Cult Movie Movie Groups The Godfather trilogy A cast reunion of another 1972 offering, “The Thing With Two Heads,” has not yet been arranged.īRIAN CROSBY is a teacher in the Glendale Unified School District and the author of “Smart Kids, Bad Schools” and “The $100,00 Teacher.” He can be reached at Pictures, Alfran Productions Genre Drama | Mafia. Of course, just as with books, not all movies provide revelations upon repeated viewings.
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Home viewing, be it on a 60-inch television or a cell phone, drains the cinematic experience of its life.
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He did win the Oscar for the sequel, sharing it with Coppola’s father, Carmine.įinally, this absorbing three-hour epic did not seem 180 minutes long, another reminder how riveting it is to watch a film on a big screen in a darkened theater. It would be hard to make a film like this today without a plethora of obscenities.Īnother integral aspect to “The Godfather” is the iconic music by Nino Rota, whose Academy Award nomination for Best Score was ruled ineligible when it was revealed that the love theme music, while his, was actually composed for the 1958 Italian movie “Fortunella.” The audience shares what is going on in his mind, that his next move is going to the bathroom to retrieve the hidden gun.Īlso enlightening was that the film did not have one F-word or S-word. When Michael Corleone guns down the police captain and a mobster in an Italian restaurant, it is the acting of Pacino, the close-ups of his eyes, that holds the emotion in that scene, not the killings themselves. But the violent acts are depicted realistically, leaving the viewer with the impression that “The Godfather” is an ultra-violent film. The violence often erupts when you least expect it, and it is over quite quickly. It is the way the scenes are edited that creates the impact on the audience. Of its three-hour length, only minutes of it contain violent moments. One, the film’s notoriety over its violence has much to do with the way Coppola handled those scenes. Two things surprised me in seeing it again. Some critics even think the sequel superior to the first one.Īll the still-living principal actors of director Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece - Al Pacino (age 77), James Caan (77), Robert Duvall (86), Diane Keaton (71), Talia Shire (71) - and director Francis Ford Coppola (78) - were on hand in New York recently at the Tribeca Film Festival, organized by Robert DeNiro (73), who portrays the younger Don Corleone (the Marlon Brando character) in the sequel. The film and its 1974 sequel “The Godfather Part II” were nominated for 22 Academy Awards, winning nine including Best Picture for each. So, if one wanted to see “The Godfather,” a person would have to travel into Hollywood or Westwood and stand in line for hours if the film was popular. When a first-run film eventually screened in the San Fernando Valley, it was weeks, sometimes months later. Each city had its own single-screen movie theaters: Glendale had the Alex and the Glendale Burbank had the California and the Magnolia.Īnd movies opened in select theaters, not in every city. However, I have strong memories of my older brother taking my father to see it because it was the last film my dad ever saw in a movie theater.Īt the time, my parents rarely went to see new movies, so it was exciting that my dad was seeing such an anticipated film based on Mario Puzo’s huge bestseller at the time.īack then, multiplexes did not exist. In 1972, I was too young to see the film when it premiered, so it was a few years later when I saw it at a revival house. To commemorate the 45 th anniversary of its release, “The Godfather” played in theaters last week and I went to see it again. Just like a good book, a good movie deserves repeated examinations.