Critics on The Godfather Films
|
|||
|
IMAGES:
Picture Gallery 1 Miscellaneous Pictures
Picture Gallery 2 Miscellaneous Pictures
Movie Stills
The Godfather Photos
M. Brando & Godfather Posters, Prints, Photos
|
Critical reaction to The Godfather was mixed; the more downbeat The Godfather II drew more uniform praise. Audiences, on the other hand, were stunned by The Godfather and more dubious about The Godfather II. The immense popularity of The Godfather (aided by the interest generated by Puzo's book, and by a beautifully designed trailer) suggests that it got a good many people into the theater who hadn't been there for a while. One can see why. It retained, as it modified, a strongly traditional appeal. It was controlled by a large, heroic, dignified character, whose efforts were on behalf of family unity and survival, and that struck a sympathetic chord in a fragmented culture. Don Vito's obsolescence was a kind of purity. The film progressed linearly toward an undeniable achievement—a political marriage, the baptism, the destruction of family enemies, Prince Hal understanding the responsibility of kingship by both learning and choosing not to learn from his father. The family was a bunch of potential freaks who ultimately coalesced with our sense of normalcy (despite disturbing evidence to the contrary). In The Godfather II the family, settled into normalcy, appears more freakish and neurotic. The world of The Godfather moved toward something, however slowly and grotesquely. The sense in The Godfather II is that once there, there is no turning back, and nothing else to move toward. The film, accordingly, juxtaposes two pasts. There is no point in hoping for Michael; for him to succeed means that he must destroy the family, which he does. The continual references and parallels to The Godfather provide an ironic perspective on both films.
The Lake Tahoe gathering is contrasted to The Godfather wedding, Michael now assuming Don Vito's role in a similarly subdued interior that is played off against the gaiety outside—with major differences, of course. The family is now a sad, worn-out group that has lost its ethnic definition (neither the music nor the musicians are Italian, and the old-timer Pantangeli, who would have simply been part of the scenery at the wedding, is buffoonishly obstreperous in the midst of the pseudogentility. Brando, personal and virtuosic, gave a goitrous performance that threw The Godfather appropriately off-balance. Don Vito was a big man, and Brando's overplaying registered how the world of the film could be defined by him. Al Pacino's mannered soft-spokenness, small build, tight uncomfortableness, and minor-key presence suit the more reductive and darker vision of the sequel. In The Godfather the door is shut on Kay out of necessity and a macho propriety of means and ends audiences found agreeable. In The Godfather II Michael slams the door in Kay's face in a neurotic rage that underscores his compulsion, insecurity, and loneliness. It is a destructive not a constructive gesture. The stark, plangent theme for solo trumpet that helped solemnize and authenticate The Godfather is used basically as recall, being inappropriate to the mood and content of The Godfather II.
The Godfather II uses The Godfather analytically, linking the violence of Sicily, Vito's progress in America, and Michael's brutal reign as Don in a cumulative vision of the order of things. The world of The Godfather, it turns out, was not any better than the world of The Godfather II, past or present. It was a world in transition, however, a transition associated with values that created false options and induced an illusion of choice. All the time, however, we were observing inevitables.
The restrained pace and overrefined visuals of both films keep us unagitated and untroubled by existential givens. One may well ask what good it would do to arouse concern, since everything seems out of our hands. Coppola's cutting, and graphic bloodletting—as subtle as a brass band—is a way of supplying, by aesthetic peroration, what will keep the audience absorbed in a period of moral and political inertia. It is not quite virtuosity in a vacuum; the vacuum demands the virtuosity. The lack of moral urgency, or a commitment to statement, is reflected in the films' temporal and narrative structures as well as in their unrelieved stylization. Within their noncommittal attitude, they can go back and forth, stretch scenes interminably, pan expansively, dolly at snail speed, intersperse flurries of action with long, static passages of characters staring at each other and whispering. They can (and do) take their time because there is no point in hurrying to where they have to go or in obeying the momentum of a strict causality. They cannot resolve anything for the audience, and so they take the “and then … and then … and then” route and work hard to keep the journey to nowhere interesting. Aesthetic considerations and an acute attention to the medium are forced into being by the absence of any other confident purpose. We are not “moved” by Michael sitting alone as night descends over his expensive property and his burdened conscience, but we appreciate the beauty of the image and the aesthetic finesse of the conception.
|
POSTER SHOP
|
|
This Website is created and designed by NumberOneStars Int. All rights reserved.