The Godfather

No argument from me. I never tire of it.

The casting really was perfect, however Robert De Niro as Sonny would have been also interesting.

It's no Valley of the Dolls.

You could make a case for the sequel being even greater.

(The one annoying imperfection in both is Diane Keaton's inauthentic hair styles (they're too 1970s).

Part II is great, but just by definition it builds on the perfection of Part I. It does transition expertly from the 1940s into the 50s. It has a midcentury modern look and feel - Lake Tahoe, Miami, Vegas.

And the flashbacks are terrific: again, perfect casting: Bruno Kirby as young Clemenza, the young Tessio a dead ringer for Abe Vigoda (!). And DeNiro perfect as the young Don Corleone. He speaks so little, but is so expressive and perfect in that role. When baby Fredo gets pneumonia and he is standing outside the room worrying....

Sheer perfection.

Just watched "The Godfather" and it sucks

The Godfather is one the most overrated movie of all time and it sucks

It's just not as good as my Baywatch!

I'm waiting for the reboot with Zac Efron as Michael and Tom Daley as Fredo. And, rumor has it that Henry Cavil is going to beef up and play Vito Corleone.

I adore the first part but never got the love for the sequel. It lacked all the charm the first one had. Not having Marlon Brando in it probably had something to do with it. And Hyman Roth is perhaps the most annoying movie character of all times.

I saw The Godfather and while it's fine I certainly wouldn't call it the greatest American film ever made. Glorifying violence and organized crime. Good movie but seedy storyline.

R12 misses the point.

I think the sequel is great, but I also have never gotten as into it. The first one is about Michael's seduction into power. The second is about his decline as a human being, set against his father's rise against an environment of that same sort of inhumanity. I think the first is captivating; the second is hard to watch. Michael becomes so depraved.

Of course, as long said, matters of taste are not debatable. In this case, there may be an exception. I can't accept an opinion that it is not, at least, a very good movie.

[quote]Hyman Roth is perhaps the most annoying movie character of all times.

I don't know about the character itself, but Lee Stassberg "Master Thespian"-ing all over the place certainly grated.

The most recent remaster, where everything is frickin' gold, is a pain in the ass.

I'm not fond of Part II either. I realize it's excellent filmmaking, but as R13 said, it's just not enjoyable to watch. The downward spiral of Michael, the lack of Brando, and on a purely shallow level, the 1940s era sets of the first film are gorgeous and sumptuous but the sequel is drowning in 1970's ugliness and vulgarity. (Which might be appropriate, but I don't want to stare at it for 3 hours.)

The casting of Troy Donahue as "Merle" (his real name) was brilliant, especially since he looks a little like Connie's doomed first husband, Carlo Rizzi.

R16 prefers Guys and Dolls as a representative of the era.

I wonder how much Coppola makes each year from the Godfather movies.

Probably not as much as you would think.

Thank god they omitted the 'Lucy Mancini has such a loose vagina only Sonny's enormous cock can fit it'-storyline from the book.

I once asked my father if he liked the movie Goodfellas.

He said he turned it off halfway through because it enraged him to see "Mediterraneans" getting away with crimes on American soil.

He was somewhat mollified once I told him the ending.

My favorite line is when Abe Vigoda says to Robert Duvall, "Tom...can you get me off the hook for old times' sake?" and Duvall says with this little smile, "Can't do it, Sally." He is really terrific in both these films - very understated but powerful performances.

I can never decide if The Godfather, Part II, Once Upon a Time in America or Goodfellas is my favourite gangster film.

I love all of them.

Pacino's performance in The God Father marked his final superb acting performance. It was subsequent to this performance he began to confuse yelling with acting.

Part II is so EPIC, and has so many plot lines and crowd scenes. The Ellis Island scenes, the Italian street festival where Vito kills Don Fanucci, the giant party scene at the beginning, all the crowd scenes in Cuba, the Senate hearings. Gordon Willis was a genius.

Both these films would probably cost a bazillion dollars to make today..the kind of money that goes toward the idiotic CGI action hero crapola we see over and over...

Pacino was so handsome and sympathetic in the first Godfather.

