The movie that filmgoers, critics and the Oscars couldn’t refuse

“The Godfather” is a story about a family and its business. Which, for the Corleone family, just happens to be running an organized crime syndicate.

Based on a bestselling book by Mario Puzo, the epic three-hour saga took America by storm when it was released 50 years ago. The movie would go on to be a prototype for blockbuster films of today, with production starting on the sequel before the first film hit theaters.

Howard Suber, professor emeritus at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, is not surprised by the continued relevance and success of “The Godfather.” He sees the story of a tight-knit family caught in a life-or-death struggle for power, love and respect as carrying on the tradition of storytelling from Greek tragedy and Shakespeare. “The Godfather resonates today because it follows the path of Western drama for the past 2,500 years,” Suber said.

The film was both a huge commercial and critical winner, earning more money than any other film that year and winning acclaim for acting, directing and music from the Academy Awards, the Grammys, the Golden Globes and many others. The trilogy of Godfather films has been nominated for a total of 28 Oscars, winning nine. The film’s cultural impact is readily seen by the term “godfather” becoming common language, but that was not always the case. The book “The Godfather Effect” notes that “Puzo actually invented the term ‘godfather’ as a term of mobster respect.”

The cast was relatively inexperienced, with leading roles featuring newcomers Al Pacino, James Caan, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall and Talia Shire, while the film was anchored by veteran Marlon Brando. “The Godfather” is seen as reviving his career after many years of unsuccessful projects and for turbocharging the careers of the others for decades to come.

Portrait drawing of director Francis Ford Coppola

The director

Director Francis Ford Coppola was barely in his 30s when he started work on “The Godfather,” but pursued his vision diligently despite frequent friction with studio Paramount on almost every aspect from casting to location to what era the film should be set in. Despite arguments with Paramount and Coppola often fearing he would be fired, the film was made and the resulting wild success of “The Godfather” cemented his place in Hollywood. He went on to create a string of incredibly successful films through the ‘70s. “The Conversation,” “The Godfather Part II” and “Apocalypse Now” were all nominated for best picture by the Academy, with the sequel to “The Godfather” winning the golden statuette.

Coppola’s influence in the industry emanated not only from his own films but also through the reach of his production company, American Zoetrope. He founded the company with eventual “Star Wars” creator George Lucas. With the success of “The Godfather,” they were able to stay afloat and help filmmakers from outside the mainstream they were inspired by, people like Wim Wenders, Carroll Ballard, Jean-Luc Godard and Akira Kurosawa.

But only so much of the story of “The Godfather” can be shown through its impact. The film is revered due to the way Coppola was able to translate his ideas onto the screen. He took a then-tired genre — gangster films — and elevated Mario Puzo’s story to an operatic level of drama by setting the stage with a series of intimate scenes around a family. “The Godfather” is largely filmed in a “tableau format” where static scenes are presented like paintings in a frame that characters move in and out of. Despite this traditional format, it employed many innovative techniques both in front of and within the camera, and the true story of how it was made is full of both surprise and speculation.

The magic of cinema is to make what is not real appear to be truly happening, and nowhere is that magic more evident in “The Godfather” than through the violent episodes that punctuate the Corleone family’s actions. Coppola aimed for accuracy and realism in all aspects of the film, from period-specific background props to portraying mob violence.

Movie magic for murder

The youngest Corleone (and relatively straitlaced), Michael, turns a thematic corner in the film when he decides to get revenge by killing a rival Mafia member and a police captain at a meeting in a restaurant. The tense scene leads up to Michael shooting them both as the camera follows the killings with an intimate close-up view.

The only way to make the violence appear real while filling the entire screen was through careful consideration and planning. Coppola, in the book “The Annotated Godfather” says the killings in the restaurant are ”the biggest scene in the movie, effect-wise.”

Animated image of a scene from “The Godfather” where Michael Corleone shoots character Virgil Sollozzo

The first victim is shot and the camera cuts away very quickly, so the crew was able to make do with a less detailed effect — firing a small wax cylinder filled with fake blood that leaves a visual “hole” on his forehead. But the camera lingers on a tight frame of the second victim, necessitating a more involved approach.

The crew mounted a metal plate with a squib — or exploding blood packet — on the actor's forehead, with a wire running to a trigger through his hair. Makeup conceals the squib and is ready to be triggered when the gun goes off. The scene unfolds as a realistic and grisly murder, showcasing the lengths to which Michael is willing to go to protect his family.

Moe Green’s last scene

Casino owner Moe Green’s death toward the end of the film required similar ingenuity. The scene calls for a man to be shot in the eye through his glasses, with a resulting gush of blood. To pull this off, special effects supervisor A.D. Flowers recalled an effect he had attempted previously but had never captured on film properly before “The Godfather.”

