The story of the Corleones: Chapter One

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2005)

Before I saw 'The Godfather', I had always wondered about it; been seeing it at #1 on the IMDb Top 250 List. It has a consistent rating of 9.1/10.0 and I was always fascinated by that. I had some really heavy duty expectations from this movie.
A friend lent me his DVD and I finally saw this movie which has widely been said to be the greatest movie in all of film history! This was quite long ago, and in all honesty I wasn't very impressed in my first viewing (probably due to my ultra-high expectations).
Now, I had heard about The Godfather Part II being better. Therefore, after knowing all the characters and the actual story in Part I, I rented Part II.
This time, I was awestruck, as I totally fell in love with Part II! I shall leave the review of 'The Godfather Part II' to its own comments section.
Since I loved Part II, I decided to watch the first installment again. Only this time, I liked it much better than the first viewing! It turned out to be one of those movies that get better with each viewing. I was also picking out the reasons why I hadn't liked it by itself at that time.
First, though, the pluses, which are aplenty! Wonderful acting from everyone in the lead roles as well as the supporting cast. Marlon Brando never fails to amaze me with his majestic screen presence! Other bravura performances: Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Richard Castellano and Al Lettieri (as Virgil Solozzo). John Cazale is good too (although he has a bigger part in Part II, so he made a bigger impression there).
The story: The novel is already one of the most popular books I've ever come across! The story is indeed powerful and quite gripping.
The cinematography: Need I mention the already talked about sepia colors Coppola has used throughout the trilogy? They add a wonderful touch to the movie and it makes the movie look more "beautiful"!
The Lighting: Excellent effects; one noteworthy scene is the talk between Solozzo and Hagen. The dim lighting gives a brilliant touch to their topic of discussion!
The score: Beautiful, haunting music that won't let go; I still casually whistle the tunes every now and then! Thus, as far as the technical aspects are concerned, the film is flawless! (well, almost...there are a few revealing mistakes as are listed in the goofs section of this movie!)
Now the minuses: I was not happy with a couple of things. First of all, my biggest complaint..the length of Marlon Brando's screen time!! His scenes total to a length of not more than 50 mins in a running time of 175 mins!! Why? I just wished I could see more of his greater than great performance! Second thing: The blooming of Michael and Apollonia's romance in Sicily appears at a time when the story should've really moved ahead at the pace that it had caught! Those scenes in Sicily (him being "hit by thunderbolt" on seeing her; the exchange of glances, etc.) were just taking too long and could have easily been cut short! They just hampered the smooth flow of the story. I can say that 'The Godfather' is an almost perfect film! Minuses apart, the film has some really memorable scenes, which will go down in history as some of the classiest moments in cinema.
The Godfather saga continues in Part II, which is even better than this first offer that no respectable movie buff can refuse.....