The Godfather

Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather arrived in theaters in March 1972 and immediately changed American cinema. Based on Mario Puzo's best-selling novel, the film follows the Corleone crime family through the late 1940s and early 1950s. At its center is Don Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando, a powerful Mafia patriarch who runs his empire from the study of his Long Island estate. The story tracks his youngest son Michael, a decorated World War II Marine who initially wants nothing to do with the family business but gets pulled in after an assassination attempt on his father.

Coppola shot the film on location in New York City's Little Italy and in the Sicilian hill towns of Savoca and Forza d'Agrò. Cinematographer Gordon Willis, later nicknamed the Prince of Darkness for his shadowy lighting style, gave the film a look that felt both operatic and documentary-like. The score by Nino Rota, with its haunting waltz theme, became almost as famous as the film itself. Paramount Pictures originally saw the project as just another gangster picture, but Coppola fought to cast relatively unknown actors like Al Pacino and to keep the period setting and Italian-American authenticity that made the novel resonate.

The film earned eleven Academy Award nominations and won three, including Best Picture. Brando won Best Actor but famously refused the award, sending Sacheen Littlefeather in his place to protest Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans. The Godfather's influence ripples through every crime drama that followed, from The Sopranos to Goodfellas, and its lines like I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse have become part of the language.[edit]

The film opens on the day of Connie Corleone's wedding to Carlo Rizzi in the summer of 1945. Don Vito Corleone holds court in his study, granting favors to friends and supplicants while the celebration rages outside. Among those seeking his help is Amerigo Bonasera, a mortician who wants the Don to punish the men who assaulted his daughter. The Don agrees but reminds Bonasera that someday he may ask for a favor in return.

Meanwhile, Michael Corleone arrives with his girlfriend Kay Adams. He tells her stories about his family, making light of their criminal connections, but Kay is uneasy. Michael's older brother Sonny is hot-tempered and impulsive, while the middle brother Fredo is weaker and less involved. The family consigliere Tom Hagen, an adopted Irish orphan raised by the Corleones, handles legal and diplomatic matters.

The central conflict ignites when Virgil Sollozzo, a drug trafficker backed by the rival Tattaglia family, proposes that the Corleones invest in his heroin operation. Don Vito refuses, citing moral objections and the danger of narcotics. Sollozzo then orchestrates an assassination attempt on the Don, who is shot in the street and left for dead. With Vito hospitalized, Sonny takes control and vows revenge. The family discovers that the corrupt police captain McCluskey is in Sollozzo's pocket.

Michael volunteers to kill both Sollozzo and McCluskey. In a tense scene at a Bronx restaurant, Michael retrieves a gun hidden in the bathroom and shoots both men at close range. He then flees to Sicily, where he lives in hiding and falls in love with a local woman named Apollonia. Back in New York, the war escalates. Sonny's brutality and lack of diplomacy lead to a trap at the Long Beach causeway, where rival gunmen murder him in a hail of bullets.

Don Vito, now recovered but broken by Sonny's death, brokers a peace with the Five Families. He secures Michael's safe return from Sicily, but Apollonia is killed by a car bomb intended for Michael. Michael returns to New York hardened and cold. He marries Kay, who has waited for him, and slowly takes over the family business. The Don retires, and Michael begins planning a move to Las Vegas to legitimize the Corleone empire, but he knows he must first eliminate all his enemies.[edit]