Late in Part II, Tom Hagen asks Michael, "Do you just want to wipe everybody out?" and he answers, "No, just my enemies." That is the one teeny criticism I have with Part II. Michael is SO cold, do dead eyed. I kept wishing he could show just the tiniest flicker of compassion at least once. Especially the Fredo storyline. I wish he had just shown a tiny flicker of love for his brother at his mother's funeral.

I think they're trying to say that Michael basically is disassociated from reality as he becomes a cold blooded killer. He's much more harsh than his father, which is interesting, because as a young man, Michael was the conscience of the family. The others weren't bothered by it as he was.

Sonny was always consistent in his feelings. Emotionally he was more healthy than Michael because he got it all out, even though he was an asshole. Michael kept it all in and it poisoned him from the inside out.

What's really interesting is how emotionally stable the elder Corleones were. The wife never worried about her husband's job, she just cooked and took care of the kids and didn't worry about it. A perfect Mafia wife. The Gidfather was a family man. They stayed grounded with their family. No going off the deep end because he had a family to stay sane for.

There's a scene were the Godfather asks Michael if he's happy with his family. Michael thinks it's just a polite inquiry, but the impression is that the father knows Michael needs a good family life to keep him sane. Michael made a terrible mistake marrying Kay because she was too Americanized and smart for that lifestyle. That dumbass Italian girl he married would have been a far better wife, she was like a dumb animal. She didn't care what he did as long as she got to live in luxury, by her very simple standards.

It's a great film but not one of my favorites. It's a funny thing about lists and what are considered masterpieces. The imdb top movies of all time has this high. I think The Dark Knight is third and fight club is high too. I think The Dark Night is way overrated if you're not a comic nerd.

I love them both, OP. Part 1 & 2. Like others have mentioned, I never tire from watching them. Undoubtedly, Part 1 is one of the top 5 films in cinema history.

I'm also a HUGE fan of Apocalypse Now. I just loved it. Duval's small but unforgettable performance, and the true reward is Brando. He was absolutely perfect. Blew my fucking mind the first time I watched it as an adult. I gathered a whole new appreciation for actors after watching AN, because we all know how absolutely brutal it was to film it. It truly was a work of cinematic lunacy, and love. And of course, it was a once in a lifetime role for Sheen, filming after the heart attack in such an unforgiving environment.

After these films, I also love The Deer Hunter. Sophie's choice makes it on my list, as well.

Hollywood makes pure diarrhea now. The art of film making is pretty much dead.

With regard to the differences between Michael and his father, one of the things that struck me yesterday was that Michael became far more vindictive than his father. In Part I, after Sonny is killed, Don Corleone is the one who calls a truce, meets with all the heads of the Five Families, despite the fact that he himself was shot in the street (which set off the war), and that one of them (Barzini, as it turns out) was responsible for his son's savage murder. And their issue at the time was that Don Corleone refused to get involved in the dirty business of narcotics, and was unwilling to "share" the judges and politicians he "carries around in his pocket." As Solozzo the Turk explains early on, there was millions to be made in narcotics in post WWII America, and the Mob was ready to supply it and cash in. After Sonny's death, Don Corleone is forced to negotiate with them, and they make the (ludicrous) decision to keep the drugs "away from the schools" and as one says, "give it to the coloreds - they're animals anyway." He even makes a big display of hugging Philip Tattaglia to seal the peace. The irony, of course, is that the Mob was largely responsible for the introduction of narcotics into the US, a problem which has only worsened to this day.

At the end of Part I, however, Michael "settles all the family business" in a single day, and wipes out every single one of his father's enemies, including his brother in law, making his power absolute. His goal is to "make the Corleone family completely legitimate in five years", moving their base to Nevada to take advantage of the rise of legal gambling out there, the hotels, etc. But he discovers in short order that he will never be accepted into "legitimate" society - he is treated with utter contempt by the Senator (who turns out to be a complete sleaze himself). Michael turns to Cuba and one of the last old time mobsters, Hyman Roth, who assures him that the hotels in Cuba are "swankier" and more expensive than anything in Vegas, and that the puppet government will look the other way as they amass their millions. But of course the Castro rebellion puts an end to all that. Michael does the only thing he knows how to do: wipe out every single enemy he has, even if that includes his wife, his brother, and his father's longtime lieutenant Tessio. And in so doing, he is left completely alone and isolated, just like the memory he conjures up at the end of Part II, where his brothers, Tom Hagen, Connie and Carlo, all rush to meet his father for his surprise birthday party, while he remains at the table by himself.

