The Godfather Review

THE GODFATHER -1972

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We are family...

Director_____Francis Ford Coppola

Country_____USA

To say I was born a lover of quality cinema would be a blatant lie. I used to be one those regular ‘watch-a-movie-once-in-a-while’ kinda guy, not really that into the beauty of cinema. But one fine evening, I let Coppola, guide me into world of the Corleones, and nothing was ever the same again. No, I didn’t become a movie buff overnight, but ‘The Godfather’ exposed to me a level of cinema that I had never experienced before, leaving in me a new taste for movies of such calibre.

Considering all the success it has had in all the past decades, since its release in 1972, it’s kind of interesting to note the sheer number of difficulties, the production ran into. The lack of trust on the then inexperienced Coppola, the producers outright refusal to cast Brando as Vito, the hurdles in getting Pacino as Michael, the clashes with the production et al. The only reason this movie exists today, is probably due to the sheer will of Coppola to get his own way and we can always be thankful for that.

‘I believe in America’, the memorable opening line, we hear the words first, before the title has gone away and the speaker comes into focus; Bonasera, one in the line of many who have come to the wedding of Connie, daughter of the Don, Vito Corleone, with the hope that the Don will listen to their grievances and will refuse them a promise of justice, as it is his daughter’s wedding.

Coppola then goes on to the famous wedding scene, which though long, manages to introduce us almost all of the key players of the movie. There are the three sons Sonny, Fredo and Michael. Tom, the adopted son; the caporegimes Clemenza and Tessio, Luca Brasi the enforcer, Fontane the star, the other leaders of the Five Families, among others.

Under this fun and merriment, though underlies the question of ‘Who Next?’ Who will succeed Vito? Sonny is too much of a hothead and Fredo was never given too much of importance. So that leaves you with Michael, the career defining role of Al Pacino. The youngest of the three and the favourite of Vito, but one with no desire for the family business, and had against the wishes of his father enlisted himself in the Marines. And on this eventful day, he had come with his girlfriend, Kay Adams, an American, with no roots in Italy, and therefore considered a outsider and treated with distrust.

And so begins the saga of the epic, they call ‘The Godfather’ and soon you lose yourself in the world of the Sicilian Mafia, their honors, their codes, their way of life, as triumphs, betrayals, love, loss, regrets immerse you in a world unlike any world ever experienced. To try and describe how it felt to me, then a sixteen year old kid, would be humongous task, and I would be doing a disservice to the ones who are yet to see it, and robbing them of the experience of really feeling it, if I spell it out loud.

Clocking in with a runtime of around three hours, The Godfather is a testimonial of how a great movie always feels like it has ended too soon, when you are not yet ready to forgo the sheer pleasure of the epic film-making.

Coppola may not be at his peak now, making cinema that are but just a pale shadow of what he used to be once, but no matter what we will always have the Godfather, and to any cinema lover worth his/her salt, your love is not complete if you have not yet seen ‘The Godfather’.