The best cinematic adaptation of a novel... ever.

Rating: Null/10 (26 February 2001)

Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather was a sweeping tale spanning two generations with a tale that, as director Francis Ford Coppola states, is more the tale of a king with three sons than of a mob war. This view of the novel is surprisingly accurate, and the movie is helped along by it. Granted, the family at the centre of the story is in the business of crime, but the story is more about the family than the crimes.
The head of this family is Don Vito Corleone, played to perfection by Marlon Brando. His mannerisms, and the mannerisms of any other mob boss who has survived assination attempts and wars, are captured marvellously in Brando's performance. At no stage did I have any problem believing that I was watching a mob boss rather than an actor just playing his part. Then, of course, there's the three sons: Santino (James Caan), Frederico (John Cazale), and Michael (Al Pacino). The first two of these young men are unsuitable to succeed their father as head of the family business. The youngest, and most unwilling, is ironically the most suitable. This touch makes me wonder if Mario Puzo read Plato a lot when he was writing The Godfather, for it was Plato who said that the unwilling make the best rulers. Filling out the family's ranks are Constanzia Corleone (Talia Shire), who is getting married on the day the film opens to Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo), and Vito's adopted son, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall). There isn't a single member of the cast, at least where these important roles are concerned, who doesn't play their part to a disbelief-suspending perfection.
As I mentioned previously, the film is more about the family than their business activities. Indeed, the business side of the story really only exists for plot movement. While the film cannot capture every single detail from the novel, such as the intricacies of the business, it does an excellent job of filling out the details. I've yet to see another film where this much detail from the original novel has made its way into the screenplay. Critics accuse this film of being overlength, but this is a load of cobblers. Having sat through a television broadcast of this film that took up four hours once the commercials were accounted for, I can tell you that the film is absolutely riveting. Whether it is the story, the characters, or Nino Rota's amazing score music, this film has everything it takes to keep a viewer glued to the screen for its entire length. Even the slowest part of the film, Michael's pilgrimage in Sicily, is delightful to watch due to its cinematography and doomed romance between Michael and Apollonia.
As a matter of fact, the only criticism I have of The Godfather and its first sequel is that the back story of Vito Corleone wasn't developed enough. There are numerous details, such as how Luca Brasi came to be in Vito's employ, which should have been shown in the film. The role of Mama Corleone was also somewhat underdeveloped, as her interaction with Kay Adams was a critically important element of the novel. I don't think she was ever known by any other name in the novel, either, but she was still a living, breathing character with concerns and feelings of her own. Something she was stripped of in the film. All of these elements could have used some screentime because they help the reader/viewer to understand Vito Corleone as a human being as well as as a mob boss.
Aside from that one minor complaint, however, The Godfather is the best screen translation of a novel in the history of the art form. Francis Ford Coppola should be knighted for this movie, as he stands head and shoulders above anyone else who has attempted this feat (Stanley Kubrick's failure to get half the detail of The Short Timers, a 180-page novel where half the words are expletives, into Full Metal Jacket, anyone?).