THE GODFATHER

Vito to Tom (when Michael sends him west): "It isn't that you were a bad consiglieri, it was Sonny who was a bad Don, god bless him"--The Godfather

The other day on my memoir blog I said that I could go on for hours about gangster movies like Francis Coppola's The Godfather, so I may as well write some more.

The 1960s were a time when American society became genuinely "multicultural." (It's telling that the acronym WASP appeared at this time.) Many Italian-Americans resent the Mafia-related stereotypes that movies like The Godfather have promoted, yet the blockbuster success of that movie marked the true "mainstreaming" of their culture.TheGodfather appeared at about the same time as Norman Jewison's hit movie of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, which marks a similar mainstreaming of Jewish-American culture.

And what great storytelling Coppola managed!  I haven't read Mario Puzo's book, but I'm told the movie is better. Coppola takes almost three hours to tell the story, giving texture its due. (Paramount studio head Robert Evans asserts that Coppola offered him a shorter cut, but Evans himself realized that the long cut was needed!)

The Godfather is a crime drama, but it's also a family epic.  The whole idea of a patriarch was a bit exotic to Americans with a WASP nuclear-family background. It's a rather basic, mythical story about a father with three sons:  the testosterone-charged heir who disappoints him, the loser who can't do anything right, and the quiet, thoughtful one who ends up saving the family.  There's also the daughter whose husband never really gets into the inner circle, and the adopted son who serves as consiglieri.

But it's also the story of Michael trying to stay out of the family business, only to be drawn in and ultimately take over. (We first see him in his army uniform, suggesting that he knows something about killing...)  Like Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, it addressed the identity crisis of baby boomers, the younger generation back then.

The Godfather was so successful that Coppola got a free hand with The Godfather Part II, and he came up with something even more epic. (That version is half prequel, about Vito's emigration to America; and half sequel, about the family's fate under Michael's leadership.) I could write another post about that movie, but I will mention just one detail showing how Coppola's vision evolved.

The first movie has a famous ending:  Michael's just lied to his wife about a murder close to home, and as she looks into his office the door gets closed on her!  In the second movie there's a similar scene, except that it's shown from Michael's perspective, with the subtext that he's cutting himself off from everyone close to him...

Now I want to see both movies again!