Edward D. Wood Jr.

Edward D. Wood Jr.
(Worst Director of All Time)

Frank Henenlotter

Frank Henenlotter
(Film Maker & Film Historian)

quinta-feira, 26 de setembro de 2013

O Padrinho - Parte III (The Godfather - Part III)










































Info About The Third Movie Of This Great Trilogy:

The Godfather Part III is a 1990 American crime film written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, and directed by Coppola. It completes the story of Michael Corleone, a Mafia kingpin who tries to legitimize his criminal empire. The film also weaves into its plot a fictionalized account of two real-life events; the 1978 death of Pope John Paul I and the Papal banking scandal of 1981–1982; linking both and with the affairs of Michael Corleone. The film stars Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, and Andy García, and features Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna, George Hamilton, Bridget Fonda, and Sofia Coppola.
Coppola and Puzo originally wanted the title to be The Death of Michael Corleone but this was not acceptable to Paramount Pictures. Coppola states that The Godfather series is in fact two films, and Part III is the epilogue. Part III received mixed reviews, grossed $136,766,062 and was nominated for seven Academy Awards.

Plot

In 1979,[2][3] Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is nearing 60 and wracked with guilt for his ruthless rise to power, especially ordering the murder of his brother Fredo. By now, he has mostly retired from the Mafia, leaving the Corleone family's criminal interests in the hands of enforcer Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), and is using his tremendous wealth and power to restore his reputation via numerous acts of charity. Michael and Kay (Diane Keaton) have been divorced since 1960, and Michael gave her custody of their children, Anthony (Franc D'Ambrosio) and Mary (Sofia Coppola).
At a ceremony in St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, Michael is named a Commander of the Order of St. Sebastian. At a party following the ceremony, Anthony tells his father that he is going to drop out of law school to pursue a career as an opera singer. Kay supports his choice, but Michael disagrees, wishing that his son would either finish law school or join the family business, but Anthony refuses to have anything to do with his father's "legacy". Michael and Kay have an uneasy reunion, in which Kay tells him that Anthony knows the truth about Fredo's death.
Meanwhile, Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), the illegitimate son of Michael's late brother Sonny, shows up at the party. He is embroiled in a feud with Zasa, who has involved the Corleone family in major drug trafficking and turned Little Italy into a slum. Michael's sister Connie (Talia Shire) arranges a "sit-down" between Vincent and Zasa in Michael's study. The discussion erupts into a fight, in which Vincent bites Zasa on the ear. That night Vincent has a one-night stand with a journalist named Grace Hamilton (Bridget Fonda). Two men armed with knives and a gun break in and try to kill him. Vincent kills them both, but not before learning that Zasa sent them. Michael is troubled by Vincent's fiery temper, but is nonetheless impressed by his loyalty, and agrees to take his nephew under his wing.
Meanwhile, Michael busies himself with the biggest deal of his career: He has recently bought up enough stock in International Immobiliare, an international real estate holding company known as "the world's biggest landlord", to become its largest single shareholder, with six seats on the company's 13-member board of directors. He now makes a tender offer to buy the Vatican's 25% interest in the company, which will give him controlling interest. Knowing that Archbishop Gilday (Donal Donnelly), who serves as head of the Vatican Bank, has run up a massive deficit, he negotiates a deal to pay $600 million to the Bank in exchange for the shares. The deal is quickly approved by Immobiliare's board. However, it must be ratified in Rome by Pope Paul VI, who is gravely ill. Without his word, the deal is in limbo.
Don Altobello (Eli Wallach), an elderly New York Mafia boss and old friend of the Corleones (as well as Connie's godfather), soon visits Michael, telling him that his old partners on the Commission want in on the Immobiliare deal. Michael, however, is adamant that the deal shall be untainted by Mafia involvement. A meeting is arranged, and Michael appeases most of the Mafia bosses with payoffs from the sale of his Las Vegas holdings. Zasa, however, gets nothing and declares that Michael is his enemy and storms out. Altobello tells Michael that he will try to reason with Zasa and follows close behind. Minutes later, a helicopter hovers outside the conference room and sprays it with machine gun fire. Most of the other mob bosses are killed, but Michael, Vincent, and Michael's bodyguard, Al Neri (Richard Bright), escape. Back at his penthouse in New York, Vincent tells Michael that those mob bosses who escaped the massacre made deals with Zasa. Michael knows that Zasa was not the mastermind of the massacre due to Zasa's being "muscle" and not having the cunning to organize such a scheme. Vincent wants to kill Zasa, but Michael refuses. As he considers how to respond to the situation, he suffers a diabetic stroke and is hospitalized, but not before realizing Altobello is the traitor.
As Michael recuperates, Vincent begins a romantic relationship with Mary and plots revenge against Zasa. Neri and Connie give Vincent permission to act. During a street festival hosted by Zasa's Italian American civil rights group, Vincent's men gun down Zasa's bodyguards. Vincent, disguised as a policeman on horseback, shoots Zasa dead. When Michael discovers this, he berates Vincent for his rashness. Michael also insists that Vincent end his relationship with Mary, because Vincent's involvement in the family's criminal enterprises puts her life in jeopardy.
The family takes a vacation to Sicily in preparation for Anthony's operatic debut in Palermo at the Teatro Massimo. They stay at the villa of Corleone family friend Don Tommasino (Vittorio Duse). Michael tells Vincent to speak with Altobello and tell him that he is planning to leave the Corleone family. Altobello supports the idea of Vincent's switching his allegiance, and introduces him to Don Licio Lucchesi (Enzo Robutti), a powerful Italian political figure and Immobiliare's chairman. Michael realizes that the Immobiliare deal is an elaborate conspiracy among Lucchesi, Archbishop Gilday, and Vatican accountant Frederick Keinszig (Helmut Berger) to swindle him out of his money, and visits Cardinal Lamberto (Raf Vallone), the man favored to become the next Pope, to speak about the deal. Lamberto convinces Michael to make his first confession in 30 years, in which he tearfully admits to ordering Fredo's murder. Lamberto tells Michael that he deserves to suffer for his sins, but that his life could still be redeemed.
Shortly after the meeting between Vincent and Lucchesi, Altobello travels to the small village of Montelepre, where he hires Mosca (Mario Donatone), a veteran hitman, to assassinate Michael. A few days later, Mosca and his son, disguised as priests, attempt to kidnap Don Tommasino and force him to allow them entry to his villa. Tommasino refuses, and Mosca kills him. While touring Sicily with Kay, who has arrived for Anthony’s operatic debut, Michael asks for her forgiveness. As they both admit that they still love each other, Michael receives word that Tommasino is dead. At Tommassino's funeral, Michael swears over his old friend's coffin to sin no more.
After the death of Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Lamberto is elected Pope John Paul I, which means that the Immobiliare deal will likely be ratified. The new Pope's intentions come as a death knell to the plot against the ratification of the Immobiliare deal, prompting frantic attempts by the plotters to cover their own tracks. Vincent tells Michael that he has learned from Altobello of Mosca's plot on his life. Michael sees that his nephew is a changed man, and makes him the new Don of the Corleone family. In exchange, Vincent agrees to put an end to his relationship with Mary.
The family travels to Palermo to see Anthony perform the lead in Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, a tale of murderous revenge in a Sicilian setting. Meanwhile, Vincent exacts his own revenge:
  • Keinszig is abducted by Vincent's men, who smother him with a pillow and hang him from a bridge to make his death look like a suicide.
  • Don Altobello, also attending the opera, eats poisoned cannoli that his goddaughter Connie gives him. He dies as Connie watches sadly from her box.
  • Al Neri travels to the Vatican, where he shoots Archbishop Gilday.
  • Finally, Calò (Tommasino's former bodyguard) meets with Don Lucchesi at his office, claiming to bear a message from Michael. As he pretends to whisper the message to Lucchesi, Calò stabs him in the throat with his own glasses.
The killings are too late to save the Pope, however. Just hours after he approves the Immobiliare deal, the Pope drinks poisoned tea provided to him by Archbishop Gilday and soon dies in his bed.
Mosca, still disguised as a priest and armed with a sniper rifle, descends upon the opera house during Anthony's performance, killing three of Vincent's men and preparing to shoot his target from a box, but the opera ends before he has the chance to pull the trigger. The assassin retreats to the opera house façade's staircase and tries to shoot Michael there. At the same moment, Mary confronts her father about the forced break-up with Vincent. Mosca fires twice, wounding Michael and accidentally killing Mary. Vincent then shoots him dead. As Kay and Connie weep, Michael cradles Mary's body in his arms and screams in agony.
The scene dissolves to a short montage of Michael's memories of all the women he has lost, composed of scenes with Mary, Kay, and his first wife, Apollonia.
The film ends with Michael, an old man, sitting in the garden of Don Tommasino's Sicilian villa. He slumps over in his chair, falls sideways to the ground, and dies alone, with only his dog present.

