The Godfather is arguably a more important movie, culturally. It essentially invented the mob genre and established a romantic mythos for the Mafia. The acting was as good as it gets, and Brando gave one of the most iconic perfortmances of all time.
Having said that, I still find Goodfellas more compulsively watchable, and the acting is just as good - especially Pesci, but DeNiro’s performance in that might be a little underrated as well. same with Ray Liotta, for that matter. Henry Hill is such an unsympathetic heel, but for some reason he’s still fascinating to watch.
I’ve seen The Godfather once all the way through, and found it unremarkable. Tried to watch it several more timrs, to no avail. Goodfellas is worlds better, IMHO.
The Godfather was original in its time, but among nearly 40 years of mobster films, it’s lost ground to better films. The Goodfellas is one of those. If the Godfather wasn’t your first mobster flick, it’s likely to prove itself unexceptional.
More often than not, that’s the way it works. The person who invented a genre deserves some credit for having made something new, but it’s pretty likely that someone else is going to top him, later.
They’re different movies for different moods, both remarkable in their own ways. I only saw The Godfather a couple years ago and was completely enthralled by it. I didn’t think I was going to like it, especially after seeing Goodfellas and all the mob movies that came after it, and because it’s a lonnnng movie (and I tend to nod off if a movie creeps past the two-hour mark), but it proved to be a veritable Shakespearean epic, well deserving of its place in the American cinematic canon.
(And I haven’t seen Godfather II yet. I take it that it’s supposed to be pretty good, too, eh?)
It’s also about the American immigrant experience - taken together with Part 2, I don’t think any movie has ever portrayed it as deeply and vividly. My family also immigrated to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century; my grandfather was also born in a tiny apartment in the lower east side of Manhattan. The story resonates with me.
In fact, I’d say that while *Goodfellas *is a movie about crime, *Godfather *is a family saga about a family whose business happens to be crime.
PSXer, what kind of an answer do you even expect for a question like the one in the OP? Look at the IMDb Top 250 films:
The Godfather is at number 2 with an average rating of 9.2 (out of 10). Goodfellas is at 15 with an average rating of 8.7. Now, unless what you’re asking is whether the IMDb is a gigantic conspiracy which someone has created purely to promote certain films, then the answer is obvious. Yes, there are very many people who think that Goodfellas is a great film. On the average, most people rate The Godfather as being a little bit better, but for films rated that close, it’s clear that there are a lot of people who rate Goodfellas as being better.
What you asked in the OP was whether there was anyone at all who thinks Goodfellas is the better film. It sounds like what you’re saying is that you personally don’t think that it’s better, so you can ignore any objective evidence that there are people who disagree with you, since it’s not possible for anyone else’s tastes to be different. The answers you’re getting in this thread aren’t really addressing directly your question (because the question doesn’t make much sense). People are just giving their own opinions on the relative merit of the two films. If one looks at the literal meaning of your question though, the answer is obvious. Yes, there are many people who like Goodfellas better.
This doesn’t mean that I personally agree with the ratings on the IMDb. My personal ratings are often wildly different. I recognize though that other people exist and they have their own opinions, and I’m not free to act as though they don’t exist.
Nothing is as good as Godfather I and II combined, but Goodfellas has a bit of an edge over Godfather I. Scorsese is by far the better director. Godfather indulges in archetypes, the bane of good writing and directing (Men fear Michael and women worship him because the script says they do; Henry Hill has a slightly more believable link to reality). ** The Godfather** romanticizes its dodgy protagonists, while Goodfellas just invites you to look at them, warts and all.
Still, Goodfellas is no epic and The Godfather is. I could go either way in this one.
I have fond memories of the mammaries of Miichael’s first wife in “The Godfather” but I’d rather watch “Goodfellas”. But for a gangster film, I’ll still take “Each Dawn I Die” with Jimmy Cagney and George Raft. Raft didn’t have to do much acting to play a gangster, he was pretty close to being one.
Mob films that were closely patterned after real events and people didn’t exist prior to The Godfather. Efforts to portray mob activity before that film were either cartoonish or way off the mark. Puzo wrote about the Vegas mob, the Miami mob and the Havana mob, and about real events, such as the Castro revolution that evicted the mob from Cuba: he just used different names, but people like Meyer Lansky, Luciano, et al, were thinly disguised. That these events and people were dramatized is just good movie making, but I didn’t find any of them to be sympathetic characters.
Goodfellas was just pure entertainment, and I enjoy watching it over Godfather, depending on what mood I’m in.
I’ll join your team! At least Citizen Kane is no longer at (or anywhere near) the top of that list. I don’t have SR in my top 20, even though I really like the movie.
