Is there any midlife moment more poignant, painful even, than when a father introduces his teenage son to The Godfather, and the reaction is “Little slow”?
Slow? We’re talking about the greatest movie of all time here! Not just a cinematic masterpiece, but for my generation, a touchstone of masculinity, what with Sonny’s tinder-box machismo, Clemenza’s murderous avuncularity, and Michael’s transformation from sensitive idealist to heart of stone. The Godfather isn’t just a movie. It’s something to be passed down, the way Don Corleone passes on his wisdom to his sons: “Never tell anyone outside the family what you’re thinking again.” At least that’s what I want The Godfather to be. But is it?
Celebrating 50 years since its release in 1972, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic achievement is back in the pop-cultural consciousness. A new edition of Mario Puzo’s bestseller has been released with an intro by Coppola, along with a “50th Anniversary Edition” of The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, and The Godfather: Part III (the latter being the critical flop Coppola tried to salvage last year by editing it a little and rebranding it The Death of Michael Corleone). Paramount+, the streaming arm of the studio that made The Godfather, recently aired The Offer, a series about the making of the movie, built around its unlikely producer Albert S. Ruddy, an ex–Rand Corporation card-puncher whose principal credit had been the World War II POW camp sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. Most recently, the death of James Caan generated fond memories of his legendary turn as Sonny.
I can’t get enough of any of it. Have you seen Robert De Niro’s audition for the role of Sonny? Or Caan reading with Diane Keaton to play Michael? These auditions were filmed by the wife of Coppola’s disciple George Lucas. “Give it to Al Pacino,” she said: “He undresses you with his eyes.” Keaton also thought Al was cute. I happily dive down all those rabbit holes. If I’m scrolling through channels and land on The Godfather, I still can’t stop watching it all the way to the end no matter how many times I’ve seen it.
So what is this magic that gives Coppola’s masterpiece its enduring appeal—well beyond, say, the movie that won eight Oscars in the year The Godfather won only three? (That movie was Cabaret.)
Robert Evans—the garmento-turned-actor-turned– studio head who ran Paramount and got The Godfather made against considerable odds—says in his memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture that good movies don’t come out of everyone getting along. Passion, and the conflict that goes with it, is what makes a great film.
The Offer makes the Evans-Coppola dynamic seem like a lovefest. (They are superbly played by Matthew Goode and Dan Fogler.) But this was hardly the case. Although it was Evans who recruited the young, arty Coppola to direct, their feuding started early in the process and continued almost to Evans’s death in 2019. The first major battle was over casting. Coppola wanted Pacino. “That shrimp,” as Evans called him, was a respected but little-known New York stage actor. He had starred in Israel Horovitz’s play The Indian Wants the Bronx with John Cazale, who would play Fredo in Godfathers I and II. But prior to The Godfather, Pacino’s only film credit was Panic in Needle Park, a downer from 1971. In Evans’s mind, he was no movie star. He wanted Ryan O’Neal, newly famous from the Paramount blockbuster Love Story, or Robert Redford. In The Offer, there’s a scene with Evans and his wife, Ali McGraw—O’Neal’s co-star in Love Story—watching Panic in Needle Park. McGraw is mesmerized by Pacino: “I can’t take my eyes off him.” Evans relents.