Cast


Pre-production

Coppola felt that the first two films had told the complete Corleone saga. In his audio commentary for Part II, he stated that only a dire financial situation caused by the failure of One From The Heart compelled him to take up Paramount's long-standing offer to make a third installment.[4]
According to an article in Premiere,[citation needed] Coppola and Puzo requested six months to complete a first draft of the script with a release date of Easter 1991. Paramount agreed to give them six weeks for the script and, lacking a holiday movie, a release date of Christmas Day 1990.
Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, and Talia Shire reprise their roles from the first two films. According to Coppola's audio commentary on the film in The Godfather DVD Collection, Robert Duvall refused to take part unless he was paid a salary comparable to Pacino's. On an episode of Inside the Actors Studio,[when?] Duvall said he understood that Pacino was the star but felt insulted by the difference in their salaries, saying "if they paid Pacino twice what they paid me, that's fine, but not three or four times, which is what they did."[5] When Duvall dropped out, Coppola rewrote the screenplay to portray Tom Hagen as having died before the story begins. Coppola created the character B. J. Harrison, played by George Hamilton, to replace the Hagen character in the story. The director further states that, to him, the movie feels incomplete "without [Robert] Duvall's participation." According to Coppola, had Duvall agreed to take part in the film, the Hagen character would have been heavily involved in running the Corleone charities.
The first draft of a script had been written by Dean Riesner in 1979, based on a story by Mario Puzo. This script centered around Michael Corleone's son, Anthony, a naval officer working for the CIA, and the Corleone family's involvement with a plot to assassinate a Central American dictator.[6] Almost none of the elements of this early script carried over to the final film, but one scene from the film — in which two men break into Vincent's house — exists in the Riesner draft and is nearly unchanged.[7]
Coppola says that he felt The Godfather saga was essentially Michael's story, one about how "a good man becomes evil," as the writer/director puts it on the same commentary track referenced above. Coppola says he felt that Michael had not really "paid for his sins" committed in the second film, and wanted this final chapter to demonstrate that. In keeping with this theme, Coppola completely re-wrote the script.
Julia Roberts was originally cast as Mary, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.[8] Madonna wanted to play the role, but Coppola felt she was too old for the part.[9] Rebecca Schaeffer was set to audition,[10] but she was murdered. Winona Ryder dropped out of the film at the last minute.[8] Ultimately Sofia Coppola, the director's daughter, was given the role of Michael Corleone's daughter. Her much-criticized performance resulted in her father being accused of nepotism, a charge Coppola denies in the commentary track, asserting that, in his opinion, critics, "beginning with an article in Vanity Fair," were "using [my] daughter to attack me," something he finds ironic in light of the film's denouement when the Mary character pays the ultimate price for her father's sins.
As an infant, Sofia Coppola had played Michael Corleone's infant nephew in The Godfather, during the climactic baptism/murder montage at the end of that film. (Sofia Coppola also appeared in The Godfather Part II, as a small immigrant child in the scene where the nine-year-old Vito Corleone arrives by steamer at Ellis Island.) The character of Michael's sister Connie is played by Francis Ford Coppola's sister, Talia Shire (making her both Mary and Sofia's aunt). Other Coppola relatives with cameos in the film included his mother, father (who wrote and conducted much of the music in the film), uncle and granddaughter, Gia.[11] Michele Russo, who plays the son of the assassin Mosca, is also a distant Coppola relative, from the same town as Francis Ford Coppola's great-grandmother.[citation needed] In addition, Coppola cast Catherine Scorsese, mother of Martin Scorsese, in a small part.

Reception

At Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a mixed to positive response with a 68% "fresh" rating.[12] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 60, based on 19 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews".[13]
The Godfather Part III is considered by some to be the weakest of the three Godfather films.[14][15] Common criticisms include Sofia Coppola's acting, the plot being too outlandish and convoluted, and being too based on continuity, rather than just a "stand alone" story.
In his review, Roger Ebert stated that it is "not even possible to understand this film without knowing the first two." Nonetheless, Ebert wrote an enthusiastic review, awarding the film three-and-a-half stars, a better rating than he gave The Godfather Part II in an earlier review.[16]However, he gave 4 stars for The Godfather Part II in his 2008 re-rating[17] and included it in his list of Great Movies but excluded The Godfather Part III. He also defended the casting of Sofia Coppola, who he felt was not miscast, stating, "There is no way to predict what kind of performance Francis Ford Coppola might have obtained from Winona Ryder, the experienced and talented young actress, who was originally set to play this role. But I think Sofia Coppola brings a quality of her own to Mary Corleone. A certain up-front vulnerability and simplicity that I think are appropriate and right for the role."
Ebert's colleague, Gene Siskel, also highly praised the film and placed it on his list of the ten best films of 1990 (#10). Siskel admitted that the ending was the film's weakest part, citing Al Pacino's makeup as very poor.
Leonard Maltin gave the movie three out of four stars and stated in his movie guide that the film is "masterfully told", but the casting of Sofia Coppola was an "almost-fatal flaw".

Awards and honors

The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Andy Garcia), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Dean Tavoularis, Gary Fettis), Best Music, Song (for Carmine Coppola and John Bettis for "Promise Me You'll Remember").[18][19] It is the only film in the series not to have Al Pacino nominated for an Academy Award (he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather and for Best Actor for The Godfather Part II). It is the only film in the trilogy not to win for Best Picture or any other Academy Award for that matter, as well as the only film in the trilogy not selected for preservation by the U.S. National Film Registry. It is, however, the first trilogy to be nominated for Best Picture in each of the installments, and the only sequel to win the coveted prize after the original film won.
American Film Institute recognition:
The film was also nominated for seven Golden Globes Awards, but did not win.[21] Sofia Coppola won two Golden Raspberry Awards for both Worst Supporting Actress and Worst New Star.