I believe we are so lucky to have these two beautifully crafted and detailed films. I always notice some new detail or see something in different light every time I see them. I think Coppola spent most of his genius of these two films, and everything afterward was downhill, starting with Apocalypse Now. But these two films to me are perfect jewels in terms of film making, acting and story telling, as well as being wholly American.

The scenes in part 2 with De Niro are some of my favorite moments in all of cinema. And watching part 1 yesterday I noticed you can see the young De Niro in the old Don Corleone as he sits in his garden waiting for death.

Then and now photos of NY filming locations at the link.

Interesting thread. I kinda wish I loved The Godfather I or II as much as the OP and some other posters. Of course it's a great film, but I've never connected with it as deeply as some other great films from the 1970s (truly the golden age of American cinema in my opinion): Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, The Conversation, Klute, The Parallax View, All the President's Men, The Last Detail, The Last Picture Show, Badlands or Nashville, to name just a very few. The American studio films of this era feel so dark, gritty and excitingly "real". A definite high point for auteur filmmaking in Hollywood, with such a powerful sense of cinema reflecting cultural malaise. And to think, most of these highly cynical films won or were nominated for the Best Picture and/or Director Oscar!

I also agree that cinema today is absolutely shit in comparison with the 70s.

Everyone's talking about the look of the films, so remember, Godfather II was the last movie filmed in Technicolor.

Actually, the last American movie before the equipment was sold off to China where they made some stunning films with it.

R35, thank you for listing films that I'd not mentioned. I also want to add The Graduate to a list of great films. The 70s had some of the best films ever made.

And let's not forget Network. I remember when I first viewed it, I thought to myself that the performance by the woman who had played Louise, was Oscar worthy, even though it was quite short. A few years later, I was looking for information on the film on IMDB, and much to my surprise, Beatrice Straight had won Best Supporting Actress, for Network!

Another thing that I'd like to point out is that Hollywood doesn't appear to have anymore actors who are still relatively young, and can deliver Oscar worthy performances time after time, other than for Daniel Day Lewis, and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. Losing Hoffman is a very big deal, because let's face it, that kind of talent is a true rarity nowadays.

"Thank god they omitted the 'Lucy Mancini has such a loose vagina only Sonny's enormous cock can fit it'-storyline from the book."

Mario Puzo for some reason created a whole chapter detailing what happened to Lucy Mancini after Sonny's death. Here's the story, for anyone interested. Lucy is a hot to trot young girl; in college she has two affairs but neither last more than a week. During a quarrel one of her lovers mumbles something about her being "too big down there" and she refuses to go out on any more dates. She hears stories about Sonny's huge cock (his wife likes to joke about her husband's big dick) and flirts with him; he ends up fucking her in a room while Connie's wedding party is still going on, and she has her first orgasm. After that, she becomes his mistress and he sees her regularly. Their relationship is nothing but sex; all they do when he comes over is rut like maniacs. After Sonny is killed she tries to commit suicide but recovers. The Corleone family takes pity on her and they send her out to Las Vegas to work in the hotel Fredo is supposedly in charge of. Sonny supposedly made "provisions" for her and she has a share in the profits of the hotel; all this seems rather implausibly generous, considering that she was no more than a cum bucket for Sonny, and he was married with children. She goes to see the hotel's doctor Jules Segal for a minor ailment; he's tall, blonde, thin and handsome. He was a promising young surgeon but was blackballed for doing abortions and through some connections her got the job at the hotel, where he mostly gives the showgirls abortions and treats them for VD. He also comes across as an asshole. Of course, he immediately is attracted to Lucy and asks her out but she demurs because he believes Sonny is the only man would be able to "make her body achieve the act of love" and she doesn't want him to know her secret. He's persistent and finally seduces her and finds out why she wouldn't have sex with him: she has a weakening of the pelvic floor, in other words, a loose vagina. He refers her to a doctor friend of his who will tighten up her pussy and since the doctor owes him a favor she won't even have to pay for it. After the operation he proposes to her and proceeds to try out her newly improved vagina. The have sex, successfully it seems, and then start having sex again. That's what people do in "The Godfather"; they don't have sex once they have sex over and over until both parties are too exhausted to continue. Anyway, Lucy and Jules presumably live happily ever after, fucking their brains out, until in one of the Godfather sequels Michael has Jules whacked because he thinks he may have assisted Kay in getting an abortion.

