The Godfather Trilogy (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972-1990)

[ianthemovie]

FWIW, It's even more apparent in Italian cinema because it was standard practice to overdub all dialogue after the fact

What's more, Coppola was (for obvious reasons) highly influenced by Italian cinema and frequently hired Italian crew members on his films. I'm not sure if he had started working with his Italian crew at this point in his career but that might explain it. It's also possible that he simply wanted to try utilizing traditional Italian methods. I would be surprised if he doesn't touch upon this in his audio commentaries, by the way. He has been very detailed in discussing nearly every aspect of his films' production.

[domino harvey]

Revisited the trilogy in one long day of viewings and my takeaway on the first two parts remains more or less unchanged: the first is every bit the masterpiece it is always held to be, especially the fortuitous right place right time casting of all time talents like Duvall (who, if I may controversially posit, gives the best and most underrated perf in the film), Caan, Brando, and Pacino, all giving their best performances that succeed because they all feel lived in and real. I think if Evans had pushed Coppola to cut it down more we could have lost the fifteen minutes spent on Michael’s time in Italy, but I can’t imagine what else would have been lost for the original 2h15m cut.

I remain unconvinced that the second film is an equal to the first. We don’t get any of the finely tuned plotting and operatic payoffs from the first. What’s worse, it devotes a lot of screen time to explaining moments and beats from the first film that I didn’t need fleshed out. I don’t care about Vito Corleone’s childhood/apprenticeship, I don’t need to see him buy oranges or utter his catchphrases for the first time. DeNiro’s Oscar win is a joke— if the Academy had to pick one of three supporting nominees from the film, surely Michael V Gazzo’s incredible “Where the hell did this guy come from?” perf merited it far more. Gazzo’s compulsive energy is the easy highlight of the film for me. Pacino, so great and dynamic in the first entry, coasts here in the same smoldering register that renders Michael far more boring a character this round. I think Keaton’s assessment of Michael, that he’s irredeemable evil, is one shared by the film, and there’s less room for nuance with the flat arc of Michael here. I do like the detail that for all his power and excuses and codes, he’s too cowardly to commit the fratricidal act himself, though.

As for the third, well, I currently have none of my guarded praise from my first viewing this time: I thought virtually every decision made here was bad. The casting and performances this round are particularly grievous. I love Eli Wallach and Joe Montegna in other films but their characters seem such improbably small fish to pull off many of their machinations, and they’re dispersed with such ease that it only underlines their limited threat (and the embarrassing sequence of Talia Shire, punching way out of her weight class in this film, landing the coup de grace is as unlikely a plot beat as any I’ve ever seen). It’s hard to separate Andy Garcia here from anything else he’s done, but perhaps one has to give consideration for him doing it here first— however, I don’t buy this character, I don’t buy how quickly and easily a street hood with good genes ascends to the top, and the double crossing intrigue never lands (much less the “romance”). The worst decision here, though, has to be George Hamilton. Imagine trying to fill the void left by Duvall with George Hamilton… was he mobbed up in real life or something? Beyond these mistakes, as I mentioned in the first page of this thread, the stylistic whiplash between this and the first two is stark and sad and its mediocrity lowers to badness because we know every creative involved here could have used all of these component parts to do almost anything else but what we got. I do not expect I will ever watch this installment again, but who knows— lately I have a compulsion to rewatch movies I hated from 15, 20 years ago to reassess, so give it time and I may be back here with a new take…

[therewillbeblus]

I didn't bother with the third, but also revisited these the other day. Agreed on Duvall, who never wow'd me in these films before, coming across as the best actor in a very subtle performance, and Gazzo’s just about the only thing I can stand in the modern scenes of Part II. His nonsensical involvement is delightful, as if he came to act in a much better and lively film while everyone else is sad and subdued, and decided to just go with what he wanted the tone to be regardless. Our only disagreement is in the prequel scenes, which still play for me as the best elements of Part II. De Niro likely won his Oscar for memorizing a new dialect, but I also think his performance demonstrates an interesting kind of growth that leaves the character in step with who he was before his push into a life of crime, and that's a rare and difficult thing to pull off with such sparse time. The rooftop chase through the kill that would change everything is so well constructed and leans into the brutality soberly in ways that can be sensationalized elsewhere. I'm not with Pauline Kael on these being so different that they made me cry, though!

[colinr0380]

I don't have much to add to either domino or therewillbeblu's takes, but on revisiting Blue Velvet recently was Lynch consciously doing a cheeky suburban homage to Brando's orange grove death scene from the Godfather in the opening of that film? (Especially with the matching pair of toddlers watching on at the collapse of the patriarchy)

[domino harvey]

I did think it was perverse that the Blu-ray’s main menu screen for the first film is just a loop of the corpse in the grove— granted someone who hasn’t seen this before wouldn’t know what they’re looking at, but still pretty spoilery!

[therewillbeblus]

That's such a strange menu screen decision for a movie overflowing with iconography that spoils nothing

[domino harvey]

The menu screens for the other two were Michael looking out from his window in Tahoe during Fredo’s hit and the swinging hanged body of the papal adviser, the last of which is potentially a spoiler since you can tell what’s going on in the image, but it’s too dark to see who it is