Historical background

Main article: Pope John Paul I conspiracy theories

Parts of the film are very loosely based on real historical events concerning the ending of the papacy of Paul VI, and the very short duration of John Paul I in 1978, and the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. Like the character Cardinal Lamberto, who becomes John Paul I, the historical John Paul I, Albino Luciani, reigned for only a very short time before being found dead in his bed.
Journalist David Yallop argues that Luciani was planning a reform of Vatican finances and that he died by poisoning; these claims are reflected in the film.[22] Yallop also names as a suspect Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was the head of the Vatican bank, like the character Archbishop Gilday in the film. However, while Marcinkus was noted for his muscular physique and Chicago origins, Gilday is a mild Irishman. The character has also drawn comparisons to Cardinal Giuseppe Caprio, as he was in charge of the Vatican finances during the approximate period of which the movie was based.[23]
The character of Frederick Keinszig, the Swiss banker who is murdered and left hanging under a bridge, mirrors the fate (and physical appearance) of Roberto Calvi, the Italian head of the Banco Ambrosiano who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 (it was unclear whether it was a case of suicide or, as the Italian idiom has it, "being suicided". Courts in Italy have recently ruled the latter.) [24] The name "Keinszig" is taken from Manuela Kleinszig, the girlfriend of Flavio Carbone who was indicted as one of Roberto Calvi's murderers in 2005.[25]
On the audio commentary of the DVD, Francis Ford Coppola states that the character of Don Licio Lucchesi would be very recognizable for Italian citizens. The thick-rimmed glasses, the official police bodyguard while Michael meets the Don in Sicily, and a single quote at the end of the movie are supposedly clues that Don Lucchesi is (at least partly) based on Giulio Andreotti.
The killing of Joey Zasa is reminiscent of the shooting of Joseph Colombo in a street parade.

Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Score.[26] Also, the film's love theme, "Promise Me You'll Remember" (subtitled "Love Theme from The Godfather Part III") sung by Harry Connick, Jr., received Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Song.


Above Extracts Taken From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Godfather_Part_III

More Info: http://www.thegodfather.com/ - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099674/





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O Padrinho - Parte II (The Godfather - Part II)









































Info About The Second Movie Of This Great Trilogy:

The Godfather Part II is a 1974 American crime epic that Francis Ford Coppola produced, directed, and co-wrote with Mario Puzo, starring Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, and Robert De Niro. Partially based on Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather, the film is in part both a sequel and a prequel to The Godfather, presenting two parallel dramas. The main storyline, following the first film's events, centers on Michael Corleone (Pacino), the new Don of the Corleone crime family, trying to hold his business ventures together from 1958 to 1959; the other is a series of flashbacks following his father, Vito Corleone (De Niro), from his childhood in Sicily in 1901 to his founding of the Corleone family in New York City.
The film was released in 1974 to great critical acclaim, some deeming it superior to the original.[3] Nominated for eleven Academy Awards and the first sequel to win for Best Picture, its six Oscars included Best Director for Coppola, Best Supporting Actor for De Niro and Best Adapted Screenplay for Coppola and Puzo. Pacino won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Like its predecessor, the sequel remains a highly influential film in the gangster genre.[citation needed] In 1997, the American Film Institute ranked it as the 32nd-greatest film in American film history and it kept its rank 10 years later.[4] It was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry in 1993.[5]
A sequel, The Godfather Part III, was released 16 years later in 1990.

Plot

In 1901 Corleone, Sicily, nine-year-old Vito Andolini’s family is killed after his father insults local Mafia chieftain Don Ciccio. He escapes to New York and is registered as "Vito Corleone" on Ellis Island.
On the occasion of the 1958 first communion party for his son, Michael Corleone has a series of meetings in his role as the Don of his crime family. With Nevada Senator Pat Geary, he discusses the terms of a fourth state gaming license for the Corleones, but the two only trade insults and demand payoffs. Johnny Ola arrives to express support for Michael on behalf of Florida gangster Hyman Roth. At the same time as the Don tries to manage his depressed sister Connie and older brother Fredo, Corleone caporegime Frank Pentangeli is upset that his boss will not help him defend New York against the Rosato brothers, who work for the Jewish Roth. That night, Michael survives an assassination attempt at his home and puts consigliere Tom Hagen in charge, reassuring him of their fraternal bond.
In 1917, Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) lives in a tenement with his wife Carmela and son Sonny, and works in a New York grocery store owned by the father of a close friend. A member of the Black Hand, Don Fanucci, who extorts protection payments from local businesses, forces the store owner to fire Vito and give his job to Fanucci's nephew. As a favor to his neighbor, Peter Clemenza, Vito hides a stash of guns; in return, he is invited to the burglary of a rich apartment. His share of the loot is a plush rug, which he lays in his own living room.
In Miami, Michael tells Roth that Pentangeli was behind the assassination attempt; he then tells Pentangeli that Roth ordered it and asks him to cooperate. Pentangeli meets the Rosatos; their men ambush him, saying they act on Michael's orders, but a passing policeman interrupts them and they flee, leaving Pentangeli for dead.
Geary finds himself in Fredo's brothel with a dead prostitute and no memory of how he got there; he accepts Tom's offer of "friendship" to cover up the incident.
After witnessing a rebel suicide bombing in Havana, Cuba, Michael becomes convinced of the rebels' resolve to overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Fredo brings Michael the money for a deal with Roth, but instead of turning it over to Roth, Michael asks who put out the hit on Pentangeli. Roth is reminded of his late friend Moe Greene – dead in a spate of Corleone killing – saying, "This is the business we've chosen. I didn't ask who gave the order because it had nothing to do with business!" As they go to the President's New Year's Eve party, Michael tells Fredo that he knows Roth plans to kill him as he leaves the party and later Fredo reveals that he knew Johnny Ola, despite his previous denial. Michael's bodyguard strangles Ola but is killed by police before he can finish off the ailing Roth. Michael embraces his brother, revealing that he knows he was behind the plot on his life but the party breaks up as word spreads that the rebels are taking over, and Fredo flees in the chaos. Back home, Tom informs Michael that Roth is recovering in Miami and that Kay's pregnancy has miscarried.
Three years later, two more sons—Fredo and then Michael—have been born to Vito. He and his partners (Clemenza and Sal Tessio) face extortion by Don Fanucci, who demands they let him "wet his beak" from their recent burglary or he will have the police ruin the Corleone family. Vito persuades his partners to pay Fanucci less than he asks and promises he will "make him an offer he can't refuse" as a favor to them. During a neighborhood festa, Vito meets with Fanucci and earns his respect. He then follows Fanucci, surprises him in his apartment foyer, shoots and kills him, takes back his partners' money and escapes.
In Washington, D.C., a Senate committee investigating the Corleone family cannot find evidence to implicate Michael until a surprise witness is called. Pentangeli, ensconced in FBI witness protection and ready to avenge the attempt on his life, is prepared to confirm accusations against Michael until his Sicilian brother attends the hearing at the Don's side; Pentangeli denies his sworn statements and the hearing dissolves in an uproar.
Vito has become a respected figure in his New York community. He confronts a landlord who doesn't know him, offering extra money to let a widow keep her apartment. The landlord says he has already leased it and becomes angry when Vito demands that he allow her to keep her dog. Later the landlord learns that he may have offended the wrong person. Terrified, he returns to assure Vito that the widow can stay, along with her dog, at a reduced rent.
Michael and Tom observe that Roth's strategy to destroy Michael is well planned. Fredo has been found and persuaded to return to Nevada, and in a private meeting he explains his betrayal to Michael; he was upset about being passed over to head the family, and helped Roth, thinking there would be something in it for him. He swears he was unaware of their plan to kill Michael. He tells Michael that the Senate Committee's chief counsel is on Roth's payroll. Michael disowns Fredo and instructs Al Neri that "nothing is to happen to him while my mother's alive." Afterwards, Michael violently prevents Kay from leaving with their children; she retaliates with the revelation that her miscarriage was actually an abortion.
Vito, together with his young family, visits Sicily for the first time. He is introduced to the elderly Don Ciccio by Don Tommasino as the man who imports their olive oil to America, and who wants his blessing. When Ciccio asks Vito who his father was, Vito says, "My father's name was Antonio Andolini, and this is for you!" He then plunges a large knife into the old man's stomach and carves it open. As they flee, Tommasino is shot and injured.
Carmela Corleone dies. At the funeral, a reformed Connie implores Michael to forgive Fredo. Michael relents and embraces Fredo, but stares intently at Al Neri. Roth is refused asylum and even entry to Israel. Over Tom's dissent, Michael plans his revenge. Tom visits Pentangeli and offers to spare his family, reminding him that failed plotters against the Roman Emperor took their own lives.
Connie helps Kay visit her children, but Michael closes the door on any forgiveness.
As he arrives in Miami to be taken into custody, Hyman Roth is shot in the stomach and killed by Rocco Lampone, who is immediately shot dead by FBI agents. Frank Pentangeli is discovered dead in his bathtub with slit wrists. Al shoots Fredo while they are fishing on Lake Tahoe.
On December 7, 1941, the Corleone family gathers to surprise Vito for his fiftieth birthday. Sonny introduces Carlo Rizzi to Connie. Tessio comes in with the cake, and they discuss the attack on Pearl Harbor. Michael announces he has left college to enlist in the Marines, leaving Sonny furious, Tom incredulous, and Fredo supportive. Vito is heard at the door and all but Michael leave the room to greet him.
Michael sits alone by the lake at the family compound.

