Even this movie's goofs were great

Rating: 10/10 (17 September 2006)

We all know what a wonderful movie this is. I saw it on original release in the Netherlands on a weekday afternoon with perhaps 5 people in the theater...when Michael killed the cop and the gangster and walked out right before the intermission, you could hear everyone in the theater gasping from the relief of pent-up breath. The Godfather has one of the great goofs ever shown. In the scene where Sonny beats up Carlo on the street in front of Carlo's bookmaking operation, there's a shot of Sonny swinging a roundhouse right to the left of Carlo's face; you hear the impact on Carlo's face (nice Foley work), and Carlo's head is jerked to his right from that impact. It is all quite persuasive except for one thing: the camera was positioned directly to the side of the fight on a line at zero degrees of angle, and so you can clearly see Sonny's hand miss Carlo's face by at least 4 or 5 inches. A phantom punch! I get a kick out of this every time I watch the film.