The REEL Addict 

THE GODFATHER is one of those films universally acknowledged by almost everyone who has seen it to be one of the greatest films of all time. Though you’ll get no argument from me on that matter, I have found that whenever I go a while (usually a few years) without seeing the film, there’s a part of me – call him Mr. Contrary or Mr. Forgetful – that wants to resist the endless praise heaped upon it. I want to argue that though it’s certainly a technical masterpiece, its story is pretty straight forward, and its themes aren’t nearly as deep as the movie or others believe they are.  

Always a fan of being proven wrong or reminded of something good, when I heard that THE GODFATHER films were not only finally coming out on Blu-Ray DVD, but would feature new restorations supervised by Francis Ford Coppola himself, it seemed the perfect opportunity to re-watch the film again and confront Mr. Contrary. Watching a three hour movie is a daunting task with my schedule sometimes, so one night I came home from a long, hard day at work – needing to do a whole lot of errands – and decided to at least pop in the film for a few minutes as I ate my dinner, just to see how it looked and sounded in glorious high definition.  

Next thing I knew I was staring at the end credits.  

It kind of proves a point Alec Baldwin makes in one of the features created exclusively for the new box-set: THE GODFATHER will steal your free will. There’s something so compulsively watchable about the movie, even after many years and viewings, I become so fully immersed in the grand Shakespeare like dramatics. Like the best of films, it transported me to another world and I didn’t return till it was done. That’s why even though I would still maintain the film may not be excessively deep, it doesn’t even remotely matter, because it remains an incredibly powerful, exquisitely made cinematic masterpiece that makes me stop every five minutes and think “This is so damn good.” 

What’s always fascinated me about THE GODFATHER is that everyone has their reason for loving it, whether it is its representation of Italian families, its nearly mythological narrative, its gangster landscape of killing and political maneuvering, its metaphor for capitalism. For me what draws me into the movie every time is the stunning (and stunningly portrayed) transformation of Michael Corleone from innocent college boy to the cunning, manipulative, cold Don at the end of the film. It’s one of very few times to me a film reaches the level of Shakespeare, a character-centric narrative on par with “Hamlet.”  

While THE GODFATHER is certainly in which I feel I can see something new every time, in this instance I even mean that literally. Despite the film being an often darkly lit and grainy affair, the restoration and bump up to high definition infuses the film with a new visual splendor. Admittedly some scenes don’t handle the translation so well, and there is some controversy about Coppla having brightened and softened much of the first two films, but when you have sequences like the ones of Michael in Sicily that are so crisp and gorgeous, it’s hard to nitpick. Further, as someone who is probably the most audio illiterate person on earth, even I can notice the improvements in the swelling of Nina Rota’s score, the crisp, sharpness of those menacing footsteps in the hospital sequence, and even just the famous opening words of the film.  

THE GODFATHER is certainly a film that doesn’t need additional help to enhance its esteem in my eyes or others, but nevertheless the boosting of the visual and the audio go a long way to infusing the film with more reasons to appreciate it.