The Mystique of 'The Godfather"...

Rating: 10/10 (2 May 2012)

Now I have seen 'THE GODFATHER' and its sequels a number of times and can even recite the dialog of whole scenes word for word. I took my father to see it on his birthday back in the seventies, because I thought he would get a kick out of seeing someone who, like himself didn't speak much, but when he did, made it count. I think he fell asleep here and there during the film, but then, he was just a man holding down a full time job and taking care of his family.
I remember first reading the novel, which I rated as a cultural curiosity somewhere in quality between 'THE DAY OF THE JACKAL' and 'MANDINGO'. The film we enjoyed because of Brando's at that time offbeat performance and the strong ensemble cast. When I went to see 'NOTHING BUT A MAN' with my friend Donald Mack, besides him commenting to me, "-this ain't no movie, this is real-", I remember Ivan Dixon telling Gloria Foster in the movie that he was turning out to be just like his father. The manner in which Al Pacino portrays Michael Corleone you see this process of transformation rather than hear the character tell of it. Though in the original screenplay that I was fortunate to read recently, Michael does indeed tell his father, "-and now I'm just like you."
Francis Ford Coppola has made many interesting statements about this unlikely and serendipitous masterpiece he has wrought. Some of the reviewers have compared it to 'DEATH OF A SALESMAN' complete with a spaghetti dinner, and Coppola himself once compared Don Vito Corelone to King Lear, a man whose void will be hard to fill ere his Kingdom is to be kept from collapsing. Michael, as we come to discover, has the cold Machiavellian cunning, Santino has the muscular viciousness, Fredo the sweetness of a kindly sense of compassion, and Tom as the adopted son the calm deliberation for moderation, and yet not one of these individuals has all these attributes so harmoniously blended into their personality as the Don himself.
And who is this Don Vito Coreleone? A man alone with his own thoughts who well realizes he could have been more than he is given an uplifting childhood environment and better circumstances. A natural leader who is even something of a statesman to hear Mario Puzo tell it in his novel, who yet and still played by Brando is a walking shell of a man able to offer his family nothing beyond their material success other than an incremental spiritual decay. Should you doubt this, review the endings of 'THE GODFATHER-II' and 'THE GODFATHER-III again.
Now that I look back on it, I don't believe 'THE GODFATHER' would have become the success it is today were someone else to have acted Brando's role. There is an intelligence and a liveliness to all the portrayals from Diane Keaton to Robert Duvall to James Caan and others, but there is something haunting and understated about Brando's performance in this film that speaks to the mystery of unfulfilled human potential. Of all the performances that I revisit in this movie from time to time his is the only one that seems to have grown in stature over the years. Sure, I understand better now what a tight spot Michael was in with the death of Santino, and now sitting at his father's funeral, watching Barzini shake hands with his colleagues as though he were the heir apparent, he realizes that he is just the next item to be checked off on the list in a power struggle he inherited more than signed up to fight. That is, unless like Telemachos, he can carry out the plan he and his father designed before Don Vito went off to his grave.
I know my girlfriend at the time felt cheated and disappointed with Brando's performance. She wanted more of Stanley Kowalski's animal vitality or the roaring declaiming of Brando as Mark Anthony in 'JULIUS CAESAR'! But I understood, even though I was not at first viscerally affected by it so much, what Brando was doing.
The acting that Brando does in 'THE GODFATHER' is the acting of personal presence altitude. The power of his portrayal comes not from what he says or does, but from what he doesn't say or does. It is an understated performance that evokes and causes you to add your own connotations to what he is doing. Here is a self made man who somehow worked himself through material success from something to nothing and is puzzling to himself how he got there, but he is not going to let you see him doing it.
I know and have read how Pacino and many others thought he should have been nominated for Best Actor honors along with Marlon Brando and whether he should have or not is more than I know. All I do know is that there were times when the action got hot and furious, and that I was tensely waiting for Don Vito Corelone to appear again, not say or do anything particularly, just appear, and somehow by just appearing stabilize the narrative and bring some kind of sense and order to his surroundings. There are people like that, you know. I remember when I would watch 'Young Abe Lincoln' there was a point in the story where Lincoln played by Henry Fonda would not be physically in the scene, and yet you could feel his shadow over the entire proceedings.
Brando's Don Vito Corelone is the moral inversion of all of this. When he lays his plans with his son Michael, you glimpse the roles that Brando could have played; Socrates, Ernest Hemingway, and even Black Elk. The roles of idealism that James Coburn berated him for not playing. And who can say there wasn't time, there just wasn't time?