Review of The Godfather (1972) by Clem666 — 18 Jan 2021

It was about time I finally took an interest in this famous masterpiece of 1970s cinema. Before I saw it, I had heard a lot about it and I had read quite a lot about it. So I somehow managed to set aside 3 hours of free time in order to focus my attention completely on this feature film.

The colors, sequencing and the lighting are beautiful throughout the film. The immersion in the heart of a powerful Italian-American family is complete, especially thanks to the scenes of festivals and traditions directly imported from Southern Europe. The main characters are endearing. The script, although we know from the first thirty minutes the tone and subject matter that the film will have, is quite unpredictable in its own way. We can feel the drama that hovers over the Corleone family and its survival all the time. There is no doubt that the movie and its genesis are entirely rooted in a factual observation and study of events related to the Mafia.

The violence is totally rich in meaning. It is not used and shown as one would expect when watching a film about the mafia. It is cleverly diffracted in accordance with the characters, their individual personalities and purposes. It is only excessive when events require it to be so.

Unfortunately, however, I have recognized some important and numerous flaws in the film, starting with its length. As I said, the atmosphere is heavy throughout the entire length, one is constantly preparing in vain for the unpredictable, but nothing covers the general rhythm of the plot, which does not hesitate to let long uninteresting scenes of everyday life run their course.

The acting is interesting, especially in the case of Al Pacino. I found Marlon Brando (in the role of Vito Corleone) rather flat, almost inexpressive from beginning to end except for a few intense scenes. I find that one of the major flaws of the film is to be found in Marlon Brando's (in my opinion) completely failed facial makeup. Until the end I couldn't accept his two cheeks with their strange shapes and preventing him from articulating properly. All he does is mumbling again and again. I think this is an excellent example of a makeup that takes precedence over the actor's abilities, and that's a shame, especially for a movie with such a critical acclaim.

With the information I had before I saw the film, I did not expect that the woman as a whole would play an important role in the story. Nevertheless, I was excessively disappointed by the feminine images that the film returns to us. They are only there to brighten men's days, complaining, whining, cooking, educating kids, breaking dishes and crying (I am not making this up, all those descriptions directly come from different scenes of the movie). I made every effort to try to capture the slightest clue in the film that any lady is smart, but there was nothing I could do about it. Stupid traditional patriarchal society at its best.

The script allows us to take a deep interest in various characters evolving in parallel. I thought it was a brilliant idea, but eventually you get lost very quickly in the first names, nicknames and surnames of the hundreds of protagonists present at the casting. All of this gives a nasty impression of superfluity and superficiality to the story that we try to tell us for three hours.

Except for these most intense moments, the film is excessively poor in terms of emotions. Everything seems to happen as if everything had been planned down to the most outrageous dramas. The film seems to be much more interested in the machinations of the mafia than in the real human adventures that crime engenders. From this point of view, the mafia seems like a simple banal organization, except that it takes place in the most total illegality, giving a different meaning to each individual's life. It would have been much more interesting to have given more detail to the characters and especially their relationship to each other and to the authority of the godfather. Here everything seems to take place in an ocean of convenience that takes away all its intensity from the film.

I did my best to take into consideration the time of release of this film to try to analyze it with arguments as close to objectivity as possible. I can totally understand that at the time this film received so many positive reviews. Unfortunately, watching it in 2020 only underlines the fact that other more recent films manage to give a content similar in depth to 'The Godfather' but sparing us all the negative hazards that I have just explained above.