"The Godfather" on Blu-ray

[Steve]

"I love The Godfather as well as other mafia movies"

 

I love Hamlet as well as other plays about princes of Denmark.

 

Godfather is, as I have pointed out, far more than a mafia movie. This is what raises it high above movies like Godfellas which is just a clever and entertaining movie about the mafia.

 

Apart from our diverging perspectives I enjoy reading your stuff about Siciliani mafia type life style!

 

The Godfather is the KING of mafia movies. Goodfellas is a biogragphy and Casino is just restating events. The Godfather is an actual story that rises to a far higher level.

 

Both father and son went through a transformation. Neither envisioned they would be what they become.

 

Coppola has said that he was dismayed by the glorification of the mafia after The Godfather so he wanted to show a darker side in Godfather II. Michael killing one brother and the ill treatment of his adoptive brother Tom Hagen goes to illustrate it.

 

One of my favorite parts of the first Godfather is how little Michael is respected by some folks. The other families, Moe Greene, his own capo regimes, as well as his own brother, Fredo. Tom saw it though. Vito Coreleone was legendary so its easy to dismiss Michael. I especially like how he casually uses his father's phrase 'I'll make him an offer he can't refuse' when discussing Moe Greene and the casino.

 

 

 

 

[playtheblues]

"One of my favorite parts of the first Godfather is how little Michael is respected by some folks".

 

This a very interesting way of seeing Michael and might cast more light on Godfather's Shakesperean similarities.. Wasn't Richard III a rather disrespected figure in the beginning of the play and then became a cool blooded murderer of anybody he thought would challenge his power? To lazy to read the play.

 

An amazing- and somewhat uncomfortable - thing with the Godfather's portrayal of those mafia killers as multilayered human beings is the fact that we actually can empathize with the loneliness of Michael at the end of Godfather II. And that is right after we have watched the murder of his own brother (and almost everybody else)!!! And people cried at the premiere of The Godfather when Vito Corleone died...