The Godfather

As a birthday gift for my dad, I'll review one of his favorite movies.

Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) is rightfully acknowledged as one of the all-time greats. It's a near-perfect movie that brilliantly blends entertainment and art: it's just as appealing to the mass audience as to the arthouse crowd. Richly textured, beautifully shot, perfectly cast and enjoyable on many levels, it is a masterpiece.

Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is a 1940's-era crime boss in New York City, controlling a huge empire of vice and racketeering. Sons Fredo (John Cazale), Sonny (James Caan) and Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) happily follow him into the family business, but college-educated Michael (Al Pacino), a decorated WWII veteran, hopes to go straight. When business rival Solozzo (Al Lettieri) tries to kill Don Vito for refusing a narcotics deal, Michael is forced into business and volunteers to kill Solozzo and crooked cop McCluskey (Sterling Hayden). While Michael hides in Sicily, the hot-headed Sonny initiates an all-out war with the family's rivals, with tragic results. Don Vito successfully negotiates a truce upon recovering, leaving Michael to settle accounts.

Most of the classic gangster movies - Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, Howard Hawks's Scarface - were short, violent movies focused on entry-level thugs shooting their way up the criminal ladder. The genre had mostly burned itself out by the '60s, occasional hits like Bonnie and Clyde and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre notwithstanding. Movies that actually explored the inner-workings of organized crime were rare, and even the best gangster pics rarely achieved much depth or significance.

The genre always cynically reworked the "American Dream," with Italian and Irish immigrants clawing to the top with bullets rather than hard work. The Godfather's higher-stakes shows the Mafia operating like a corporation, negotiating zones of control, getting rid of weak employees (the traitorous Paulie (John Martino), the slimy Carlo (Gianni Russo)) and debating whether to sell new products. Aside from colorfully-staged hits of rivals and tratiors, the Syndicate's victims are kept off-screen. Morality is purely subjective: Don Vito has no problem with racketeering and prostitution but feels narcotics are out of line; Michael scoffs at Kay's notion that "Presidents don't have people murdered!" The Godfather is a very cynical, very '70s film.

Coppola and novelist Mario Puzo ingeniously weave a complex, multi-layered tapestry that works on many levels. The Godfather is a quintessential "guy movie" but it's just as much a family melodrama. Each of the Corleones has a "fatal flaw" that causes them to lose their way: Vito's worsening judgment, Sonny's impulsiveness, Tom's weakness, Fredo's gullibility. Michael rises to the top by being more brutal and calculating than his brothers: his transformation from innocent outsider to cold-blooded crime boss is genuinely chilling, as much a natural extension of his strong-willed character as something forced by circumstance. The women are non-existent: victimized, beaten and cheated on, they're cut out of the family business, showing that beneath Don Vito's idealized "family" is something truly rotten - something the sequels would bring out in disturbing detail.

The film would falter if it couldn't make the Corleones interesting. Coppola and Puzo achieve this by focusing squarely on the family; the absence of an outside viewpoint, of Elliot Ness-style cops and victimized prostitutes and drug users, makes the story work. The script develops every character, making them likeable (or at least sympathetic) even as they do horrible things. Accusations that The Godfather glorifies the Mob are beside the point: the Corleones are compelling because they're interesting characters, not because they're gangsters.

Coppola's direction is beyond brilliant: after a decade of B-list studio work (Finian's Rainbow) and screenwriting chores (Patton), Coppola immediately established himself as an auteur. Stylistically, the movie is more akin to Luchino Visconti's Italian epics (The Leopard, The Damned) than a Hollywood product, with its slow, langorous pace, meticulous attention to period detail, handsome photography and focus on family rituals (the wedding, the baptism), taking time to establish character, plot and mood. The movie is full of brilliant set-pieces but Coppola outdoes himself with the baptism finale: its striking use of parallel editing, stylish direction and Nino Rota's foreboding score creates a sequence of unmatched brilliance.

Marlon Brando's oft-parodied portrayal of Don Corleone rescued him from a decade of dismal failures. He makes a Vito a fully sympathetic character, his mannerisms and accent denoting a man who's been powerful for so long that he takes it for granted. He's a tragic figure who loves his sons but is unable to adapt to the changing times. It isn't a patch on the best of his '50s work, but compared to his slumming in The Chase and haminess in Burn!, it's something special.

Much of the supporting cast shot to stardom. Al Pacino's only notable role prior to this was The Panic in Needle Park; he was almost a desperation pick after Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford dropped out. James Caan had played a bumbling sidekick to John Wayne in Howard Hawks's El Dorado; Robert Duvall's had starred opposite Brando in Arthur Penn's flop The Chase.

Each of these actors is pitch-perfect: Pacino's chilling descent into criminality, Caan's self-destructive compulsion, Duvall's inner conflict and cool-headedness, are all brilliantly rendered. John Cazale starts his remarkable string of films before his untimely death (The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon); his Fredo is backgrounded here but will become the sequel's tragic center.

Diane Keaton and Talia Shire also built careers from their small but crucial roles. Shire is obnoxious but Keaton plays Kay with the perfect mixture of naivety and disbelief. Old Hollywood hands Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangelove) and Richard Conte (13 Rue Madeleine) play villains, but the reptilian Al Lettieri (The Getaway) steals their thunder. Richard S. Castellano and Abe Vigoda get choice supporting roles.

The Godfather is fully deserving of its peerless reputation. I prefer Part II for its added depth and complexity, the way it builds on existing characters and achieves Shakesperean heights of tragedy, but the original stands on its own merits as a masterpiece.