Girl that's 'The Godfather'

Thrillingly, we have arrived at our third director project on movies, regrettably. That’s how I think of it. The Director Projects. We’ve turned the page from the Sofia Coppola Director Project. And next Friday, we will turn the page from the Martin Scorsese Director Project. Going forward, the Friday free post will be more topical, or at least topical to me, something I just feel like writing about, instead of something that requires me to watch something as homework, which my stupid brain will reject when I sit down to watch it (which is why my posts are often late).

Anyway, starting next week, the Tuesday post behind the paywall will be where the Director Projects officially live. But today’s free post will be the first of that Director Project to entice new people to give me money, if they would like to do that.

So enough of that! The time has come to announce the next Director Project: Francis Ford Coppola! I can only perceive Italian-American filmmakers, so I thought it would be great to next cover the father of our last, whose first film in a decade plus Megalopolis will premiere later this year—I’m guessing at the Cannes Film Festival. I do not anticipate heading to the south of France this year but if you, my beautiful and sexy readers, would like to finance my travel, I would love to report on the premiere from on the ground.

this is so me and linda vibes

What will make this Director Project fun is that I’ve only seen half of his work, 12 out of 24 titles, which is different from the last two. I should clarify now that there are some titles on Letterboxd where he is credited as director where he like did reshoots or second unit for a Roger Corman movie. I will not be watching those. I dgaf about them. I will, of course, be watching the Cormans that he was The Director on. Also, the man has liked to tinker with his edits over the years, I imagine for a paycheck, to fund his winery, which, in turn, funded Megalopolis, and, look, I’m not going to watch four versions of The Cotton Club and talk about the differences. I’ll watch one version of each film, probably the latest version, unless there’s an earlier one that people think is better.

As I’ve done previously, I will be holding most of my favorites to the end of our journey, but I thought I would start with a bada-bing! It’s the movie we all want to hear about! But what can one say about The Godfather in 2024? At 52 years old, it has probably reigned as the singular most popular Greatest American Film longer than any other—I mean in our collective consciousness. And, like, I’m fine with that. I think it’s a great choice. I am not too cool for The Godfather.

I first saw The Godfather when I was in 8th or 9th grade, when my parents, like, sat down me and my sister and we watched the first two films in a single night. I remember that experience vividly. It was special, and life-changing! I would call it my favorite movie until I saw A Woman Under the Influence in my early twenties. But The Godfather still makes it onto my Sight & Sound ballot (Part II does, specifically).

Do I need to do plot with this one? It’s about Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), who is the head of one of the five mafia families in New York City, just after World War II; Don Corleone is mowed down by gunmen in the streets one day because he doesn’t want to get into the narcotics business and the other families do. The families go to WAR. Don Corleone’s youngest son, Michael (Al Pacino), who was never part of the family business, who is a veteran, for whom the Don had dreams of greatness a la the Kennedys, becomes drawn into the la cosa nostra to avenge his father and eventually succeeds him as head of the family.

The Godfather is a great film we all love, although I don’t know that I even really understood the plot until I was well into my 20s. Like, I understood the Michael arc, but I didn’t really understand why the war was happening. This might be evidence of my stupidity and that’s fine. When I was 14 watching the movie, I was just enraptured by the atmosphere and the acting, both of which remain entirely intoxicating.

The acting in The Godfather is still so fresh, shockingly fresh, as though they aren’t acting for the camera, but just existing. Obviously, this was not the first movie to do so but it’s still like the best movie to do so? There is a documentary realism freshness to the acting, in direct opposition to the gorgeous production value. I think this juxtaposition is something that really was completely new with The Godfather, the idea that you can direct the actors one way and the camera another. Movies can be realistic and still beautiful. Movies can be authentic and still have glorious compositions. And to that end, the end of beauty, the movie features so many of the most gorgeous young women of the era: Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Sterling Hayden. But they are not asked to be beautiful, they are merely asked to Be.

There are topics about America and American Capitalism that are raised in The Godfather, but they will be better served when talking about Part II. I really think of the two films as one. So I don’t want to get into all that yet.

I don’t really have much else to say—again, it’s all been said before! I’ll say one thing that could be seen as a criticism: I sort of think the Hollywood section, with the famous horse head in the bed scene, could lift right out of the picture and you wouldn’t miss it. I understand why it’s there, narratively, to show the audience what the Corleone family is capable of and what they’re willing to do. But do you really need that? Maybe you do. But ultimately I’m sure it has to stay in because the horse head moment is such a MOMENT. And cinematic moments are what we live for.