The Godfather (1972)

Best Al Pacino Performance ever.
When i first experienced the godfather it was the book the i watched the movies for a month straight. Al Pacino is a a mean sob and marlen brando(srry if i spell the names wrong) is the ideal character of any mafia movie. This movie will keep you on the edge of your seat. There is never a dull moment in this movie. I suggest buyin the box set cuz the end will leave you hanging and thats all im sayin about that.

Movie is Fantastic but...
do not buy just the single DVD of Godfather 1. it comes with no extra features. if you're interested at all in any extra features, just suck it up and buy the three pack of the whole trilogy.

I'll make him an offer that he can't refuse
The GODFATHER DVD

The God father is based upon Mario Puzo's novel of a Sicilian Family moved to the United States circa 1920's. Don Corleone goes into the olive oil business, what else would you expect? He soon learns that it is easier to make money on the wrong side of the law and recruits a small gang of fellow Sicilians.

A host of factors make this one of the greatest American films. First, the directing is impeccable. Coppola allows the story to unfold simply, employing for the most part a static, immobile camera, allowing each scene to unfold like a series of tableaux. Second, the cinematography. Most of the craft of the cinematography went into the lighting, which generates some of the greatest use of light and shadows since the demise of black and white film noir. Coppola also intensifies each scene by using surprisingly little music in the film. Although the film is famous for its outstanding score by Nina Rota (later discovered to have been partially reused from an obscure film he scored in the late 1950s in Italy, which led to his nomination for an Oscar to be withdrawn, an award he certainly would have won), the fact is that the music is used selectively and comparatively rarely. Silence engulfs most of the scenes. And although there are many famous lines in the film, it is driven as much by the silence between the characters as by what they say. Also accounting for the brilliance of the film is the script, which is brilliant for its simplicity. Coppola distills the tale down to only the most essential elements, with nearly every shot moving the story along or imparting a crucial piece of information to the viewer, allowing the crucial tensions of the story to unfold early on. The enormous simplicity in the telling of the tale makes the more complex moments for instance, the crosscutting during the baptismal scene all that much more effective. And any listing of all the reasons for the brilliance of the film leaving out the extraordinary art design would be woefully incomplete. This was one of the first films made that made historical accuracy a high art form, and has exerted a profound influence on any historical film since then.
Of course, one of the main reasons this is a great, great film is the acting. Few films have ever featured so many memorable performances, and no film had featured so many performances by so many actors who were explicitly Italian. In fact, the film was a coming out for one aspect of Italian culture in the United States. Even in films that were fairly transparently about the Mafia and crime families in New York and Chicago, ethnicity was completely left out of the picture. After THE GODFATHER, everything changed. The film was Marlon Brando s triumphant return to star status after a series of failures, garnering a well-served Oscar that he turned down. The quality of the acting is shown by the fact that no less than three of the other actors Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, and James Caan received nominations for Best Supporting Actor (Joel Grey won for CABERET, in what might have been the greatest group of performances in the history of Oscar for the award).
There are a million stories that whirl around THE GODFATHER. My favorite, and one of the happier accidents in casting history, was that originally Robert De Niro was cast in a small part in THE GODFATHER. Al Pacino, on the other hand, was wanted for the part of Michael Corleone, but was already obligated for the film BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY. Francis Ford Coppola worked out a deal whereby De Niro would replace Pacino in the one picture. Unfortunately/fortunately this meant that De Niro was unable to be in THE GODFATHER, which meant that he was free to appear in THE GODFATHER II as the young Vito Corleone. THE GODFATHER was a film where just about everything seemed to work out best for all involved, and this illustrates this perfectly.

Highly recommended for fans of Al Pacino, Marlan Brando et. al.and fans of organized crime in America

Gunner January 2008