Tori Brazier continues our Al Pacino Retrospective with a look at The Godfather…
Regularly topping polls as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 masterpiece The Godfather needs very little introduction. Suffice it to say, the film deserves every one of its accolades (including three Academy Award wins and seven nominations) and every inch of its stellar reputation amongst film fans and critics alike.
Based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Mario Puzo (who co-wrote the screenplay with Coppola), The Godfather tells the story of a fictional New York mob family headed by patriarch and ‘Don’ Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando). It focuses on the gradual moral corruption of his youngest and brightest son Michael (Al Pacino), who begins the film in 1945 as a decorated war hero and college-educated family outsider, but ends it as a ruthless Mafia boss operating out of Las Vegas in 1955 after a series of blood-thirsty revenge schemes between the Five Families (based on the real-life Italian American criminal New York Five Families).
Pre-production, and production for that matter, were rife with difficulty for The Godfather. Not only was Coppola not Paramount’s first choice for director (both Sergio Leone and Peter Bogdanovich had turned the project down in favour of later making the Jewish-American gangster epic Once Upon A Time in America and What’s Up, Doc? respectively) but neither Al Pacino or Marlon Brando were seen as agreeable options for their roles. Coppola, whose biggest directing credit to date was Finian’s Rainbow with Fred Astaire, was mainly chosen due to his Italian American heritage as Paramount studio boss of the time Robert Evans had seen previous Mafia films helmed by non-Italians bomb at the box office, and this time he wanted to be able to “smell the spaghetti”. Coppola had to fight hard to cast both Brando and Pacino after Laurence Olivier turned down the role of Don Corleone, as Paramount wanted Ernest Borgnine and Robert Redford or Ryan O’Neal for the parts. Brando was seen as more trouble than he was worth due to having delayed filming on previous productions, and Pacino at this time was still a relative unknown, having only appeared in two films. At one point James Caan was set to play Michael, but after Coppola threatened to quit the film Pacino was cast and Caan was moved on to the role of eldest Corleone brother Sonny. Coppola’s reasoning was that in his vision he saw an Italian-American actor for Michael, who could convincingly suggest Sicilian heritage, and not for Sonny as he was the ‘Americanized’ son. In Coppola’s own words, the making of this classic movie was “an extremely nightmarish experience” as it was “very unappreciated”. Paramount was “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”.
Luckily for Coppola, and as everyone knows today, The Godfather proved to be a colossal success and was for a time the highest grossing movie ever made. Sequels were released in 1974 and 1990, with The Godfather Part II becoming the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Brando also did well from the film, having famously stuffed his cheeks in order to achieve the desired “bulldog” effect for Don Corleone and based the character’s distinctive voice on that of real-life mobster Frank Costello, winning the Best Actor Oscar for his efforts. Both he and co-star Pacino, however, boycotted the ceremony: Brando in order to make a statement against the mistreatment of Native Americans by the film industry (Sacheen Littlefeather attended in his place in order to make a speech), and Pacino in protest of the fact that he had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor rather than Best Actor like Brando, despite the fact that he had more screen time. It was, nonetheless, the career-making and, alongside that of Tony Montana in Scarface, the career-defining role for Al Pacino, who critic David Thomson describes as having “made the poison of vengeance and paranoia absolutely persuasive”.
So, I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse: don’t be a Fredo, join the family and watch this film- and you probably won’t end up with a horse’s head in your bed tonight.
For more on the Al Pacino Retrospective running at the BFI throughout February amd March, head here.
Tori Brazier
Originally published February 4, 2014. Updated November 28, 2022.
