The Godfather is my favourite film of all time

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2008)

A family, the Don, everyone knows him, everyone knows of his power, here is the end of his era and simply the beginning of another, we a fantastic look into a family, into a style of life. It begins and we see who Vito Corleone is, we see another man who shares some things with Vito, both are Italians now established in America, that other man believes in the country that gave him and his family a fine life certainly, here you see what the Corleone family can do. And is a wonderful contrast, is the life the Corleone family, Vito ordered for justice and next he is dancing with his daughter. Family and the business, so in the business part we meet Sollozzo, big nose Italian, great businessman, narcotics are the future and Sollozzo knows that to get to that bright future Vito is important. And all is simply because of don't keeping you very own thoughts with you, every one knew that narcotics means dollars, Vito's son and right hand Tom Hagen, Vito's eldest son Santino but the decision was only of Vito. Then this is a terrific story, logic and business, "nothing personal", here Michael Corleone will enter, not to the film certainly but to the business. As any other character Michael is really interesting, here we know that he is a war hero, he is not like his family but certainly he knows the world of his family, he was born in that world. Basically during the very first part of the film we see Michael as a normal man with his former girlfriend Kay, buying Christmas presents, going to the cinema, having dinner and stuff. Soon we will see him in Sicily but before we see his first contact with the business part, obviously he suffered like Santino or Tom when he saw on the newspaper that Vito Corleone was shoot and that was still unknown if he was dead or alive so basically is this what puts Michael closer to the business part. So this is the very beginning of a new era but we don't know that yet, after all Michael was going to have a meet with Sollozzo and his dirty police officer because he was a civilian, not related with the family business. Is a great scene, the very best of Pacino in this film so Sollozo and his dirty police officer are dead, a new "chapter" in The Godfather begins, another engaging part of the film, for me each second of The Godfather is wonderful. So we for the first time see Sicily, there Michael is just waiting, there he meets a beautiful girl, she becomes his wife, certainly there are news from New York, Santino was killed (an emblematic scene), the future of Michael is only one. The last time we see Vito as the Don we see him together with Tattaglia, Barzini, Cuneo and Stracci, after this Vito realizes about something and that will save Michael's life. He is still the Don for the men of the Corleone family but certainly if they trust in Vito and are loyal to Vito they must trust in Michael and be loyal to Michael who at the time was already father, Anthony the name of his son, together with Anthony Vito is laughing, enjoying a normal time with his grandson, the most unexpected death thinking in Don Vito Corleone after the life he had, he always had honor, love for his family, he died in a peaceful way, playing with his grandson, in his house, if that would have been an offer certainly would have an offer he can't refuse.
The cast is simply perfect, the voice of Brando, the strange charisma of James Caan as Santino, one of Pacino's best performances, simply each actor/actress is fantastic giving life to all those memorable characters. My very first experience with The Godfather was not a really long time ago, was in 2005 and I came to them together with some members of my family who like me had never seen by then any of the three films, I loved The Godfather and in 2006 I read the novel by Mario Puzo. I remember not having clear in my mind each detail of the film when I started reading the novel, by then I had seen only once The Godfather. I loved the novel and after reading it I went to another one by Puzo, The Last Don and I loved it also. So after this I remember having this sort of Mafia summer by watching first the miniseries based on The Last Don and later watching again The Godfather trilogy. This film has become the one I love the most, its long runtime feels like nothing, I watched it a lot of times back in 2006 once I had read the novel, fantastic.
I received for Christmas the Coppola Restoration four-disc set on Blu-ray, while I haven't seen yet Part II and III (and the new bonus material) on Blu-ray this part looks so beautiful, in short you remember how it looks the blood of Moe Greene (during that memorable baptism sequence)? Well on Blu-ray it finally looks like blood!
PD: my very first IMDb comment was precisely for The Godfather. While I'm not at all ashamed or anything like that about it I don't like it either so I decided to delete it and write another one. I was going to put it here just because it was my very first comment but thanks to the words limit I can't. I will put it on my message board profile.