In my case I grew up a mob kid. Didn't want for much, best schools etc. One side of the family was mob, the other side police. That made for interesting times.

Did an award winning writer and director write and film your family's story, R40?

Part II is especially relevant in the Trump Era. The Kushners and Trumps are Corleone wannabes.

R35: all true, and and it all came to an end with an infantile, escapist POS called "Star Wars." And the American moviegoing public's IQ dropped 20 points overnight.

R43, we could have both. Star Wars was epic for many reasons, and if people like Lucas want to make something like that, then why not?

It's just a shame that we lost the plot when it comes to cinema as an art form. What happened? It's as if the late 60's and the 70s provided some sort of "magic" that no longer exists.

Love The Godfather, but not so much Part II. The Michael Corleone character is such a drag.

Great film. And it was shot in Technicolor. The scenes in the restaurant (assassination) and hospital always get me.

They also left out Luca Brazi's backstory ( he forced a midwife to burn his newly born child in an oven), the Jack Woltz is a pedo and most of Johnny Fontaines storyline.

I think Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Minnelli's Meet Me in St Louis are just as perfect.

Yes they did, r47. For its time, I think the horse's head in the bed was more than enough.

OP needs to introduce a little doubt into her life and consider her peculiar focus on coloration.

GODFATHER (and I prefer it to GODFATHER II, even though that's truly one of the great American films, too) is indeed a masterwork. Brilliant. Funny, absurd, frightening, revelatory, beautifully embodied, with superb performances, a remarkable script, astonishing cinematography - superlative all the way.

However, the dull need to declare something the greatest is a sign of neediness or limited grasp.

CITIZEN KANE - too old, dear? THE SEARCHERS - oh, you think it's a cowboy story? NASHVILLE - country and the 70s leave you not perceiving it's about all of us? SINGIN' IN THE RAIN - oh, a musical can't possibly be the greatest? CHINATOWN - um, is it Dunaway?

Nope. Personal taste is one thing. Saying "without a doubt" is just a poser's mouth fart.

R39 The Lucy Mancini character is shown in The Godfather Part III as Vincent Mancini's ( Andy Garcia) mother.

Here are someone of the incredibly ghastly, sleazy events that happen in the novel:

Sonny fucking Lucy against a door at his sister's wedding. Sonny and Lucy's animalistic sex marathons.

The whole icky business of Lucy Mancini's loose vagina.

Jack Woltz awakening to find the head of his prize horse in bed with him.

Sitting in a waiting room waiting to see Jack Woltz, Tom Hagen sees the most beautiful girl child he's ever seen, only 12 years old but blonde, blue eyed and gorgeous. She's there was her dragon-like mother. Later Hagen sees the mother hissing commands in the child's ear and helping her into a limo. The child seems totally distraught. Hagen realizes that the child was brought to Woltz so that he could have sex with her. "And Johnny (Fontaine) wanted to live in this world? Good luck to him, and good luck to Woltz."

Carlo Rizzi's beatings of Connie; she's led to believe that she's the reason he beats her. Her father tells her "learn how to behave so he won't beat you anymore."

Luca Brasi commanding the midwife who delivered his baby to throw the infant in a furnace. Upon pain of death, she does so.

Luca Brasi disposing of two men. They're tied up; he started to methodically dismember one of them with an ax. The other gets so scared he swallows the bath towel he's gagged with and suffocates.

