Coppola Watch: The Godfather (1972)

Watched:  02/17/2025

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Francis Ford Coppola

Guys...  it's possible The Godfather (1972) is a good movie.  

So, I'm not really going to review this movie.  If you were coming to this site to read whether you should watch one of the most well known and beloved movies in cinema, a game changer for American film, and a career high point and career maker for a handful of people...  I recommend you just set aside 3 hours of your misbegotten life and watch it.  

If you haven't seen Godfather and Godfather II, you're probably missing a lot of cultural references from your elders.  Just so you know.  It was hard to find a bigger, more universally beloved set of movies than these two, even during the Star Wars era.  Star Wars was for teens and kids, and Godfather was what is now prestige television for adults.

My first exposure to the film was in the summer of 1989.  We were staying with my uncle in DC and he happened to own copies of Godfather, Godfather II and Das Boot.  And each night after my folks and uncle went to bed, we watched parts of the movies and wound up watching all three.  

When we came home from DC, we watched The Godfather with some pals.  You had to watch it on two separate VHS tapes.  My guess is they split movie right after Michael shoots McCluskey and Sollozzo, but I honestly don't recall.

I do know that by the time The Freshman came out in summer of 1990, we were pretty well versed in The Godfather, so I'm guessing we rewatched it a few times.

At any rate, I was just the right age to cross over to watching movies really aimed at adults - and this was one of those movies that cracked my skull open to show me what a movie could be.  Because the movie was so often discussed, I knew it was popular entertainment, but still a film epic telling a complex, multi-year story that had a character arc that resonated with me as a young viewer looking out at the horizon of the future and seeing Michael's life pivot.

So much of what's in the movie has spilled out to cultural shorthand and been begged, borrowed and stolen from, it's hard to remember the shock of the baptism sequence and not-at-all subtle character beat for Michael.  But when I was a teen, this was mind-blowing as a story moment.  Now, it's mind-blowing just in execution.  It's great cinema.

Anyhow, it's difficult to measure the impact this film had on me at the time I first saw it - in part because I was of the age when one is just old enough to begin appreciating something very different from the adventure films and comedies which I usually took in.  No, I didn't fully understand every detail and nuance - a better read came with subsequent viewings.   But there's a pretty straight line from the impact of that first viewing of the movie to what I'm still into, and The Godfather showing me the *possibility* of film likely started me on the path to choose film as a major.

As an older person now, I'm moved by different things in the movie, not just understanding, say, that Don Corleone and Tom Hagen are having a moment in the wake of Sonny's death - but that the emotion each must feel as father and brother, and who else can they share this with?  Who else can they show emotion to?  It's all just business, right?

That's maybe part of what made this work in a new way.  Sometimes you'd see gangsters with children (I'm actually thinking of Conte, who is in this, as Mr. Brown in The Big Combo), but they were a plot point - and Mr. Brown wasn't showing love for his family and concerned about who would take over.

The details of things like crying babies, making dinner for 20 guys, making sure you grab the cannoli for the missus...  those things make it all feel less like a slick pulp story and a story about what it is - a very complicated family.

The movie arrived at such a curious time, as the studios flailed and the assembly line approach fell away.  New Hollywood came in and changed everything, taking huge swings we now think of as standard operating procedure.  But it wasn't just the man behind the camera, Coppola, that changed things.  Brando's breakthroughs in On the Waterfront and Streetcar Named Desire were 18-20 years in the past.  The actors that had been inspired by Brando, who came out of the same acting schools, were now playing his children.  And now we had Al Pacino delivering one of the finest performances in movies.  We had John Cazale doing great work and tee'd up for the sequel.  Jimmy Caan made a career out of Sonny.  Talia Shire is astounding in all three Godfather films.  Robert Duvall?  I mean... man. 

And Coppola knew exactly how to use the old guard.  I didn't know who Richard Conte or Sterling Hayden were (two of my personal favorite noir-mainstays here in 2025) when I watched this movie as a youth, and their inclusion now is so obvious from their crime films of the 1950's.  Their inclusion as the old way of things is both intentional and inspired.  

The story itself is fairly airtight.  There's probably flaws, but I refuse to recognize them at this point.  But what I love is the mixing of character and plot, how both work within the other as character is part of what defines who is a player in the story and how.  And how characters change and grow.  I think of the bizarre cruelty of Michael in bringing Kay into this world when he no longer was going to be the legitimate side of the family - and, in fact, knew he was the Don-in-training.  Of course this plays out over two more films, but...  Christ - that last shot.

There's an argument that The Godfather is oddly well-liked for a grimy gangster film about bad people doing bad things in sensationalistic ways.  And the people who make that argument must be extraordinarily dull, dry, pills, and I don't want to hang out with them.  It *is* a movie about bad people doing bad things, and if you think that's irrelevant to everyday life, you need to crack a history book or open a newspaper.  And I think if you think it makes gangster life look appealing, you really just want the wardrobe.  The rest seems terrible.

The 4K disc I picked up was absolutely worth the minimal cost.  Restored to a beautiful and pristine image quality, the colors are phenomenal, the picture sharp, the blacks deep - which you notice immediately in the first sequence.  The sound is good, even if my 2.1 soundbar seemed to struggle a bit deciding what to do with 5.1.  

Anyway, always fun to return to one of the films you remember striking you like lightning and see it's no less potent now than it was when you watched it the first time.

Also, I think Carlo is one of the most punchable people in any movie ever made, and I am with Sonny on his need for a good beat-down.