Godfather films

Identification Motion pictures

The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II were two of the most popular and influential films of the 1970s. They launched the careers of many actors and of writer-director Francis Ford Coppola. The third installment, The Godfather, Part III, while released almost two decades later and largely considered more flawed than its predecessors, helped to bring the persistently intriguing storyline to a conclusion.

Date Released in 1972 and 1974

Director Francis Ford Coppola

Key Figures

• Francis Ford Coppola (1939–    ), film director

Two of the most popular and critically acclaimed films of the 1970s were a three-generation saga of the Corleone family, an Italian American Mafia group. Both films won an Academy Award for best picture and were box-office successes. The films, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, influenced many other directors and actors.

The first film, The Godfather, starred Marlon Brando as the aging patriarch Don Vito Corleone—known as the Godfather—and three young actors as his sons: Sonny (played by James Caan), Freddy (John Cazale), and Michael (Al Pacino). The film was based on a best-selling 1969 novel by Mario Puzo, who coauthored the screenplay with Coppola.

The film follows the trials of and threats to the Corleone family as their power is challenged by the new generation of gangsters who wish to deal in drugs. After rival gangsters attempt to kill Don Corleone, the family becomes involved in a violent gang war. Each of the three sons show his true personality during this crisis: Sonny is violent and emotional, Freddy is weak, and Michael is most like his father. Don Corleone’s adopted son, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), is the family lawyer, and his daughter Connie (Talia Shire) disappoints him by her choice of a husband.

Don Corleone is a sly but generally nonviolent leader who argues for “reasonableness” in all things. His most famous line—“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”—is a signal of both his businesslike sensibilities and his veiled ruthlessness. In the film’s most famous scene, the head of a race horse is cut off and placed in the bed of a film producer who refuses to bend to Don Corleone’s wishes.

The film also shows how the youngest son, Michael, wishes to escape the family’s history and marry a non-Italian. However, he is brought into the business little by little. After Sonny is killed and Michael kills the family’s main enemy (and his police chief bodyguard), Don Corleone returns to settle the war and to bring his son home from exile. By the end of the film, the aged Vito Corleone has died, and Michael has become head of the family when he takes bloody revenge on the family’s enemies.

The Godfather was named best picture in 1972 and also won Academy Awards for best actor for Brando and best screenplay. The film was a box office champion that earned millions of dollars for Paramount Studios. Brando, who had gotten the part against the studio’s wishes, refused the Academy Award as a protest against racist depictions of American Indians in films and the recent incident at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

A Sequel

In 1974, Coppola made a sequel of sorts to The Godfather. The Godfather, Part II follows two story lines. One depicts a young Vito Corleone (played by Robert De Niro ) as he leaves Sicily and goes to New York City to escape the vengeance of a local Mafia don. This track shows his rise in the United States to become Don Corleone. The second track shows the modern don Michael Corleone trying to move the family out of illegal operations and into legal gambling in Nevada and Cuba. The film goes back and forth between the two stories and the two generations.

In the course of the two stories, the audience sees how young Vito Corleone rises to become a “man of respect” in the Italian American culture and how he eventually returns to his native Sicily to exact revenge on the people who murdered his family and forced him to move to the United States. We also see how Michael’s efforts to gain respectability are frustrated by the treachery of others. Michael’s life and family are threatened by a conspiracy between Jewish mobster Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) and his own brother, Freddy.

As Michael’s extended Mafia family thrives, his immediate family disintegrates. His wife (Diane Keaton) becomes estranged enough to abort their third child, his sister Connie loses all family connections, and his brother betrays him. By the end of Godfather, Part II, both Michael and Vito’s enemies have been murdered, and their fates as Mafia overlords have been sealed. Michael is alone, having disowned his wife and ordered the murder of his brother.

The Godfather, Part II also won the Academy Award for best picture, best supporting actor for De Niro, best adapted screenplay, and best director. The film was another box office success and garnered acclaim as one of the best films of the decade.

Impact

The success of the Godfather films launched the careers of many young actors. Additionally, the films allowed Coppola the freedom to become one of the most important directors of the 1970s and of subsequent decades, who in turn influenced other directors, such as Martin Scorsese. Many aspects of The Godfather can be seen throughout American popular culture, including lines such as, “Do me this favor,” and “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.” In 1998, the American Film Institute named The Godfather number three on its list of the one hundred greatest films. The Godfather, Part II was ranked number thirty-two on the same list. A third film, The Godfather, Part III, was released in 1990.

Bibliography

Elsaesser, Thomas, and Noel King, editors. The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970’s. Amsterdam UP, 2004.

Gioia, Ted. "Why Is Godfather III So Disrespected?" Daily Beast, 20 Dec. 2015, www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/20/why-is-godfather-iii-so-disrespected.html. Accessed 30 Nov. 2016.

Lebo, Harlan. “The Godfather” Legacy. Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Puzo, Mario. The Godfather. Rev. ed. New American Library, 2002.

Sigoloff, Marc. Films of the Seventies: A Filmography of American, British, and Canadian Films, 1970–1979. McFarland, 2000.