Background information
The Godfather
Writers: Mario Puzo
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Composer: Nino Rota
Starring: Marlon Brando Al Pacino
Producer: Paramount Pictures, USA
Honors: 1973 45th Academy Awards Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Screenplay.
The birth of The Godfather is legendary. Puzo, the original author, was a big-bellied man who sold the idea to Robert Evans, vice president of international production at Paramount Pictures, for $12,500 in a hurry to pay off his gambling debts. After that, Puzo completed the writing of "The Godfather", and as soon as the novel came out, it worked wonders and became the number one bestseller in the history of American publishing, ranking the best-seller list for 70 consecutive weeks and selling 20 million copies in 37 years. However, Paramount Pictures' production department was not active in bringing "The Godfather" to the screen for a crude reason that Sicilian robbery films would not sell well. Fortunately, charles Bruden, the chairman of the de facto controlling faction at the time, insisted on opening the "Godfather". But then ushered in a series of troubles, many directors refused to direct "The Godfather", they are skeptical of the original ideas and social effects of the adaptation, they agreed that "glorifying the mafia is equivalent to challenging morality". Evans decided to find an Italian-American director, screenwriter, and lead actor to make the film. In the casting of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, Paramount executives and director Coppola tore their faces in public several times and scolded loudly, and the open and secret struggle between the two sides was more intense than the corleone family's expansion foreign war and family civil war on the screen.
In March 1972, "The Godfather" was released and screened until December, when it was released, and the domestic box office exceeded 80 million US dollars, the highest record of the year. Finally, the national box office was nearly $140 million, and the foreign box office also exceeded $110 million, and the total box office of nearly $250 million was the highest record in film history.
Synopsis
A middle-aged man turned to Don Vito Corleone, the head of the New York Mafia Corleone family and sheltered the weak, so he was deeply loved and revered as the "Godfather". Because the godfather insisted on his principles and refused to cooperate with the drug lords to sell drugs, he was shot in the street, but fortunately did not die. The youngest son, Mike, visits the hospital and evacuates his father in danger in time, and goes to a banquet alone, dating the drug lord Solozo and the sheriff who is in cahoots with him, ending their lives with a pistol hidden behind a toilet water tank. After the killing, Mike fled to Sicily, where he met his first wife and lived a comfortable life. And the fight between the New York mafia is intensifying. Mike's eldest brother was killed, and Mike's wife was killed by a bomb. An enraged Mike returns to New York and takes over the Godfather's seat after his death, beginning his revenge. One by one, the leaders of the rival families are killed, and finally Mike's brother-in-law, Carlo, who colludes with the enemy to kill Mike's brother. After Carlo's death, Mike's broken sister Connie cries and cries to come to the door, and Mike calmly calls the doctor to say that Connie is crazy. At this time, Mike's face was full of indifference, and a new generation of godfathers was born.
Analysis of the reasons for the award
"Come here, kid, learn something!" One day you may have to cook for 20 men, first pour some oil, fry garlic, then put tomatoes, fry it, don't let it stick to the bottom..." This is not a cooking TV show, this is a dialogue in "The Godfather" that won the 45th Academy Award for Best Picture in 1973, the same year, the film also won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, its lead actor Marlon Brando also won the Oscar for best actor for the film, "The Godfather" became the founding work of Francis Ford Coppola, It has also become an insurmountable model for subsequent gangster genre films. 35 years later, "The Godfather" was named the best gangster film in the "Top Ten Genre Films in American Film History" by the American Film Institute (AFI).
The "best gangster film" in the history of film, there are no bullets that cannot be finished in the fierce gun battle, no tough guys who cannot be killed in the rain of bullets, no beautiful beauty bed scenes, and no stereotyped "nervous" rhythm that audiences are accustomed today. More than 30 years later, film reviews and papers about "The Godfather" have been full of sweat, and a large number of classic Dialogue dialogues in the film have made the audience relish it, for only one reason, in a real movie, behind the dialogue, is a living person - like in the design of the opening and poster of "The Godfather", it is a person who is displaced by the palm of fate.
When today's audiences have become accustomed to Hollywood's stereotyped narrative methods, the keywords extracted from "The Godfather" are more or less like this - "mafia", "desire", "family", "responsibility", etc., these labels are of course understandable. But it's worth noting that "The Godfather" is fundamentally different from today's Hollywood movies. "The Godfather" was made in the golden age of the new Hollywood films known as the "American New Wave", no matter how later film theorists sorted out and summarized the success of "The Godfather" and the commercial audience strategy, but for the young generation of directors who tried to change Hollywood at that time, such as the unknown Coppola at that time, they only had movies in mind, so using today's genre films to apply "The Godfather" will find that it does not apply at all. Because at that time, in order to seek a breakthrough in the old Hollywood film deadlock, what they did was to try to break the so-called genre, so the film was full of exploratory attempts. For example, the gangster type film classic "The Godfather" we are talking about, its gangster story is built in an epic narrative framework, the whole film is full of intentions to express the background of the American era in the 1940s, the life of Italian immigrants, the traditional customs of Sicilians, the chaotic social pattern and the judicial system have been systematically reflected in the film; even the change of two generations of godfathers, the rise and fall of the tide, all implied the differences and conflicts between the two cultures between the two generations of immigrants. It is like a slice of American history in the 1940s, and it is also like a microcosm of American culture based on immigrant culture. We hardly see similar strokes in subsequent gangster movies, and the tension of "The Godfather" is first of all due to the use of a large number of pages and heavy brushstrokes to create such an epic atmosphere, so that the film gets a good texture from the foundation. Through the background of the big era, the fate of the two generations of godfathers is rendered with a heavy fatalistic sad color, the success and failure of Mike Corleone are suspended, the autonomy and manipulation of the godfather become a mystery, and ideological speculation enters the film through a very natural way.
In The Godfather, the structure of the plot is similarly oriented towards the clarity of the theme rather than the development of the story. In adapting the screenplay, they omitted the novel's past about don Corleone, the older godfather, and made it the core of the story of established existence, and Mike's growth was only a shadow of this core, or a circular line drawn around him. We can see Don Corleone's shadow in Mike, and in the same way, we can feel the trajectory of Don's fate from Mike. Mike's attitude from appearing in a military uniform at the beginning to telling his girlfriend a family story shows that he wants to live an American life that has nothing to do with the family, which may be the kind of life that the coffin shop owner who was reprimanded by Don once wanted to live. But the calmness and composure he showed in dealing with the hospital crisis proved that he was the best candidate to be the successor of the godfather. After being punched hard by the police, Mike's choice is not so much an outbreak of family responsibility as a return to the Sicilian ancestry and mafia family life he has been escaping in the face of reality. During his asylum in Italy, Mike's flash marriage to an Italian girl completely shattered his American dream, becoming a true godfather who tried to manipulate fate in the manipulation of fate. Without the support of the novel, the regret shown by the godfather in his last dialogue with Mike before his death confirms the relationship between the shadow and the entity between father and son: "I never thought of you participating, I have done it all my life, there is no regret, I took care of my family, but I should not be a fool, let those big people manipulate me behind the scenes, I don't have to apologize, that is my destiny." 」 "Completely different from films such as "Once Upon a Time in America" that narrates personal experiences, there is no small pattern narrative in which the Corleone father and son are deeply entangled in the past, they only face the reality that is happening and the involuntary nature of people in reality, under the tragic theme of fate, the judgment of society, moral confirmation and other issues are insignificant, showing only a man's struggle under blood slavery and seemingly cool compromises.