A few thoughts on The Godfather

by samsfen

My first thought in writing about Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, which I first watched a few weeks ago, is that there’s very little still to be said. Of course that’s not true, and The Godfather‘s status in film history implies that there are many realms within its framework yet to be re-explored. I haven’t watched enough of Coppola’s films to do that well, but I do have a few thoughts about the movie.

The first concerns Al Pacino. I was struck over and over by the fresh quality of his performance, especially in a movie that birthed a number of cliches about the mob persona. Michael is altogether heroic and terrifying, clearly and immediately doomed to fall into the moral ambiguity of his family. In some ways the movie seems like a slope, where we and Kay (played effectively by a young Diane Keaton) stumble with Michael until—in the famous final scene—the door is closed on both of us. It’s more complicated than that, because there are other interesting characters and scenes, and the film’s title and cover would imply that The Godfather is nearly as much about Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) as it is his son.

The cast of The Godfather is important, and personally interesting to someone my age, who grew up watching James Caan and Robert Duvall and Al Pacino play old (and often gruff) characters shaped by broken or tough pasts, in movies like Secondhand Lions, Elf, Kicking and Screaming, and The Insider (the latter being the most recent I saw, and far after the first three mentioned). Here they play young, serious men who, although similar to some characters they played later in life, could never grow up to be Walter from Elf or Hub from Secondhand Lions. That’s because The Godfather takes place in a bubble that has its own set of objectives and moral codes, or lack thereof. Everyone (Michael, Don, Tom Hagan, Sonny, Fredo) plays by the rules.

What ensues is a clash between the seeming order of the family and Michael’s initial divergence. Is there something healthy in the tight-knit community of the Corleones? If yes, then Michael’s baptism into power isn’t all bad. If no, and this seems the more obvious answer, then identifying with his own flesh and blood—as he so intentionally avoids in that first scene with Kay—is Michael’s downfall.

That’s my family, Kay. That’s not me.