Often a film is made to fit a genre but it is rare that a film defines the criterion of a genre. ‘The Godfather’ is one such gem of a movie that defined another genre of its time, ‘gangster movies’. The film was released in 1972 and bagged ten Academy Award nominations and was named the ‘Best Picture’. Since that time, all gangster movies has been compared with this one, an unfair comparison as it may seem to be.
If ‘The Godfather’ was just about carrying a gun and shooting people around, it would never have become the epic of gangster movies. One factor that sets this movie on a higher pedestal than all others that were made before it and after it, was its success in interweaving, the often disconnected stories as a cohesive whole. All the issues covered by this movie are strong enough to individually become the foundation. However, they have been so well glued together that they resonate with each other. The movie has a series of climaxes which all build themselves into one devastating conclusion.
One example of a film telling many diverse stories was ‘Pulp Fiction’ but there were only three stories in this movie whereas, The Godfather has so many interconnected stories that it is impossible to even think that they may have a link somewhere. The Godfather’s success is not only its strong script but the amazing performances by the actors who just dissolve into the characters under the solid direction by Coppola plays the biggest role in its blasting the box office records.
In not so many words, a must watch.
