Respect

Rating: Null/10 (19 February 2003)

Spoilers herein.
Building a life in film is not so much a matter of discovering the worthwhile films, but choosing which of those have the stuff worth building with. I have a clear understanding of what Scorsese is about, which I attribute to the Latin convention for storytelling. This convention is totally invested in characters, not situation or place or God help us, ideas. Scorsese's camera is attached to people, never place. His curiosity is always about people. This is a form of visual gossip that I eschew.
So it is with Coppola. But his two projects (the Godfather and Apocalypse journeys) have another merit in how they work with what came before. Apocalypse is far more interesting in this respect. But `Godfather' is very clever in how it places itself. Gangster pictures began as a matter of a pretend world, and became ever more so as the genre matured. Mobsters lived in a world not unlike that of the Roadrunner, always at a distance from reality, often winking at the audience.
Coppola took his focus on the human to this genre. The film itself is no masterpiece without this placement, but is great with it. We inherit all the machinery and momentum of the genre to place behind the characters. Brando understood this, and alone is able to effect the transferral. Pacino would go on to sledgehammer his roles, but is appropriately subdued here.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.