The Godfather (1972): The Movie Paramount Almost Fired Its Director Over

It begins in darkness. Before we see a single gangster, before the famous music, we hear a man's voice in a black screen: "I believe in America." Slowly the picture opens on the face of an undertaker telling his sad story to someone we can't see yet. Ebert pointed out how significant it is that the very first shot is inside a dark, shuttered room. Outside, in bright sunshine, a wedding is going on. Inside, a man is asking for justice that the police won't give him.

That split between the sunlit family party and the dark office where the real business happens is The Godfather in miniature. Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's bestseller follows the Corleone crime family in New York just after World War II: the aging Don Vito (Marlon Brando); his hotheaded eldest son Sonny (James Caan); his gentle, weak son Fredo (John Cazale); his adopted son and lawyer Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall); and Michael (Al Pacino), the war-hero youngest son who wants nothing to do with any of it. Until he does.

Why It's a Masterpiece

Film critic Michael Sragow, writing for the Library of Congress, argued that the film is full of "correct choices, painstakingly thought out and passionately carried through." Its breakthrough, he said, was making gangsters people who make choices, not just thugs driven by greed. The Corleones are playing a game of power, and the movie lets you feel how sordidly exciting that game is.

Ebert put his finger on the trick. The story is told entirely from inside the family. In nearly three hours, he observed, we see almost no ordinary civilian victims of organized crime. The only cop with a real speaking part is corrupt. By keeping us inside that closed world, Coppola gets us to root for people who are, in plain terms, murderers. Then he makes us watch what that costs the young man at the center of it.

That's the shape of the film: Michael's transformation. Sragow lists the milestones. Michael stands guard outside his father's hospital and realizes his hands aren't shaking. He calmly explains that a killing he is planning is "not personal… it's strictly business." Then, when his girlfriend Kay (Diane Keaton) tells him senators and presidents don't have men killed, he answers, "Who's being naïve, Kay?" In 1972, Sragow notes, that line marked a breakthrough in political awareness for a mainstream movie.

The film was the highest-grossing release of 1972 and for a time the highest-grossing film ever made. It won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay, joined the National Film Registry in 1990, and is ranked No. 2 on the AFI's 2007 list of the greatest American movies.

Behind the Scenes

Almost every choice that made the film great was a fight. Paramount had bought the rights to Puzo's novel for $80,000 before it became a phenomenon. Studio chief Robert Evans wanted an Italian-American director so the film would feel authentic. That's how the young Coppola got the job, though he spent much of production believing he could be fired at any time. He knew Evans had asked Elia Kazan about taking over.

The studio didn't want Brando either. His recent films had performed poorly and he had a reputation for a short temper. Puzo had written to Brando saying he was the only actor who could play the role. Paramount demanded a screen test, so Coppola told Brando he was coming over to test some equipment and filmed him at home. Brando stuffed cotton balls in his cheeks, darkened his hair with shoe polish, and rolled his collar. Executives watching the tapes were won over.

They resisted Pacino even harder. They wanted a star like Warren Beatty or Robert Redford, and they thought Pacino was too short. Coppola wanted an unknown who looked Italian-American and whom he could picture walking through the Sicilian countryside. According to Vanity Fair's history of the production, Coppola's job wasn't really secure until executives saw the scene where Michael shoots Sollozzo and the crooked police captain McCluskey in a restaurant.

Then there was the look. Cinematographer Gordon Willis agreed with Coppola to avoid modern tricks such as zoom lenses and helicopter shots and to compose scenes like paintings. He also lit them in deep shadow, underexposing the film for a warm, yellow tone. In an era when movies were brightly lit, the darkness at first horrified studio executives. "I just kept doing what I felt was visually appropriate for the movie," Willis told Vanity Fair.

Hidden Details You Might Have Missed

The family is real family. Coppola's sister, Talia Shire, plays Connie Corleone. His infant daughter Sofia is the baby being baptized in the climactic christening scene. His father, Carmine, appears as a piano player, and his wife, mother, and two sons are extras.

Watch Tessio at the wedding. Ebert loved this detail. The first time we see Abe Vigoda's Tessio, he is dancing with a little girl whose satin shoes are balanced on his feet. After that he is a looming, shadowy presence. Only at the end is he brightly lit again, so he looks vulnerable as he begs for his life.

Pay attention to the light in Sicily. Willis deliberately shot the Sicilian sequences softer and more romantic than the New York scenes, which is why Michael's exile feels like a dream before it turns into a nightmare.

The opening scene's colors. Sragow points out that the wedding sequence alternates between sepia interiors and golden exteriors, two sides of the Corleones' life.

Luca Brasi was a late addition. The enormous enforcer is played by Lenny Montana, a former wrestling champion. According to Vanity Fair, the part was still uncast well into filming when Montana turned up as a young mobster's bodyguard, and Coppola took to him immediately.

Sonny's tollbooth was built on an airfield. The shocking ambush was shot on a runway at Mitchel Field on Long Island, where the crew built three tollbooths. It took three days and cost more than $100,000.

A trivia question from Ebert: What is the name of Vito's wife? Most viewers can't say. Ebert's point was how little room the film leaves for its women, which makes the final shot even sharper.

The Director's Genius Moment

Spoiler warning: this section and the next discuss the ending.

The baptism. Michael stands in church as godfather to his sister's baby, renouncing Satan in a series of solemn answers. Coppola intercuts the ceremony with his men murdering the heads of the rival families all over New York. The organ keeps playing. The priest keeps asking questions. Michael keeps answering, calm as stone.

Ebert called it "tough, virtuoso filmmaking": the christening gives Michael a perfect alibi, and he becomes a godfather "in both senses at the same time." Sragow saw in it the film's view of Catholicism in the Corleone world, as both salvation and cover for evil. His summary is the best one-line description of the whole film: in this world there is no God, "only godfathers."

Another Way to See It

The last shot answers that trivia question about the women. Kay asks Michael if he had his brother-in-law killed. He looks her in the eye and lies. She is relieved. Then, from the next room, she watches his captains kiss his hand and call him Don Corleone. The door closes on her face.

Sragow argues that the film isn't really about the death of the American dream. It's about immigrant families for whom that dream was limited from the start, and about a country where, as he puts it, evil sleeps with the good. Ebert noticed what Nino Rota's sorrowful main theme seems to say: things would have turned out better if only everyone had listened to the Godfather. Or you can read it the other way. Michael listened to his father perfectly, and that's his tragedy.

Should You Watch It?

Absolutely. Clear an evening, though, because it runs nearly three hours. Watch it on the darkest screen you can find. Ebert warned that you can't fully appreciate Willis's photography on an artificially brightened TV image. The 2022 50th-anniversary restoration, whose trailer is above, is the version to look for. And if you get to the end and want more, The Godfather Part II is waiting.