Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola from the book by Mario Puzo, few films can hold their own on the shelf with The Godfather. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Actor (refused by Marlon Brando), and Best Screenplay (adaptation), few films are more celebrated. The gangster genre is one of the oldest genres in film history. However, The Godfather gave new vigor to the genre, thanks in large part to the beautiful photography and cinematography of Gordon Willis. While all references to “the Mafia” have been changed to “the family” in the film, the story still revolves around one of the five crime families in 1940s New York lead by Godfather Don Corleone. An insightful sociological study of power, corruption, crime, and violence in America, the film’s impact is heightened due to the superb music, lighting and editing. The story covers the activities of the close-knit Italian family over a ten year period.
Nearly two dozen murders occur during the course of the film whose editing brilliantly intertwines family scenes of marriage, cooking, shopping, and baptism with horrific scenes of violence and death. Firmly entrenched in the gangster/crime film genre, The Godfather contains many elements of other gangster films, particularly the glorification of the rise and fall of a gang or family of criminals. Rivalry with other gangs is a traditional element of this genre and this conflict keeps the action of the film propelled forward with little chance for peace. The typical gangster film has an inverted Horatio Alger tale at its heart, in other words an inverted world of wealth and success made possible through crime, corruption, power and violence. Gangsters are typically materialistic, street smart, immoral, egomaniacal and self-destructive and we see this in characters like Sonny, whose self-destructive passions result in his slaughter by a rival gang.
Large crowded cities, dark nightclubs an...