Cast

  • James Caan agreed to reprise the role of Sonny in the birthday flashback sequence demanding he be paid the same amount he received for the entire previous film for the single scene in Part II, which he received.
  • Marlon Brando initially agreed to return for the birthday flashback sequence, but the actor, feeling mistreated by the board at Paramount, failed to show up for the single day's shooting; Coppola rewrote the scene that same day.
  • Richard Castellano, who portrayed Peter Clemenza in the first film, also declined to return, as he and the producers could not reach an agreement on his demands that he be allowed to write the character's dialogue in the film. Clemenza's role was subsequently filled by Frank Pentangeli.
  • Troy Donahue, in a small role as Connie's boyfriend, plays a character named Merle Johnson, which was his birth name.
  • Two actors who appear in the film played different character roles in other Godfather films; Carmine Caridi, who plays Carmine Rosato, also went on to play crime boss Albert Volpe in The Godfather Part III, and Frank Sivero, who plays a young Genco Abbandando, appears as a bystander in The Godfather scene in which Sonny beats up Carlo for abusing Connie.
  • Among the Senators in the hearing committee are film producer/director Roger Corman, writer/producer William Bowers, producer Phil Feldman, and science-fiction writer Richard Matheson.

Production

The Godfather Part II was shot between October 1, 1973 and June 19, 1974, and was the last major American motion picture to be printed with Technicolor's dye imbibition process until the late 1990s and was the last major American motion picture filmed in Technicolor. The scenes that took place in Cuba were shot in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.[6] Charles Bluhdorn, whose Gulf+Western conglomerate owned Paramount, felt strongly about developing the Dominican Republic as a movie-making site.
The Lake Tahoe house and grounds portrayed in the film are Fleur du Lac, the summer estate of Henry J. Kaiser on the California side of the lake. The only structures used in the movie that still remain are the complex of old native stone boathouses with their wrought iron gates. Although Fleur du Lac is private property and no one is allowed ashore there, the boathouses and multi-million dollar condominiums may be viewed from the lake.
Unlike with the first film, Coppola was given near-complete control over production. In his commentary, he said this resulted in a shoot that ran very smoothly despite multiple locations and two narratives running parallel within one film.[7]
Production nearly ended before it began when Pacino's lawyers told Coppola that he had grave misgivings with the script and was not coming. Coppola spent an entire night rewriting it before giving it to Pacino for his review. Pacino approved and the production went forward.[7]
Coppola discusses his decision to make this the first major motion picture to use "Part II" in its title in the director's commentary on the DVD edition of the film released in 2002. Paramount was initially opposed because they believed the audience would not be interested in an addition to a story they had already seen. But the director prevailed, and the film's success began the common practice of numbered sequels.
Still, three weeks prior to the release, film critics and journalists pronounced Part II a disaster. The cross-cutting between Vito and Michael's parallel stories were judged too frequent, not allowing enough time to leave a lasting impression on the audience. Coppola and the editors returned to the cutting room to change the film's narrative structure, but could not complete the work in time, leaving the final scenes poorly timed at the opening.[8]

Box office

The Godfather Part II did not surpass the original commercially, but it was very successful nonetheless, with a $193 million gross on a $13 million budget. For Paramount, it was their highest-grossing film of 1974 and was the fifth-highest-grossing picture in the US that year.

Reception

The Godfather Part II ranks among the most critically and artistically successful films in history, and is the most honored sequel for excellence. Whether considered separately or with its predecessor as one work, it is widely accepted as one of world cinema's greatest achievements. Many critics compare it favorably to the original – although it is almost always placed below the original on lists of "greatest" films when listed separately.
The Godfather Part II:
  • Was featured on Sight and Sound's list of the ten greatest films of all time in 1992 and 2002.
  • Is featured on Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list, though Ebert's original review of the film granted it only three out of four stars.
  • Is ranked #7 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "100 Greatest Movies of All Time".
  • Is featured on movie critic Leonard Maltin's list of the "100 Must-See Films of the 20th Century".
  • Received only one negative review on Rotten Tomatoes and a "98%" approval rating, 2 points less than The Godfather (although it does hold a higher rating average of 9.3/10 compared to the predecessor's 9.1/10) but 32 points more than The Godfather Part III.[9]
  • Is ranked #1 onTV Guide's 1998 list of the "50 Greatest Movies of All Time on TV and Video".[10]
Pacino's performance in The Godfather Part II has been praised as perhaps his best,[citation needed] and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was criticized for not awarding him as Best Actor, which went that year to Art Carney for his role in Harry and Tonto. It has come to be seen by some as one of the greatest performances in film history.[citation needed] In 2006, Premiere issued its list of "The 100 Greatest Performances of all Time", ranking Pacino's performance at #20.[11] Later in 2009, Total Film issued "The 150 Greatest Performances of All Time", ranking Pacino's performance at #4.[12]
In the chapter "The Speeches We Keep in Our Heads" from her 1998 book Simply Speaking, former television writer and Ronald Reagan's speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, analyzes "Lee Strasberg's great speech, given as Hyman Roth stood, weak and furious, before cold-eyed Michael Corleone" and explains what makes it powerful and memorable. She urges:

"Stop here and go out and rent The Godfather, Part II. In the middle of that movie, you will find a speech that is one of the most famous of our time, and that a lot of people keep parts of in their heads. (If I were making a compendium of great speeches of the latter half of the twentieth century I would include it.)"[13]