Johnny Fontaine is trying to help his buddy Nino get in show business. He sets him up with an older actress at a "private screening." When the movie starts she immediately goes down on him; "he had been expecting something outrageous. After all, he's heard the legends of Hollywood depravity. But he was not quite prepared for Deanna Dunn's voracious plummet on his sexual organ without a courteous and friendly world of preparation." He's excited that he's being sucked off by a big movie star but then he starts to feel insulted. After she's done he says in the most relaxed voice imaginable: "this looks like a pretty good movie." She stiffens and he thinks does she want some kind of compliment? Then he thinks "the hell with that. She'd treated him like a goddamn male whore." Later Johnny asks him if she invited back to her place and he says "I got too interested in the movie." Johnny says get serious: "a dame like that can do you a lot of good. And you used to boff anything. Man, sometimes I still get nightmares when I remember those ugly broads you used to bang." And Nino says "yeah, they were ugly, but they were WOMEN."

After Johnny Fontaine wins the Academy Award he and Nino go to the studio party afterwards. Nino stays sober but Johnny gets drunker and drunker and women keep pulling into bedrooms for "a little chat. The woman who wins the Best Actress award is "suffering the same fate but loving it more and handling it better. Nino turned her down, the only man at the party to do so. "Finally somebody had a great idea. The public mating of the two winners, everybody else at the party to be spectators in the stands." Nino, the only sober person there, grabbed the half-dressed Johnny Fontaine, slung him over his shoulder and fought his way out of the house and into their car. "As he drove Johnny home, Nino thought that if that was success, he didn't want it." '

Why didn't Luca want his baby? What about the mother?

All those paragraphs are horrific!

Terrific Vanity Fair article, looking back on how The Godfather came to be.

Michael kills his own brother and you feel sorry for him. Brilliant

I would love to read a book or see interviews about the story behind the scenes. I'm talking individual scenes. Were any lines improvised? When Michael was talking to Carlo and got him to admit he set up Santino he spoke very quietly. Never raised his voice. Who decided that he would play the scene that way. The way John Cazale and Al Pacino interacted in the Cuba scenes. When Diane Keaton and Pacino played the scene in the hotel room where she told him she was leaving him, that she had an abortion. That was powerful. The first time I saw it I thought he would kill her. So many choices were made and I want to know what the actors were thinking and how they came to play it that way. Or did they do several different takes, and do different interpretations and then Coppola chose the scenes and the takes he used. Personally I think The Godfather one & 2 are genius. They are probably among the top ten movies ever made, IMO. But whatever anyone thinks of them, I think the cast was amazing and I want to hear the stories behind the story.

OP here - thanks to everyone for their intelligent comments.

And just for the record, I love NASHVILLE and most of Altman's other films; and yes, I love CITIZEN KANE too, although over the years its luster has kind of waned on me; Loved THE GRADUATE, CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, THE DEER HUNTER, McCABE AND MRS. MILLER, SHAMPOO, BONNIE AND CLYDE, MIDNIGHT COWBOY and many other 70s classics. I have great admiration for GONE WITH THE WIND. I just feel that THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER PART II are head and shoulders above all of these examples.

WITHOUT. A. DOUBT!!!

So, it needs to be asked. If I and II were masterpieces, what the fuck happened to III?

Money is the root of all evil, R58.

Coppola had said that the two Godfather movies completed the Corleone story; however, his Zoetrope Studios was in such financial shambles that he agreed to make the third movie.

R56 Francis Ford Coppola Godfather notes.

[quote]Sonny fucking Lucy against a door at his sister's wedding.

This was a brief scene in the movie.

Thanks for the additional information about Johnny Fontaine, R52.

r58 Sofia Coppola happened. Okay she wasn't the only problem with the film but she was a major detriment to the film.

Also, the absence of Robert Duvall.

Talia Shire acting like she was in some kind of opera.

Andy Garcia, though, was very sexy and brought a lot of energy.

[quote]Sonny fucking Lucy against a door at his sister's wedding.

I was in high school when the book came out, and one day a bunch of girls were talking about it, and one of the said "page 34" (or whatever it was) and every single one of them giggled. Apparently that scene was quite the masterbation fantasy for girls of a certain age.

I read the book, but I thought the way they interpreted it, and wrote the screenplay helped make the story a lot better. What I really appreciate is the way the movie portrays, especially in Part II, the relationships of Vito, Clemenza, Tessio, Genco, etc. from their early days. And Don Tomasino in Sicily, and how he got shot.

