An Excellent Work of Movie-making by Copolla

Rating: 10/10 (16 July 2007)

Some spoilers ahead.
If you rent the "Godfather" DVD and listen to Copolla's comments about the production of the movie, it seems, from his view, that this film was plagued from the start with needling from Paramount studios. He was supposed to film "The Godfather" on the cheap with limited resources and constant input from the studio as to what he could do. He was regarded as such a bad director that he was almost fired from the task. His photo director (somebody with more knowledge of movie-making can correct me) thought Copolla didn't know what he was doing with what he thought were odd camera angles. It is the greatest irony of all that this movie became a timeless classic and propelled not only the fortunes of Paramount Studios in 1972, but launched the careers of Copolla as a director, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton as actors, and revived the once-glorious but then-moribund career of Marlon Brando (as you all know, he would later enter a second period of professional and personal decadence).
Copolla was blessed with some of the best actors possible for this movie. Al Pacino was great as the mostly-taciturn but wily and cunning Michael Corleone, the true protagonist of the "Godfather" saga. I personally thought he, rather than Brando, should have won the Best Actor Oscar. Michael Caan gives his all as the bombastic and violent Sonny, Michael's older brother. Diane Keaton's performance has been called relatively weak, but I think this is not a fair assessment. She is very good as the naive and rather innocent girlfriend of Michael. Despite cries of nepotism in the casting decision, Talia Shire, Copolla's sister, does well as the battered and frantic sister of the Corleone clan. Robert Duvall is absolutely excellent as the "brains" of the Corleone family, Tom Hagen. Of course, Brando's performance is what will be most remembered of this movie, even though he is not on the screen as much as Pacino or Caan. He chose to be creative as the mumbling, aged, and rather stoic leader of the mob family. He is seldom over-the-top, which one may see as a relief to the stock character of the angry, vengeful gangster (Caan fulfills that role to the nines).
Of course, overlooked are the performances of the secondary characters (whose names fail me, precisely because they never achieved fame and fortune on the scale of Pacino, Brando, Duvall, Keaton, or Caan). The guy who played "The Turk" Solozzo is a wonderful actor, and convincingly plays the character of the slimy drug-dealing antagonist. Sterling Hayden, who portrayed the loony "Jack D. Ripper" in "Dr. Strangelove," also is quite good in his brief role as the evil police captain. I honestly can't be a fair judge of the characters of Fredo Corleone or the infamous henchman, Luca Brazi, as their time on the screen was rather brief. Still, for what it's worth, they did the best they could with what little screen time they had (John Cazale's Fedo would play a much more significant role in the "Godfather" sequel).
The movie does have its fair amount of stylistic or memorable violence, but the screen in not chock full of nonstop guts and gore. Copolla's creativity as a director, and his use of stylistic devices, such as the frequent use of running children, dark, gloomy backgrounds, and music juxtaposed with violent images, makes this a highly entertaining movie. The characters are actually deep and make an impression on the viewer. This story is not Marlon's, but rather Pacino's, as we see his character grapple with his decision to join his family's criminal empire after his father is gunned down. We see him, based on his not-so-reluctant decision to murder the man responsible for shooting his father, Solozzo, slowly and credibly evolve from war hero who is not a member of the rackets, to being the ruthless head of the criminal empire. Copolla and Pacino keep us engaged in the story the whole time, with very few abrupt halts in the in the flow of the story.
In short, this is the little film that, in spite of the huge problems it faced, payed off big in terms of box office receipts and critical acclaim. No movie buff should miss this masterpiece; average joes will love it too. Highly recommended.