Releases for television and video

Main article: The Godfather Saga
Coppola created The Godfather Saga expressly for American television in a 1975 release that combined The Godfather and The Godfather Part II with unused footage from those two films in a chronological telling that, because it toned down the violent, sexual, and profane material, received a rating of TV-14 for its NBC debut on November 18, 1977. In 1981, Paramount released the Godfather Epic boxed set, which also told the story of the first two films in chronological order, again with additional scenes, but not redacted for broadcast sensibilities. Coppola returned to the film again in 1992 when he updated that release with footage from The Godfather Part III and more unreleased material. This home viewing release, under the title The Godfather Trilogy 1901–1980, had a total run time of 583 minutes (9 hours, 43 minutes), not including the set's bonus documentary by Jeff Werner on the making of the films, "The Godfather Family: A Look Inside".
The Godfather DVD Collection was released on October 9, 2001 in a package[14] that contained all three films—each with a commentary track by Coppola—and a bonus disc that featured a 73-minute documentary from 1991 entitled The Godfather Family: A Look Inside and other miscellany about the film: the additional scenes originally contained in The Godfather Saga; Francis Coppola's Notebook (a look inside a notebook the director kept with him at all times during the production of the film); rehearsal footage; a promotional featurette from 1971; and video segments on Gordon Willis's cinematography, Nino Rota's and Carmine Coppola's music, the director, the locations and Mario Puzo's screenplays. The DVD also held a Corleone family tree, a "Godfather" timeline, and footage of the Academy Award acceptance speeches.[15]
The restoration was confirmed by Francis Ford Coppola during a question-and-answer session for The Godfather Part III, when he said that he had just seen the new transfer and it was "terrific".

Restoration

After a careful restoration of the first two movies, The Godfather movies were released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on September 23, 2008, under the title The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration. The work was done by Robert A. Harris of Film Preserve. The Blu-ray Disc box set (four discs) includes high-definition extra features on the restoration and film. They are included on Disc 5 of the DVD box set (five discs).
Other extras are ported over from Paramount's 2001 DVD release. There are slight differences between the repurposed extras on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc sets, with the HD box having more content.[16]
Paramount lists the new (HD) extra features as:
  • Godfather World
  • The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't
  • ...when the shooting stopped
  • Emulsional Rescue Revealing The Godfather
  • The Godfather on the Red Carpet
  • Four Short Films on The Godfather
    • The Godfather vs. The Godfather, Part II
    • Cannoli
    • Riffing on the Riffing
    • Clemenza








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sexta-feira, 5 de julho de 2013

O Padrinho (The Godfather)














































































Info About The First Movie Of This Great Trilogy:

The Godfather is a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by Albert S. Ruddy from a screenplay by Mario Puzo and Coppola. Based on Puzo's 1969 novel of the same name, the film stars Marlon Brando and Al Pacino as the leaders of a powerful New York crime family. The story, spanning the years 1945 to 1955, centers on the transformation of Michael Corleone (Pacino) from reluctant family outsider to ruthless Mafia boss while also chronicling the Corleone family under the patriarch Vito Corleone (Brando).
The Godfather is widely regarded as one of the greatest films in world cinema[3]—and as one of the most influential, especially in the gangster genre.[4] Now ranked as the second greatest film in American cinema (behind Citizen Kane) by the American Film Institute,[5] it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1990.[6]
The film was for a time the highest grossing picture ever made, and remains the box office leader for 1972. It won three Oscars that year: for Best Picture, for Best Actor (Brando) and in the category Best Adapted Screenplay for Puzo and Coppola. Its nominations in seven other categories included Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall for Best Supporting Actor and Coppola for Best Director. The success spawned two sequels: The Godfather Part II in 1974, and The Godfather Part III in 1990.

Plot

On the day of his only daughter's wedding, Vito Corleone hears requests in his role as the Godfather, the Don of a New York crime family. Vito's youngest son, Michael, in a Marine Corps uniform, introduces his girlfriend, Kay Adams, to his family at the sprawling reception. Vito's godson Johnny Fontane, a popular singer, pleads for help in securing a coveted movie role, so Vito dispatches his consigliere, Tom Hagen, to the abrasive studio head, Jack Woltz, to secure the casting. Woltz is unmoved until the morning he wakes up in bed with the severed head of his prized stallion.
Shortly before Christmas 1945, drug baron Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo, backed by the Corleones' rivals, the Tattaglias, asks Vito for investment in the emerging drug trade and protection through his political connections. Vito disapproves of drug dealers, so he sends his enforcer, Luca Brasi, to spy on them. The family then receives two fish wrapped in Brasi's vest, imparting he "sleeps with the fishes". An assassination attempt by Sollozzo's men lands Vito in the hospital, so his eldest son, Sonny, takes command. Sollozzo kidnaps Hagen to pressure Sonny to accept his deal. Michael thwarts a second assassination attempt on his father at the hospital, but is accosted by corrupt police captain McCluskey, who breaks his jaw; Sonny retaliates by having Tattaglia's son killed. Michael comes up with a plan to hit Sollozzo and McCluskey that his brother approves over Hagen's objections: on the pretext of settling the dispute, Michael lures the pair to a restaurant, retrieves a planted handgun and murders them.
Despite a clampdown from the authorities, the Five Families erupt in open warfare and the brothers fear for their safety. Michael takes refuge in Sicily, and Fredo Corleone is sheltered by associate Moe Greene in Las Vegas. Sonny attacks his brother-in-law Carlo on the street for abusing his sister Connie. When it happens again, Sonny speeds for her home but assassins ambush him at a highway toll booth and riddle him with machine gun fire.
Vito is saddened to learn that, despite his hopes, Michael has become involved in the family business. However, Michael has fallen in love with Apollonia Vitelli and married her in Sicily. His euphoria is shattered when a car bomb intended for him takes the life of his new wife.
To end the feuds, Vito meets with the heads of the Five Families, withdrawing his opposition to the Tattaglias' heroin business and swearing to forgo revenge for Sonny's murder. He deduces that the Tattaglias were under orders of the now dominant Don Emilio Barzini. With his safety guaranteed, Michael returns home and over a year later marries Kay. His father at the end of his career and his surviving brother too weak, Michael takes the reins of the family and promises his wife to make it legitimate within five years.
Biding his time, Michael allows rival families to pressure Corleone enterprises even as he plans to move family operations to Nevada, while delegating New York operations to members who stay behind. Hagen, upset when Michael replaces him with Vito, is mollified by the older man's reassurance about their long-range plans for him. When Michael travels to Las Vegas to buy out Greene's stake in the family's casinos, Greene derides the Corleones as a fading power. To add injury to insult, Michael sees Fredo falling under Greene's sway.
Vito collapses and dies in his garden while playing with Michael's son, Anthony. At the funeral, caporegime Salvatore Tessio arranges a meeting between Michael and Don Barzini, signalling his treachery as Vito had warned. The meeting is set for the same day as the christening of Connie's son, to whom Michael will stand as godfather. As the christening proceeds, Corleone assassins, acting on Michael's orders, murder the other New York dons and Moe Greene. Tessio is told that Michael is aware of his betrayal and taken off to his death. After Carlo is questioned by Michael on his involvement in setting up Sonny's murder and confesses he was contacted by Barzini, caporegime Peter Clemenza kills him with a wire garrote. Michael is confronted by Connie, who accuses him of having her husband killed. He denies killing Carlo when questioned by Kay, an answer she accepts. As Kay watches warily, Michael receives his capos, who address him as the new Don Corleone.