The camera never looks away as the shot is fired. To create the effect, Flowers produced glasses with two tubes lining the temple, one with a small ball bearing and compressed air that would shoot out when the gun was fired, cracking the stage glass in the lens, looking like it had been shot. The air kept blowing out to make sure no shards injured actor Alex Rocco. He then slumps down on the massage table as the other tube issues forth a torrent of blood behind the shattered lens to complete the effect.

Sonny pays a toll

The most aggressive murder (if there is such a thing) happens befittingly to character Sonny Corleone, who exudes machismo in every scene. He meets his fate in an ambush and is brutally gunned down inside of, out of, and all around his car by several fedora-wearing tommy gunners.

The scene required hundreds of squibs both drilled into the car, the tollbooth and dozens placed on Caan himself to explode at the right time. By some accounts, it was the highest number of squibs ever attached to an actor at that time. The wires for all the squibs ran under his suit and out his left pant leg, the bottom of which is never seen in the final cut of the film.

The number of squibs, scenery and production for the scene cost over $100,000 in 1972, which amounts to almost $700,000 in 2022 dollars. The principal scene was completed in one take with all the special effects firing correctly, which was fortunate since Coppola didn’t have the budget to do it over.

Zoom out (and out and out)

“The Godfather” opens with a man’s face filling the screen, delivering an angry and mournful speech. As he talks, the camera zooms out imperceptibly for a very long time — about 2-1/2 minutes — slowly revealing the speaker, his surroundings and the man he is speaking to, Don Vito Corleone, his “godfather.”

A set of images showing the slow zoom out over the first 2.5 minutes of The Godfather

As the scene unfolds visually, it sets up the rest of the film by encapsulating the power dynamics at play and the relationships that the family business hinges on. In the 1970s, it would have been a huge challenge for a camera operator to manually zoom out slowly and smoothly for such a long time, take after take. So Coppola harnessed a new tool: A computerized zoom lens made by Tony Karp of Discovery Technology.

It allowed the operator to input how far to zoom and the length of the scene. While Coppola and his cinematographer, Gordon Willis, largely stuck with traditional camera movements throughout “The Godfather,” the film’s opening was unforgettably rendered through the use of this new technology.

Suspicious citrus

Oranges are scattered throughout the film, and are popularly seen as a sign of doom for any character in a scene with one. It happens over and over again, such as when Vito is shopping at a fruit stand, buys a few oranges and spills a basket of them into the street as he is gunned down. He also peels an orange in his garden just before he dies. Oranges are also seen on a table in front of the Hollywood producer who finds a horse's head in his bed, and on the table in front of the many unfortunate mob bosses who meet toward the end of the film.

Harlan Lebo’s book “The Godfather Legacy” quotes production designer Dean Tavoularis, as saying the fruit just created a nice pop of color for what is a rather drab palette, “I don’t remember anybody saying ‘Hey I like oranges as a symbolic message.’ Oranges just look nice in low lighting.”

Yet, oranges kept popping up. They appear at prescient moments in all three films, which shows a consistency of vision at the very least, even though the meaning may be up for interpretation.

Animated image of Don Vito Corleone being shot.

Putting it all together

According to “The Godfather Legacy,” “By the time principal photography was completed, Coppola had shot 500,000 feet of potentially usable footage, or more than ninety hours of material.” The work was a gargantuan task of cutting and splicing for six people, including William Reynolds and Peter Zinner, that resulted in an Academy Award nomination for editing.

Their work navigates the audience through an intricate three-hour film, but is highlighted in the sequences that bookend the movie. The opening shows Don Corleone conducting shady Mafia business in a dark room, visually and thematically in distinct contrast to intercut scenes of his daughter’s wedding as they are dancing, drinking and celebrating in the bright light outside. The conclusion of the film shows Michael becoming godfather to his nephew at a church ceremony. While Michel is renouncing Satan and evil, intercut scenes of his henchmen killing his enemies punctuate his declaration of faith as organ music swells in the background.

A collection of objects from the film, such as an Oscar, a revolver, a box of cannoli, a squib and a dead fish in a bulletproof vest.
Sources

“The Godfather Effect,” by Tom Santopietro; “The Godfather Legacy,” by Harlan Lebo, “The Annotated Godfather,” by Jenny M. Jones, Box Office Mojo, IMDB, Comscore

Edited by

Julia Wolfe and Jonathan Oatis

Written, designed and developed by

Travis Hartman

Illustrations by

Catherine Tai

Graphics by

Wen Foo