How Coppola’s ‘Godfather’ at 50 remains the best movie of all times

Three men were having a quiet lunch at La Scala, the fine dining Italian restaurant in midtown Manhattan on a chilling March afternoon in 1971. Sitting across the Montreal-born Hollywood producer Albert Ruddy, was Nat Marcone, the president of the Italian American Civil Rights League, and Anthony Colombo, whose father Joseph Colombo Sr was a reputed leader of organised crime in Brooklyn. In addition to the menu of the well-appointed eatery famous for its Neapolitan cuisine, the locked script of the Ruddy’s latest film The Godfather was also placed on the table.

The shooting of the film based on the bestselling novel about a New York crime family was just weeks away, but the mafia did not want The Godfather to be made. Ruddy had received threats of boycotts, strikes, and demonstrations. Anthony, the twenty-six-year-old Military Academy graduate, softly demanded the deletion of the words, ‘Mafia’ and ‘Cosa Nostra’, from the screenplay, and Marcone felt the use of the words would defame the Italian American community. As a member of the Jewish faith, Ruddy knew all about racial bigotry and needed no further convincing. He accepted the suggestions without any arguments. The three men walked out of La Scala with smiles on their faces and their belief in America intact. Suddenly, all the threats evaporated, and demonstrations were called off.

It was business, not personal. The making of The Godfather began when a writer, Mario Puzo, inundated with gambling debts was forced to cut a deal for his proposed novel about the Sicilian mobsters with Robert Evans at Hollywood’s Paramount Studios for just $12,500. His novel, The Godfather with the remarkable central character of Don Vito Corleone, became the first paperback to sell six million copies after being on the bestseller list for a record 67 weeks in America. It was also the most popular novel across Europe and a movie version seemed a real probability. However, no Hollywood film had ever surpassed the extraordinary success of a blockbuster novel.

On the west coast of America, a broke 29-year-old filmmaker, Francis Ford Coppola of Italian ancestry, was spending time with his family. Peter Bart at Paramount suggested the name of this UCLA film school graduate as the go-to director for Puzo’s gigantic bestseller. Coppola’s friend George Lucas, the visionary filmmaker, foresaw the potential of the project and insisted that it was an offer that he could not refuse. Over the next few weeks, Coppola carefully penciled the gargantuan novel at the Café Trieste in San Francisco. He later noted, “Upon that second reading, much of the book fell away in my mind, revealing a story that was a metaphor for American capitalism in the tale of a great king with three sons: The oldest was given his passion and aggressiveness; the second his sweet nature and childlike qualities; and the third, his intelligence, cunning, and coldness.”

Against the wishes of the Paramount, he set the film in New York of the 1940s and decided to cast Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Cann, Diane Keaton, and his sister Talia Shire in the major roles. The studio hit the roof. An executive at Paramount looked straight at Coppola and said, “Francis, Marlon Brando will never appear in this picture…” But Coppola fought hard for his casting choices, and he finally won. The budget went from $1 million to $6.5 million.

Days before shooting began, Coppola gathered his actors at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, and with the Corleone family finally sitting around a dinner table together, rehearsals began. Then on 23 March 1971, he began filming the Italian American family saga about an elderly Mob leader, Don Vito Corleone, and his potential heirs — the impetuous Sonny, the emotionally fragile Fredo, and the youngest ivy-college-educated war‐hero son Michael. The Jazz singer, Morgana King, cast as Mama Corleone was much sought after during the production because of her Sicilian heritage. The role of Luca Brasi, Don Corleone’s ruthless enforcer went to a six-ft-six, 320-pound behemoth named Lenny Montana who visited the film set as a bodyguard to an actual mafia chieftain.

With his key crew of cinematographer Gordon Willis, production designer Dean Tavoularis, and the costume designer Anna Hill Johnstone surrounding him Coppola invented the classical look and feel of the period film complete with the vintage cars, street lamps, pushcarts, and even prices, circa 1940s, tacked up in store windows. The attention to detail was astounding and even the sound effects of the vintage cars had been recorded at an automobile museum. With the studio threatening to replace Coppola, the director took spur-of-the-moment risks wherever necessary and did his best to create the ambiance of the era that is visible in every scene.

Coppola’s cinematic genius brought to life the twenty-minute opening sequence of Corleone’s lavish traditional family wedding. The ambush on the causeway that killed Sonny was shot in one take. The director approved Brando’s on-the-spot improvisation in the scene of Vito having a heart attack while playing with his grandson. Coppola outshined all his peers in the now-classic baptism of blood scene when Michael while serving as godfather at the christening of Connie’s baby, vanquishes Corleone family’s enemies and rightfully assumes his father’s mantle. For authenticity, Coppola cleverly inserted his family in the film with his daughter Sofia, his wife Eleanor, and sons in the Baptism scene. From a distance it seemed, Coppola was shooting a home movie for a mafia family.