Cast


Production

Coppola and Paramount

Coppola was not Paramount Pictures' first choice to direct. Italian director Sergio Leone was offered the job first, but he declined in order to direct his own gangster opus, Once Upon a Time in America, which focused on Jewish-American gangsters.[7] Peter Bogdanovich was then approached but he also declined the offer and made What's Up, Doc? instead. Robert Evans, head of Paramount at the time, specifically wanted an Italian-American to direct the film because his research had shown that previous films about the Mafia that were directed by non-Italians had fared dismally at the box office, and he wanted to, in his own words, "smell the spaghetti".[8] When Coppola hit upon the idea of making it a metaphor for American capitalism, coupled with his Sicilian and Italian heritage, he was offered the assignment. In the interview in 1997 which accompanies the 25th Anniversary Edition box set[9] Coppola comments that, "They wanted to make it at a very inexpensive budget, which was probably why I was hired. I was young; I had two children and a baby on the way. I didn't have any money really. So, I was swept along (pause) by the studio basically wanting to make this film." At that time, Coppola had directed five feature films, the most notable of which was the adaptation of the stage musical Finian's Rainbow – although he had also received an Academy Award for co-writing Patton in 1970.[10] Coppola was in debt to Warner Bros. for $400,000 following budget overruns on George Lucas's THX 1138, which Coppola had produced, and he took The Godfather on Lucas's advice.[11][12]
There was intense friction between Coppola and Paramount, and several times Coppola was almost replaced. As early as the first week, Coppola was nearly fired when Pacino was badly injured, delaying production. Paramount maintains that its skepticism was due to a rocky start to production, though Coppola believes that the first week went extremely well. The studio thought that Coppola failed to stay on schedule, frequently made production and casting errors, and insisted on unnecessary expenses, and two producers unsuccessfully tried to convince another filmmaker to take Coppola's place. The producers scapegoated the other filmmaker when their attempt to fire Coppola became known. Because the producers told him that the other filmmaker had attempted a coup, Coppola says he was shadowed by a replacement director, who was ready to take over if Coppola was fired. Despite such intense pressure, he managed to defend his decisions and avoid being replaced.[12] Coppola would later recollect:[13]
The Godfather was a very unappreciated movie when we were making it. They were very unhappy with it. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting it. I was always on the verge of getting fired. So it was an extremely nightmarish experience. I had two little kids, and the third one was born during that. We lived in a little apartment, and I was basically frightened that they didn't like it. They had as much as said that, so when it was all over I wasn't at all confident that it was going to be successful, and that I'd ever get another job.
Paramount was in financial trouble at the time of production and was desperate for a "big hit" to boost business, hence the pressure Coppola faced during filming. They wanted The Godfather to appeal to a wide audience and threatened Coppola with a "violence coach" to make the film more exciting. Coppola added a few more violent scenes to keep the studio happy. The scene in which Connie smashes crockery after finding out Carlo has been cheating was added for this reason.[12]
The film was originally budgeted for $2 million, and was scripted as a modern adaptation. However, when Coppola got his hands on the script, he was adamant that it be set in the same time period as the book, from 1945 to 1955. This required a large number of second unit shots, some of which embarrassed Coppola at the time.[12]
Screenwriter Robert Towne did uncredited work on the script, in particular the Pacino-Brando tomato garden scene.[14]

Casting

Coppola's casting choices were unpopular with studio executives at Paramount, particularly Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone. Coppola's first two choices for the role were Brando and Laurence Olivier, but Olivier's agent refused the role, saying, "Lord Olivier is not taking any jobs. He's very sick. He's gonna die soon and he's not interested" (Olivier lived 18 years after the refusal). Paramount wanted Ernest Borgnine and refused to accept Brando because he had delayed production on his recent films. Coppola was told by Paramount president Stanley Jaffe that "Marlon Brando will never appear in this motion picture." One studio executive proposed Danny Thomas for the role since Don Corleone was a strong "family man". After pleading with the executives, Coppola was allowed to cast Brando only if he accepted a lower salary than for his previous films, performed a screen-test, and put up a bond insuring that he would not cause any delays in production.[15] Coppola chose Brando over Borgnine on the basis of his screen test, which also won over the Paramount leadership. Charles Bluhdorn in particular was captivated by Brando's screen test; when he saw it, he exclaimed, "What are we watching? Who is this old guinea?" Brando later won an Academy Award for his portrayal, which he refused to accept in order to call attention to harmful Hollywood stereotypes of Native Americans.[16][17]
The studio originally wanted Robert Redford or Ryan O'Neal to play Michael Corleone, but Coppola wanted an unknown who looked like an Italian-American, whom he found in Al Pacino.[12] Pacino was not well known at the time, having appeared in only two minor films, and the studio did not consider him right for the part,[15] in part because of his height. Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Martin Sheen, and James Caan also auditioned.[15] At one point, Caan was the first choice to play Michael, while Carmine Caridi was signed as elder brother Sonny. Pacino was given the role only after Coppola threatened to quit the production; Caan stated that Coppola envisioned Michael to be the Sicilian-looking one and Sonny was the Americanized version. The studio agreed to Pacino on the condition that Caan was cast as Sonny instead of Caridi, despite the former's Jewish heritage and the latter closely matching the character in the novel (a six-foot-four, black-haired Italian-American bull). Coppola and Puzo would subsequently create a role for Caridi in the sequels.[18]
Bruce Dern, Paul Newman, and Steve McQueen were considered for the role of Tom Hagen that eventually went to Robert Duvall. Sylvester Stallone auditioned for Carlo Rizzi and Paulie Gatto, Anthony Perkins for Sonny, and Mia Farrow auditioned for Kay. William Devane was seen for the role of Moe Greene. Mario Adorf was approached for a role as well. A then-unknown Robert De Niro auditioned for the roles of Michael, Sonny, Carlo, and Paulie. He was cast as Paulie, but Coppola arranged a "trade" with The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight to get Al Pacino from that film. De Niro later played the young Vito Corleone in Part II, winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the role.
To some extent, the film was a family affair for Francis Ford Coppola. Carmine Coppola, his father, who had a distinguished career as a composer, conductor and arranger, wrote additional music for the film and appeared in a bit part as a piano player, and Carmine's wife, Italia Coppola, was an extra. The director's sister, Talia Shire, was cast as Connie Corleone, and his infant daughter, Sofia, played Connie's and Carlo's newborn son, Michael Francis Rizzi, in the climactic baptism scene near the movie's end.[19] Coppola also cast his sons as Tom Hagen's sons, Frank and Andrew. They are seen in the Sonny-Carlo street fight scene and behind Pacino and Duvall during the funeral scene.

