Weekly themed movie recommendations
▲ It can be used as a door god
"All my life, I have been trying to climb up, the more I climb, the more grandiose, the better I do things, the higher I climb, the more I feel cold. Hundreds of years have come from cannibalism, for money, family honor, not at the mercy of the rich. I repented, I repented of my sins, I repented all. ”
—Mike Corleone, the movie The Godfather
The "Godfather" trilogy was filmed by the famous American director Francis Coppola in 1972, 1974 and 1990, telling the rise and fall of the Corleone family of the Italian-American mafia, and is also a microcosm of American and even the entire European society, as director Coppola once said, "I feel that the mafia is a wonderful allusion to this country."
This week, we will recommend the movie "Godfather" trilogy for everyone, let us walk into the underworld era of the 1960s in the United States, and understand the unique and seductive charm of the aesthetics of violence.
Part1 The Godfather 1
"The world itself has no so-called innocence, and you can admit that you have never lied, which is self-deception."
Based on the novel of the same name by American writer Mario Puzo, "Godfather 1" mainly tells the story of Vito Corleone, the "old godfather" of the five major Italian mafia families in the United States in the 1960s, who quarreled with other families because of his reluctance to get involved in the drug trade, and was jointly retaliated against by the other party.
The old godfather had to retreat in order to take care of the overall situation and pass on the family business to his younger son, Mike Corleone. When Mike took office, he began a tight and elaborate revenge plan that eventually eliminated dissidents and made the Corleone family the largest gangster in the United States again.
The term "godfather" was originally used in a Christian religious term to refer to the guardian of the newly baptized person, and when the film refers specifically to the leader of the underworld, the arrogant extrajudicial maniac suddenly becomes sacred.
In "The Godfather 1", Mike completes the baptism ceremony for his sister's newborn child in the solemn cathedral, while under the steps outside the church is a bloody slaughter of bullets and bullets.
Innocent baby cries mingle with the sound of brutal gunshots, and the tense picture announces the birth of a new godfather, Mike.
The two generations of godfathers are played by Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, respectively.
When the former filmed this film, it coincided with negative news, in order to get rid of the peach scandal, Brando took over the film by himself, and indeed set off the climax of his acting career.
It is said that in order to make the image of the godfather more arrogant and more credible, he stuffed two clumps of cotton into his mouth during filming, thus contributing to the image of Vito Corleone with a bulging cheek on the screen.
The latter repeatedly missed the Oscars, and it was not until twenty years later that he won the best actor title with "Smelling Woman".
The wonderful interpretation of Brando and Pacino will forever engrave the image of the great underworld leader into the memory of the world, he is the character that all men fear but worship and want to become, and he is also the object of sexual fantasy that all women dream of.
"The Godfather" is not about ugly gang leaders who do evil, but about great male heroes.
He is a prodigal son, a ranger, a knight, a martyr, he is both noble and elegant, deep and introverted, but also dangerous and terrifying, fierce and sophisticated, he is as sexy and charming as the vampires in medieval castles in Europe.
Part2 The Godfather 2
You can never forgive me, not even this two-thousand-year-old, Sicilian tradition.
"The Godfather 2" unfolds in two threads, one tells the story of Vito Corleone's youth who fled from Sicily, Italy, to the United States, and built a huge underworld empire with his hands in the context of the Great Depression.
Another tells the story of a new godfather, Mike Corleone, who is involved in the killings after taking power, and he knows that if he sits still, he will be murdered, so he continues to eliminate dissidents for the sake of family honor, and even sends his own brother Fredo to kill him, and his wife Kai, who is in love with Mike, also parted ways with him because of his incomprehensible behavior.
After the success of "Godfather 1", director Coppola actually did not think about making a sequel, and when someone mentioned the idea of a sequel to him, he did not think, "I have never heard of a sequel, it is a Soviet thing." ”
Later, he followed the rest of the original novel, the history of the first godfather Vito Corleone, and personally continued the story of Mike Corleone's inheritance of the family business, which was concatenated into the script of "The Godfather 2".
It is said that after the completion of the first draft, Al Pacino was not satisfied, Coppola made drastic changes for three days, and finally after the script was read, all the actors stood up to pay tribute to the classic.
The original author, Mario Puzo, was silent until he wrote The Godfather, and even when he handed over the adapted script to Coppola, Coppola rejected him, believing that the story fell into the cliché.
But later, because of financial constraints, Coppola had to take the film, and when he re-read the script, he exclaimed that he almost lost a great work.
Mario cites a quote from Balzac as the beginning of the novel, "Behind the great wealth, there is evil hidden", which is also one of the core elements of the film, capital makes people willing to degenerate, makes people desperate, makes people kill each other.
The crimes depicted in the film are all historical truths, and in the late 1950s, the Sicily Mafia and the American Mafia joined forces to sell drugs, and New York gave birth to five mafia families who did whatever it took to benefit.
Before Mario became a writer, he specialized in the investigation and research of American society and culture, and he presented his understanding of underworld organizations for many years in the form of words in the novel, and Coppola presented it to the world audience in an audiovisual way, and the underworld world that did not see the light of day surfaced in history.
Part3 The Godfather 3
Life is like a box of grenades, you never know which one will send you to God.
The shooting of "Godfather 3" has been nearly twenty years since the first two films, and the story has completely departed from the original work and been independently completed by the director, reflecting Coppola's own world view, outlook on life, and values, and drawing a complete end to the surging Corleone family history and the underworld world created by one hand.
The story tells the story of Mike Corleone in his later years who is committed to legitimizing the underworld cause, but the obstacles of reality force him to fight violence with violence. He passed on his career to his eldest brother's illegitimate son, Vincent, on the condition that he must leave his daughter Mary.
Later, after the Mike family finished watching their son Tony's musical at the theater, they were plotted by the enemy at the door, and Mike survived because of his daughter's gun. After that, he withdrew from the jianghu, and a generation of tyrants eventually died alone.
American gangster movies have had two climaxes, both of which are closely related to the violent upheavals in American society.
The first was in the thirties, coinciding with the implementation of the infamous Prohibition in the united states, coupled with the wave of Italian immigrant culture, which gave birth to countless mafia lurking in the streets of the United States.
The underworld image in the films of this period is typical of the then Chicago godfather Al Capone, the fearsome extrajudicial fanatic, the violence and bloodshed hidden by the Hayes Code, and finally punished by the moral constraints of evil and righteousness.
▲ The Man with the Scarface, 1932
The second climax was in the late 1950s, when the five major Mafia families in New York were in a state of disarray and intrigue over drug trafficking, coupled with the abolition of the Hayes Code, the rise of Italian directors, and the resurgence of new underworld films.
With the unique elegant and charming godfather image, exotic Italian folk customs, sacred and solemn religious family atmosphere, and sacrificial adherence to ideal beliefs, it has attracted fans around the world to yearn for the mysterious and strange underworld world.
The godfathers of this period, like Vito and Mike, were not blindly indulging in the pleasure of violence, nor the temptation to enjoy rights, but like religious priests or secular fathers, calm and introverted, calm and restrained, reticent, and condescending to control everything in the underworld.
But twenty years later, American society has undergone drastic changes, and Vincent, as the heir to the family, is cynical, lustful, and has no appearance of being able to assume the position of godfather, which may indicate the decline of underworld culture.
When the old Mike finally fell out of his chair, the underworld collapsed and ceased to exist.