Then a real-life incident in New York imitated cinema. On 28 June 1971, a few blocks from the shooting of The Godfather, a hitman posing as a photographer pulled out a gun and blasted Joseph Colombo Sr. The hitman was instantly killed at the scene, but Colombo Sr remained in a coma till his death.

Coppola's screen version of Mario Puzo's The Godfather opened in New York on a rainy Wednesday in March 1972 fifty years ago and the Corleone family entered mythology. Vincent Canby, in his review in The New York Times, called it “one of the most brutal and moving chronicles of American life ever designed within the limits of popular entertainment”. It was seen as the cinematic equivalent of Shakespearean dramas of royal succession, power and allegiance. The 47-year-old Marlon Brando’s depiction of Don Vito Corleone, the fearsome and aging Sicilian-born chieftain of an organised crime family with headquarters on Long Island complete with the receding hairline, cotton-stuffed cheeks, the asthmatic voice, and measured movements set the pitch for the entire saga. Brando gently stroking his cat and sorting people out was even appreciated by the real godfathers far away in Sicily.

The unknown actor Al Pacino’s performance as Michael Corleone drew the most applause. In the movie, he skillfully assumed the responsibility of the Godfather and continued the family’s legacy of dealing with organised gangsters, crooked cops, unprincipled judges, and corrupt politicians in America. His character arc as the introverted youngest son who transformed into a figure of immense gravity and ruthless emotional reserve became an example of modulation. The film that delivered a tough statement on the futility of violence, revitalised Brando’s stumbling film career, and launched Pacino into stardom.

Even the supporting roles of James Caan as Sonny, John Cazale as Fredo, Diane Keaton as Kate, Robert Duvall as Don Corleone’s consigliere Tom Hagen, Richard Castellano as Clemenza, and Al Lettieri’s Sollozzo connected with their characters creating unforgettable screen performances. The audience loved watching Al Martino, as the whimpering Johnny Fontane being slapped by Brando, John Marley’s Jack Woltz waking up in his Hollywood mansion with Khartoum’s head on his bed, the meeting with the drug-dealing upstart Sollozzo, the shoot out in the restaurant, the congregation of the heads of the five families of New York and the romantic scenes set in the Sicilian countryside.

The circular movement of the ‘Godfather Waltz’ created by music composer Nino Rota evoked a never-ending nostalgia, and magnificently added to the Corleone family’s on-screen supremacy. The well-crafted dialogues, “Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli”, “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”, “don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever”, and “Never tell anyone outside the Family what you are thinking again” became part of the American lexicon. However, not everyone in America was happy with the film. According to a New York Magazine piece by Mario Puzo, he was confronted by Frank Sinatra at a Los Angeles hotspot for the apparent similarities between the singing star and Johnny Fontane’s character in the movie.

On 27 March 1973, at the Oscar night in Hollywood, Coppola and Puzo picked up the Oscar for the best screenplay based on material from another medium. Brando received the Oscar for his portrayal of Vito Corleone but refused to accept it protesting against the film industry’s treatment of the American Indians. Oscar night also belonged to Albert Ruddy as his production won the award as best picture of the year. In an emotional speech, he stated: “America needs the motion picture business, and the motion picture business needs the United States… The American dream and what we all want and for me at least is represented by this (Oscar). It is there for everybody if we want to work, dream and try to get it.”

With three Oscars and the highest-grossing film of the year both art and arithmetic came out winners in the end. Subsequently, two more Godfather movies were produced, and they won a combined nine Oscars grossing more than $1.1 billion when adjusted for inflation. Cinematographer Gordon Willis also received an honorary Oscar in 2009. Now in 2022, the attraction of The Godfather, continues and a TV series, The Offer, produced by Paramount about the making of the film from the perspective of Albert Ruddy is to be launched in April 2022.

The film has been extremely popular in India. Unrelated to the success of the movie, Ruddy’s wife Françoise Ruddy went on to be appointed by Indian spiritual leader Osho Rajneesh as his International Secretary and renamed Ma Prem Hasya. Half a century later as The Godfather celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, the story of this Italian-American clan is idealised, and their code of loyalty and family honour is still romanticised. Largely considered the best movie of all times, Coppola’s sweeping cinematic portrait of the Corleones remains unsurpassed in the history of motion pictures.

The writer is the author of ‘Subhas Chandra Bose: The Man India Missed the Most’ (2017), ‘Har Dayal: The Great Indian Genius’ (2020) and ‘India on the World Stage’ (2021). His book on ‘The Life and Times of Vallabhbhai Patel’ is coming soon. The views expressed are personal.