Filming

Most of the principal photography took place from March 29, 1971 to August 6, 1971, although a scene with Pacino and Keaton was shot in the autumn. There were a total of 77 days of shooting, fewer than the 83 for which the production had budgeted.
The opening shot is a long, slow pullback, starting with a close-up of Bonasera, who is petitioning Don Corleone, and ending with the Godfather, seen from behind, framing the picture. This move, which lasts for about three minutes, was shot with a computer-controlled zoom lens designed by Tony Karp.[20]
The scene of Michael driving with McCluskey and Sollozzo avoided the cost of back-projection. Instead, technicians moved lights behind the car to create the illusion.
The cat in the opening scene used to hang around the studio, and was simply dropped in Brando's lap at the last minute by the director.[21][22]
One of the movie's most shocking moments involved the real severed head of a horse. Animal rights groups protested the inclusion of the scene. Coppola later stated that the horse's head was delivered to him from a dog food company; a horse had not been killed specifically for the movie.[12][15]
In the novel, Jack Woltz, the movie producer whose horse's head is put in his bed, is also shown to be a pedophile as Tom Hagen sees a young girl (presumably one of Woltz's child stars) crying while walking out of Woltz's room. This scene was cut from the theatrical release but can be found on the DVD (though Woltz can still briefly be seen kissing the girl on the cheek in his studio in the film).
The shooting of Moe Greene through the eye was inspired by the death of gangster Bugsy Siegel. To achieve the effect, actor Alex Rocco's glasses had two tubes hidden in their frames. One had fake blood in it, and the other had a BB and compressed air. When the gun was shot, the compressed air shot the BB through the glasses, shattering them from the inside. The other tube then released the fake blood.
The equally startling scene of McCluskey's shooting was accomplished by building a fake forehead on top of actor Sterling Hayden. A gap was cut in the center, filled with fake blood, and capped off with a plug of prosthetic flesh. The plug was quickly yanked out with monofilament fishing line, making a bloody hole suddenly appear in Hayden's head.
The most complicated filming scene was the death of Sonny Corleone at the Jones Beach Causeway toll plaza midway through the film. Caan's suit was rigged with 127 squibs of fake blood that exploded in a simulation of multiple sub machine-gun bullet hits.

Locations

Locations[23] around New York City were used for the film, including the then-closed flagship store of Best & Company on Fifth Avenue, which was dressed up and used for the scene in which Pacino and Keaton are Christmas shopping. At least one location in Los Angeles was used also (for the exterior of Woltz's mansion), for which neither Robert Duvall nor John Marley was available; in some shots, it is possible to see that extras are standing in for the two actors. A scene with Pacino and Keaton was filmed in the town of Ross, California. The Sicilian towns of Savoca and Forza d'Agrò outside of Taormina were also used for exterior locations. Interiors were shot at Filmways Studio in New York.[citation needed]
A side entrance to Bellevue Hospital was used for Michael's confrontation with police Captain McCluskey.[24] As of 2007, the steps and gate to the hospital were still there but have fallen victim to neglect. The hospital interiors, shown when Michael visits his father there, were filmed at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary on 14th Street, in Manhattan, New York City.[citation needed]
The scene in which Don Barzini is assassinated was filmed on the steps of the New York Supreme Court building on Foley Square in Manhattan, New York City.[25]
The wedding scene at the Corleone family compound was shot at 110 Longfellow Avenue in the Todt Hill section of Staten Island. The numerous Tudor homes on the block gave the impression that they were part of the same "compound".[26] Paramount built a Plexiglas "stone wall" which traversed the street – the same wall where Santino smashed the camera. Many of the extras in the wedding scene were local Italian-Americans who were asked by Coppola to drink homemade wine, enjoy the traditional Italian food, and participate in the scene as though it were an actual wedding. Coppola revealed in the extras DVD released in 2008 that if you look really close, some of the "daytime" scenes were actually shot at night, with almost blinding backlighting used to simulate the afternoon environment. The production scheduling required this, since this location was on an actual community street and time didn't permit extra days to shoot in daylight.[citation needed]
Two churches were used to film the baptism scene. The interior shots were filmed at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. For the baptism, Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582 was used, as were other Bach works for the pipe organ. The exterior scenes following the baptism were filmed at The Church of St. Joachim and St. Anne in the Pleasant Plains section of Staten Island. In 1973, much of the church was destroyed in a fire. Only the façade and steeple of the original church remained, and were later incorporated into a new structure.[citation needed]
The funeral scene was filmed at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens.[27] The toll booth scene was filmed at the site of Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York on Long Island, which was under construction at the time. It also utilized the former Mitchel Field, and the roadway used was once a runway.[citation needed]

 Music

The film's famous score was composed by Nino Rota. Francis Coppola's father Carmine Coppola contributed to the music performed in the film's wedding scene.[28] Later, his son would call on him to compose additional music for the score of The Godfather Part II (1974) and most of the score for The Godfather Part III (1990).

Reception

Box office performance

The Godfather was a blockbuster, breaking many box office records to become the highest grossing film of 1972. It earned $81.5 million in theatrical rentals in North America during its initial release,[29] increasing its earnings to $85.7 million through a reissue in 1973,[30] and including a limited re-release in 1997 it ultimately earned an equivalent exhibition gross of $135 million.[31] It displaced Gone with the Wind to claim the record as the top rentals earner, a position it would retain until the release of Jaws in 1975.[32][33] News articles at the time proclaimed it was the first film to gross $100 million in North America,[32] but such accounts are erroneous since this record in fact falls to The Sound of Music, released in 1965.[34] The film repeated its native success overseas, earning in total an unprecedented $142 million in worldwide theatrical rentals, to become the highest net earner.[35] Profits were so high for The Godfather that earnings for Gulf & Western Industries, Inc., which owned Paramount Pictures, jumped from seventy-seven cents per share to three dollars and thirty cents a share for the year, according to a Los Angeles Times article, dated December 13, 1972.[32] To date, it has grossed $286 million in international box office receipts,[36] and adjusted for ticket price inflation in North America, still ranks among the top 25 highest-grossing films.[37]

Critical response

Since its release, The Godfather has received universal critical acclaim.[38] Rotten Tomatoes reports that all 77 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average score of 9.1/10.[39] Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a perfect weighted average score of 100 (out of 100) based on 14 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "universal acclaim".[38]
Both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II were selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1990 and 1993, respectively. International critics routinely list these two among cinema's pinnacle achievements, sometimes considering them as one work. In the decennial 2002 Sight & Sound poll of film directors, the pair was ranked as the second best film of all time.[40] The critics poll separately voted it fourth. The American Film Institute[5] has listed it second in U.S. film history behind Citizen Kane. Other polls and publications have it first, as well, among them Entertainment Weekly,[41] and Empire magazine (November 2008)[42]
The soundtrack's main theme by Nino Rota was also critically acclaimed; the main theme ("Speak Softly Love") is well-known and widely used (see Score Controversy for more information).
Director Stanley Kubrick believed that The Godfather was possibly the greatest movie ever made, and had without question the best cast.[43]
Previous Mafia movies had looked at the gangs from the perspective of an outraged outsider.[44] In contrast, The Godfather presents the gangster's perspective of the Mafia as a response to corrupt society.[44] Although the Corleone family is presented as immensely rich and powerful, no scenes depict prostitution, gambling, loan sharking or other forms of racketeering.[45] Some critics argue that the setting of a criminal counterculture allows for unapologetic gender stereotyping, and is an important part of the film's appeal ("You can act like a man!", Don Vito tells a weepy Johnny Fontane).[46]
Real-life gangsters responded enthusiastically to the film, with many of them feeling it was a portrayal of how they were supposed to act.[47] Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, the former Underboss in the Gambino crime family,[48] stated: "I left the movie stunned ... I mean I floated out of the theater. Maybe it was fiction, but for me, then, that was our life. It was incredible. I remember talking to a multitude of guys, made guys, who felt exactly the same way. " According to Anthony Fiato after seeing the film, Patriarca crime family members Paulie Intiso and Nicky Giso altered their speech patterns closer to that of Vito Corleone's.[49] Intiso would frequently swear and use poor grammar; but after the movie came out, he started to articulate and philosophize more.[49]
Remarking on the 40th anniversary of the film's release, film critic John Podhoretz praised The Godfather as "arguably the great American work of popular art" and "the summa of all great moviemaking before it".[50] Two years before, Roger Ebert wrote in his journal that it "comes closest to being a film everyone agrees... is unquestionably great."[51]

