The Godfather, a First-Timers Review
By: Julian G.
Tags: The Godfather, Criticism, Movies, Thoughts, Review

In 1969, Mario Puzo released his most famous work titled The Godfather, which focused on the fictional Italian crime family of the Corleone’s and their struggle to withhold their power amidst a gang-war and shifting times. Merely three years after the release of the book, a film adaptation under the same name was released and was met with overwhelmingly positive reception from critics and viewers alike all over the world. Everyone and their godfather has seen this movie by now, that is, except for me.

via Paramount Pictures

In the world of film The Godfather is like what Da Vinci is to art or what Mozart is to music. You always hear about how amazing it is, how it is one of the best pictures that has ever been made, and you never, ever hear anything bad about it, even from the harshest critics of them all or that one pretentious friend of yours from high-school that avoided anything that the mainstream had an interest in like theplague. For me, that kind of reputation built up huge expectations, expectations that I thought the movie would never be able to satisfy even if I gave it a chance or even three. It terrified me.

So just like that, for about two years or so of my constantly growing fascination with film as an art form and my descent into a full-blown movie dork, I’ve been brushing it aside for no real reason other than the fear that the movie would simply not deliver on my impossible expectations. That is, until Christmas of this year, when I picked up the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, the same book that the film Goodfellas is based on. It got me really interested in the history of the Mafia, The Five Families, et cetera. Because of the fact that I’ve already seen Goodfellas so many times and other Scorsese works were simply not what I was looking for at that moment, I decided to finally give The Godfather a chance. I put all my expectations aside, put it on, and just let it play. Safe to say, in about ten minutes I was totally hooked.

The first thing that I noticed right out the gate was that this wouldn’t be the typical mob movie that I’m so used to. Instead of a fast-paced, strong and cheeky opening where the main character does a voiceover as we’re presented with a montage showing how he got into the whole mob business as a teen, we are thrown into a wedding for about the first 20 minutes of the film that has practically no action in it, only the family discussing life and business, broken up by three short yet deeply significant scenes in Don Corleone’s office that set up the atmosphere for the rest of the movie.

via Paramount Pictures

That’s when you’re hit with the realization that this movie won’t focus on big shootouts or whatever else you might find in a typical gangster film, even though it is also a really big part of the movie. It will focus on the family, both in the literal sense as in on the family of the Corleone’s as well as this grand idea of family and what it really means to be in it. You’re presented with all of its main members and slowly, you’re exposed to everything that’s brewing under the sheets and all of the tangled mess that the family is involved in.

Without going much into the spoiler territory for those five of you who haven’t seen the film just like me just yesterday, I’ll say that the story in this film genuinely does live up to it’s reputation, and even further. The story doesn’t really follow any rules or a typical structure you’d see in any other movie, it takes you wherever it wants to take you and (for the most part) you have no clear idea of where it’s taking you, only a slight hint or a feeling in the back of your head. There are a lot of plotlines throughout the movie that feel huge in the moment but are just as quickly brushed off later, not because they are useless, but because they hold no significance past their stay. Coppola has already shown you what he needed to show. You don’t need to see how everything else reacts to it, and that’s another part of this movie that’s so great, it never really wastes your time. Sure, sometimes it can have some slow moments, but they never feel wasted since everything in here has a purpose. By the end of the film you really get the impression that you lived through what these characters lived through, as if you were there right with them.

Even when you look past the terrific storyline you can’t really find a single flaw in this film. Brando and Pacino play the main roles beautifully, and so does everyone else in the film. Past their first appearances the enitre idea of them acting flies right out of your head, Brando becomes Vito and Pacino becomes Michael, and that’s the way it stays for the entirety of the film. There isn’t a moment that takes you out of it, because their acting is really just that good.

via Paramount Pictures

Everything else, whether it be the beautiful and iconic score by Nino Rota, who scored many, many works by Federico Fellini or the fantastic cinematography done by Gordon Willis, it’s all just perfect and right how it needs to be.

Before I pressed the damned play button, I was really scared of it just not living up to what I imagined it, but after my first viewing I honestly can’t wait to watch it once more after I wrap up the whole series. As of now, the movie sits comfortably among the many Kurosawa and Scorsese works that I have in my top 10. It’s a beautiful work of art, and if I learned anything from this, it’s reputation doesn’t even live up to how good it actually is. So, if by any chance you still haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and just throw it on and just wait until you fall in love with it.