I thought they should have included the little girl being brought over to Woltz's estate, but I think there's another cut of The Godfather that sort of combines Part I and Part II and it does show her, albeit briefly, so you know what's going on. I didn't care about Johnny's friend, Nino or Lucy Mercer's pussy. I'm glad they spared us the details of Johnny Fontaine's rise in H'wood. I was more interested in the Frank Pantangeli, Hyman Roth angle.

If anyone is near a Cinemark theatre they are presenting (LOL!) The Godfather tomorrow and Wednesday. It's only $5 here - not a bad way to kill a rainy afternoon.

I sleep with the fishes. And I don't mean smelly blody vaginas either.

I've never loved this film or particularly enjoyed it. Yes, it's a very well-made drama, but I don't identify with any of the characters, and more important... I don't *like* them or want to spend time with them.

So, do you fans of the "Godfather" films like the characters, or identify with them?

I don't believe that one has to "like" characters in order for a story to be compelling, but yes, I like Don Corleone. I like Michael early on. I have sympathy for Fredo.

I like Sonny - he's a mess, but I understand his temper. His feistiness brings so much to the movie - he is who he is - no apologies. Loved the book - some of the story was too graphic to include in the movie back then, but helped flush out the characters more.

Connie could irritate me. Her husband beat her, was a part of Sonny's murder, but she rips into Michael for him being killed. Don't get me started on her in G2 - argh.

I don't necessarily like the characters, but I find each and every one of them compelling.

I also find the story compelling.

And so many memorable lines.

"Apparently that scene was quite the masterbation fantasy for girls of a certain age."

It was quite over the top, as were most of the sex scenes in the novel:

"Now as she ran up the steps toward Sonny a tremendous flash of desire went through her body. On the landing Sonny grabbed her hand and pulled her down the hall into an empty bedroom. Her legs went weak as the door closed behind them. She felt Sonny's mouth on hers, his lips tasting of burnt tobacco, bitter. She opened her mouth. At that moment she felt his hand come up beneath her bridesmaid's gown, heard the rustle of material giving way, felt his large warm hand between her legs, ripping aside the satin panties to caress her vulva. She put her arms around his neck and hung there as he opened his trousers. Then he placed both hands beneath her buttocks and lifted her. She gave a little hop in the air so that both her legs were wrapped around his upper thighs. His tongue was in her mouth and she sucked on it. He gave a savage thrust that banged her head against the door. She felt something burning pass between her thighs. She let her right hand drop from his neck and reached down to guide him. Her hand closed around an enormous, blood gorged pole of muscle. It pulsated in her hand like an animal and almost weeping with grateful ecstasy she pointed it into her own wet, turgid flesh. The thrust of its entering, the unbelievable pleasure made her gasp, brought her legs up almost around his neck, and then like a quiver, her body received the savage arrows of his lightning-like thrusts; innumerable, torturing; arching her pelvis higher and higher until for the first time in her life she reached a shattering climax, felt his hardness break and then the crawly flood of semen over her thighs. Slowly her legs relaxed from around his body, slid down until they reached the floor. They leaned against each other, out of breath."

"The casting really was perfect, however Robert De Niro as Sonny would have been also interesting."

I think Caan was perfect as Sonny - his best movie performance. The problem I see all these decades later, is that Caan is a small guy. Sonny beating up Connie's husband, well, not too believable. De Niro is smaller than Caan.

Um, no, R63, how ridiculous. They probably giggled because it was a "sex scene."

OP here; the pleasure in it for me is the epic sweep of the whole story. The films are populated with dozens of vivid and interesting characters some likable, some not, but all memorable. Moe Greene, for example. But what I enjoy most about them is the way they portray the entire history of the Mob and its impact on American life. Its system of justice, as depicted in the very early life of Vito Andolini as a young boy; and the way these primarily Italian immigrants transferred that same system, complete with its violence, revenge and corruption, to the USA. The first line of Part I is "I believe in America", said over a black screen, followed by the wealth of plot lines showing Vito and Michael Corleone's lives in one memorable sequence after another. I love to watch Connie's wedding; love the sequence in LA between Tom Hagen and Woltz; anything with Fredo in it; I like the sequences in Cuba and in Vegas, and the big outdoor Lake Tahoe party that opens Part II. I love the way Part I closes with them KISSING MICHAEL'S HAND (!!) as the door is shut in Kay's face (not the only time this will happen to her); And of course the iconic sequence in Woltz's bed. I think about the characters I have sympathy for: every time they take Tessio off, I think why CAN'T Hagen get him off? Why does Michael have to kill Fredo rather than just send him off somewhere and forget about him? I have zero sympathy for the Carlo character, primarily due to the scene where he savagely beats Connie.