Awards

The Godfather won three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor for Marlon Brando and Best Adapted Screenplay for both Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola. The film had been nominated for eight other Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Al Pacino, James Caan, and Robert Duvall, Best Director for Coppola, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound.[52] The film also had a Best Original Score nomination but was disqualified when found out that Nino Rota had used a similar score in another film. Despite having three nominees for the Best Supporting Actor award, they all lost to Joel Grey in Cabaret. It also lost the Best Director, Best Sound and Best Film Editing to Cabaret.
The film won five Golden Globes out of seven nominations. It won the Golden Globe for Best Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Score and Best Actor – Drama for Brando. It received two nominations for Best Actor – Drama for Pacino and Best Supporting Actor for Caan.
Nino Rota won the Grammy Award for Best Original Score for a Motion Picture or TV Special for the film's soundtrack.
At the BAFTA Awards, Nino Rota won the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music while Brando, Duvall and Pacino received nominations for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Most Promising Newcomer, respectively. Anna Hill Johnstone was also nominated for Best Costume Design.

Legacy

Cinematic influence

Although many films about gangsters preceded The Godfather, Coppola's nuanced treatment of the Corleone family and their associates, and his portrayal of mobsters as characters of considerable psychological depth and complexity[61] was an innovation. He took it further with The Godfather Part II, and the success of those two films, critically, artistically and financially, opened the doors for more and varied depictions of mobster life, including films such as Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas and TV series such as David Chase's The Sopranos.
The image of the Mafia as a feudal organization with the Don as both the protector of the small fry and the collector of obligations from them for his services is now a commonplace trope which The Godfather helped to popularize. Similarly, the recasting of the Don's family as a figurative "royal family" has spread beyond fictional boundaries into the real world as well – (cf. John Gotti – the "Dapper Don", and his celebrity family.) This portrayal is echoed in the more sordid reality of lower level Mafia "familial" entanglements depicted in various post-Godfather Mafia fare, such as Scorsese's Mean Streets and Casino, and also to the grittier hard-boiled pre-Godfather films.
The 2005 Indian film Sarkar, directed by Ram Gopal Varma, with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead role as a "Don" and his son Abhishek Bachchan as the equivalent of Michael, is modeled on The Godfather.
In the DVD commentary for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas states that the interwoven scenes of Anakin Skywalker killing Separatist leaders and Palpatine announcing the beginning of the Galactic Empire was an homage to the christening and assassination sequence in The Godfather.

In popular culture

The Godfather epic, encompassing the original trilogy and the additional footage Coppola incorporated later, is by now thoroughly integrated into American life, and the first film had the largest impact. Its depiction of Italian immigrants to the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, unlike any film before it, is perhaps attributable to the director, himself an Italian-American, presenting his own understanding of their experience. Setting aside the stereotypes of the criminal element and the simple peasant, the films explain through their action the uneven integration of a particular population into a new milieu. Ironically, The Godfather increased Hollywood's unsavory depictions of immigrant Italians in the aftermath of the film and was a recruiting tool for organized crime.[62] Still, the story is of a piece with all immigrant experience as much as it is rooted in the specific circumstances of the Corleones, a family of privilege who live outside the law, are not robbed of their universality yet assume a heroic aspect that is at once admirable and repellent. Released in a period of intense national cynicism and self-criticism, the American film struck a chord about the dual identities inherent in a nation of immigrants.[63]
The concept of a mafia "Godfather" was an invention of Mario Puzo's and the film's effect was to add the fictional nomenclature to the language. Similarly, actual gangsters adopted Don Vito Corleone's unforgettable "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" for themselves. That line, voted the second most memorable line in cinema history in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes by the American Film Institute[64] originates in the French novel Le Père Goriot, by Honoré de Balzac, where Vautrin tells Eugène that he is "making him an offer that he cannot refuse".[citation needed]
An indication of the continuing influence of The Godfather and its sequels can be gleaned from the many references to it which have appeared in every medium of popular culture in the decades since the film's initial release. That these homages, quotations, visual references, satires, and parodies continue to pop up even now shows clearly the film's enduring impact.[citation needed]

 In film

References to the film are abundant. In the 1999 film Analyze This, which starred Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal, many references are made both directly and indirectly to The Godfather. One dream scene is almost a shot by shot replica of the attempted assassination of Vito Corleone (Crystal playing the Don and De Niro playing Fredo). In the 1990 comedy The Freshman, Marlon Brando plays a role reminiscent of Don Corleone. And one of the most unlikely homages came in 2004, when the PG-rated, animated family film Shark Tale was released with a storyline that nodded at this and other movies about the Mafia. Similarly, Rugrats in Paris, based on a Nickelodeon children's show, began with an extended parody of The Godfather.
In Set it Off, four women - Lita "Stoney" Newsome (Jada Pinkett), Cleopatra "Cleo" Sims (Queen Latifah), Francesca "Frankie" Sutton (Vivica A. Fox), and Tisean "T.T." Williams (Kimberly Elise) - meet around a conference table at the office building they clean to plan a series of bank heists, during which time they do imitations of The Godfather.[65]
In You've Got Mail, Joe Fox (played by Tom Hanks) quotes The Godfather, positing:
"The Godfather is the I-ching. The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom. The Godfather is the answer to any question. What should I pack for my summer vacation? 'Leave the gun, take the cannoli'. What day of the week is it? 'Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday'."

In television

The Warner Bros. animated show Animaniacs featured several segments called "Goodfeathers", with pigeons spoofing characters from various gangster films. One of the characters is "The Godpigeon", an obvious parody of Brando's portrayal of Vito Corleone.
John Belushi appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch as Vito Corleone in a therapy session trying to properly express his inner feelings towards the Tattaglia Family, who, in addition to muscling in on his territory, "also, they shot my son Santino 56 times".
The Simpsons makes numerous references to The Godfather, including one scene in the episode "Strong Arms of the Ma" that parodies the Sonny-Carlo street fight scene, with Marge Simpson beating a mugger in front of an animated version of the same New York streetscape, including using the lid of a trash can during the fight. The "All's Fair in Oven War" final scene shows James Caan being ambushed by hillbillies (Cletus relatives) at a toll booth, a parody of the scene when Sonny Corleone (portrayed by Caan) is shot and killed. The later episode "The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer" parodies the film's ending scene, with Lisa Simpson taking Kay Adams' role and Fat Tony's son Michael standing in for Michael Corleone. The horse-head scene is also parodied in the episode Lisa's Pony.
In the television show The Sopranos, Tony Soprano's topless bar is named Bada Bing after the line in The Godfather when Sonny Corleone says, "You've gotta get up close like this and bada-bing! You blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit."
In Season 5 Episode 7 of Breaking Bad, there's an explicit homage where Walter White orders the execution of prisoners that could implicate him as a drug king.


Above Extracts Taken From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Godfather

More Info: http://www.thegodfather.com/ - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/






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