Crime and inheritance

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Mary Reichard.

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Coming next: The WORLD History Book.

More than 50 years after its release, March 24, 1972, The Godfather remains one of the most influential films ever made. Francis Ford Coppola’s movie reshaped Hollywood and redefined the gangster genre.

WORLD’s Max Belz now on the film’s place in American culture.

MUSIC: [Singing C'è la luna mezzo mare]

MAX BELZ: The Godfather opened to success at the box office, but it also was a critical favorite earning three Academy Awards, including Best Picture of 1972. 

Pauline Kael, the legendary critic for The New Yorker Magazine, said, “If ever there was a great example of how the best popular movies come out of a merger of commerce and art, “The Godfather” is it.”

BONASERA: I believe in America. Americans made my fortune and I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom, but I taught her never to dishonor her family.

The Godfather is a story about succession. Coppola said that it’s a movie about a man who must give his kingdom to one of his three sons: the oldest--quick-tempered Sonny; the middle son Fredo, who is weak and double-minded; or the youngest, Michael. 

Michael is cool-headed, but is also the most adjusted to America and the least likely to embrace the life of a crime boss. He served in the military during World War II. He’s a patriot. He doesn’t need the dirty business of organized crime to make his way in the world. But the lot falls to him.

MICHAEL: That’s my family Kay, it's not me.

It’s a movie that almost didn’t get made because of pressure on the inside and outside.

Paramount executive Bob Evans and Coppola clashed over casting and budget because the movie’s 1940s setting made its sets and costumes more expensive. Paramount also faced opposition from mobster Joseph Colombo who thought the movie might give Italians a bad name. 

Coppola, here, in a 1972 commentary:

COPPOLA: So I was in very, very deep trouble, and I’m not even sure how I survived, to be honest.

Through sheer determination, the movie did come together with a budget of roughly $6 million. 

Its cast shone with the following stars: Diane Keaton, Al Pacino, James Caan, and Robert Duvall. Cinematographer Gordon Willis shot The Godfather with warmth and richness, a mark the photographer left on other movies of the 1970s like Annie Hall and All the President’s Men.

COPPOLA: I learned a lot from Gordon. Gordon’s concept of structure was you know, very disciplined, and I learned that from him. I’ll always be grateful.

And what to say of Nino Rota’s lush score? The melodies are as unforgettable as the movie’s images. His compositions bind the epic together.

MUSIC: [Love theme from The Godfather, by Nino Rota]

The Godfather’s premise is similar to Shakespeare’s King Lear, and is based on a pop novel by Mario Puzo who co-wrote the screenplay with Coppola. It also introduced great lines into our speech like: like “taking it to the mattresses” … “sleep with the fishes,”… “making someone an offer he can’t refuse,”…

CLIP: Leave the gun, take the cannoli.

Even though gangster movies had been around awhile, this was a detailed window into Italian-American life, some of which seems cliche now, like when Clemenza is making spaghetti sauce.

CLIP: Hey come over here, kid. Learn ya something. You never know, you may have to cook for 20 guys some day. You see, you start out with a little bit of oil. Then you fry some garlic...

Francis Ford Coppola had made a name for himself as the co-writer of Patton, for which he won an Academy Award in 1970. He also was close friends with Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas, the so-called "movie brats."

This generation of younger directors brought change to the movies in the 60s. The old producers were stepping away and the popularity of television made the movie business more fragile. By 1972, the shine of the golden age of Hollywood had worn off, and the stories of New Hollywood, as it was called, took on grittier subject matter. Violence became more realistic and an aimlessness marked American movies, something learned from the French movies of the 50s and 60s.

But The Godfather had a tie to old Hollywood because Marlon Brando gave an iconic performance as the don of the family. This shift in the movie business is reflected in one of the movie’s most powerful themes, but also was appropriate at the time it came out. 

What was the America that we knew in 1972? And how was it about to change? How do you embrace a new way while also standing fast in time-tested tradition? Interestingly, this was a main theme in 1971’s Fiddler on the Roof too.

CLIP: You spend time with your family? / Sure I do. / Good, because a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.

The old don has a code and a love for family. But the new generation embodied in Michael is slicked back, corporate, colder, and more violent. He is unforgiving and loveless. But it’s the changing world that is a timeless theme. The Leopard, from 1963, inspired this theme in The Godfather. It’s a movie about a patriarch in 1860s Sicily watching a middle class revolution replace his old aristocratic world.

Don Corleone echoes some of the old world traditions.

CLIP: I spent my life trying not to be careless. The women and the children can be careless, but not men.

The legacy of The Godfather expanded the form of movies. It was a sprawling story with many characters, but also deep character development. It has the feel of a novel with generations and marriages and deaths and side characters and subplots. 

Perhaps that’s why it’s still a part of our culture 54 years later.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Max Belz.

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