medium and wide images, depicting a group of characters in a richly detailed, cluttered series of rooms. The focus is on characters within a context, moulded by that context, not on a hero towering above and beyond their world. Coppola focuses on the grand ensemble and the family’s executive group, detailing the collaboration and organisational structure of the mafia with every image. When two characters talk, a third is usually present, looming over the conversation, listening in and waiting to be called on.

The Godfather endures because its substance is ancient and timeless. The very greatest, most popular and enduring stories are always about family politics. Succession, Game of Thrones, King Lear and the histories of just about every country in the world are all stories of powerful, dysfunctional families battling for power, eliminating their rivals and achieving their goals at a great cost. The Godfather is the ultimate story of warring families, a fundamentally American response to Shakespeare and Sophocles that follows the kings, queens, princes and pawns of the New York underworld. Spectacular performances, thoughtful direction and a reliance on age-old, failsafe elements of storytelling pay-off in the greatest epic of Hollywood’s auterist decade.