Reassessing The Godfather

Cafe Society
1

I recently read a comment by the late film critic Ian Alexander Cameron. He described The Godfather as “built to be the “Gone With The Wind” of the crime genre, which is to say a crime movie for people who despise crime movies but are impressed by gigantic, best selling novels, a movie for people who do not even much like movies.”

Them’s fighting words and I decided to rewatch for the first time in many years both The Godfather and Godfather II. (The third film in the series I deliberately omitted, I just don’t consider it as belonging with the first two.)

After watching them I thought about Cameron’s remarks again. Was he right? To my surprise I found myself thinking that he does have a point. The films are superb cinema and hold up well after all these years, they fully deserve their status as classics and I speak as one who loves both crime movies and movies in general. But comparing them with other classics of the genre (eg the 1928 version of The Racket, 1931’s The Public Enemy, Little Caesar from the same year, the 1932 Scarface) the two movies do seem bloated and operatic, as does Brian De Palma’s Scarface. I can see the relevance of Cameron’s invocation of Gone With The Wind and I do wonder just how many fans of the Godfather movies know or even care about the earlier classic gangster films or crime movies in general.

What are others’ thoughts on this?

2

I thought The Godfather was great, and Gone With the Wind sucked. But what do I know?

3

The Godfather movies were about family and the evolution of Michael and Vito. The Mafia stuff was just the context.

It’s like saying Gone With the Wind was about the Civil War.

(OTOH, Goodfellas was a mob movie. The family stuff was quite secondary.)

4

Comparing Godfather with Public Enemy is a little like comparing* Dr. Strangelove* with Fail Safe. Sure, you can argue that they sort of come out of the same general idea, but everything after that is completely different, and the compare-contrast thing is strictly a lesson in how to tell a story in different ways.