And I love the montage right after Michael shoots the cop, set to that tinny piano music, showing all the gruesome photographs, along with lurid newspaper headlines. And of course its most famous and iconic scene that occurs less than an hour into Part I; a scene with one character where not one word is spoken, until Woltz finds out what's in his bed.

Are you aware that The Godfather was a best selling novel, OP? Coppola didn't make it up.

I never said he did - Puzo wrote the screenplays from his own novel. Agree with whoever said the screenplays improve the story. The Lucy Mancini and Nino (a kind of Dean Martin character) were pretty disposable.

The book, of course, does flesh out the women a lot more, such as Kay, Sonny's wife, Tom Hagen's wife and so on.

R67, I didn't identify with any of the characters, being that I've never been exposed to that lifestyle. However, I loved WATCHING the characters and the film itself, because it was so well done.

By the way, I didn't identify with Daniel Day Lewis' character in "There Will Be Blood", nor Forrest Whittaker when he played Idi Amin, but both men were excellent at their jobs (acting), and I was able to recognize that, as were others.

did Kay know that she was Michael's 2nd wife?

I've wondered that too - my thought is no. Michael never told her.

I never thought of James Caan as hot but he was so sexy in The Godfather. When he was fucking that woman - so hot. He just had a magnetism in that movie that burned the screen.

Michael never told Kay about Appollonia. In the novel, after Kay and Michael are reunited after his returns from Sicily, they are of course having sex just like old times. She tells him that she was celibate during the entire time he was gone. She asks if he had any other woman and he tells her yes, "but not in the last six months." It's true; Kay is the first woman he has sex with after Appollonia is killed. But he never tells her anything about his being married before and his wife getting killed. Why would he? He probably figured that was something she definitely didn't need to know.

James Caan always had a reputation as being angry. Wonder if portraying Sonny wasn't that much of a stretch?

Are you refering to the rumor that he threw his son's gay lover off a hotel balcony? R81

[quote]Without a doubt, the greatest American film ever made.

But what was the greatest American film never made?

I don't know this Merle. I don't know what he does or what he lives on.

Are you refering to the rumor that he threw his son's gay lover off a hotel balcony? [R81]

i never knew he was a fundamentatist muslim

Mainstream media ruled it as an 'accident', however rumours claimed it otherwise. R85

I actually hadn't heard that, but did hear he was "difficult" to work with in his younger years.

[quote]The lighting, the deep reds, browns, golds, the bowls of oranges everywhere.

Raymond Babbitt has become a movie buff, apparently.

But what was the greatest American film never made?

orson welles, heart of darkness

No....Diane Keatons acting was terrible in that movie. Its a great movie about love of family (an unstable, chaotic, and dangerous love) but her acting....ugh. Was so happy when he slapped the shit out of her.

^ she was barely given anything to do, and she had the biggest woman part no less. I think she was fine with what she had to work with Not her fault the producers and directors left the women out of the story almost entirely.

Kay’s perm in G3 is an insult to us all.

The scene with Woltz and the young girl was filmed for the movie but later cut. Though in the film version, the girl looks 16 or 17 rather than 12.

Interestingly, in the book Kay becomes the perfect mafia wife: focused on the home and children and carefully unaware of most of what Michael is doing. She converts to Catholicism and goes to church every morning to pray for his soul. She has a lot more agency in the book, strangely enough: She's the one who tracks Michael down after his return from Sicily and rekindles their relationship, with the help of Michael's mother. Also, she is much more canny about what Michael is now, but she loves him too much to care. I like that better than having her the trusting fool turned vicious harpy she becomes in the film.

In Godfather III, Michael tells Kay something like "I never stopped loving you."

She replies that he was still able to marry another woman. So, at some point, she finds out about Apollonia.