The Godfather Coppola Restoration Collection - Very Glad It's on Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

But 1 essentially ends where the book does, tho they are very different. As a statement film 1 could have lived on it's own. When I first saw it I was baffled how it just kind of ends abruptly but over time I've grown to like that.

 

[TravisR]

I tend to go with Carlo and doubt the seriousness of or the thought put into an answer given to the stalkerazzi. He understandably seemed to be much more interested in getting to his car than talking film with a piece of garbage who hides behind freedom of the press to harass famous people.

 

[Richard--W]

For what it may be worth, GF and GFII were both shot by the same DP (Gordon Willis), with the same camera, optics, etc. There is total continuity.RAH

RAH, at 27:10 there is a lap dissolve, out of the plane landing, into a pan across the Hollywood rooftops with the Grauman's in the foreground, until 27:28 when it dissolves into the entrance of the studio. Question: is the overhead view of Hollywood a period still or period footage? a frame from stock footage? The plane landing, is that stock footage from the 1940s?

 

[Robert Harris]

RAH, at 27:10 there is a lap dissolve, out of the plane landing, into a pan across the Hollywood rooftops with the Grauman's in the foreground, until 27:28 when it dissolves into the entrance of the studio. Question: is the overhead view of Hollywood a period still or period footage? a frame from stock footage? The plane landing, is that stock footage from the 1940s?

The overhead view of Hollywood is stock footage from an M-G-M musical. We were able to return to the original 3-strip material for a new capture, rather than working a few generations down as had been cut into the working OCN. The aircraft landing was also stock footage, and we returned to the original element duped for the film.

RAH

 

[AdrianTurner]

Fascinating RAH - I love that little scene, probably because the music at that point is utterly evocative of that Hollywood era.

I was only thinking the other day how nice it would be to have the TV version available.

 

[Charles Smith]

Nice to hear this stuff. (That moment always left me wanting just a little more!)

 

[Richard--W]

Thanks for clearing that up. The footage works for me.

 

[Kevin EK]

Just to play devil's advocate, quite literally.

The killings in The Godfather at its climax are all extremely logical and cunning moves by Michael Corleone. Given that everyone thinks that the Corleone family is on the run and no longer has any moxie, a coordinated hit on the heads of all five families and Moe Greene to boot is an extremely powerful message. The killing of Tessio is justified on the basis that he was conspiring to kill the Don. The killing of Carlo is justified on the basis that he conspired with Barzini to kill Sonny - and he admits this openly to Michael in the end. Granted, Michael's soul takes a huge beating from all of this - and the man we see at the end of the movie is someone the young Michael probably would not recognize. And to think the whole fall starts with his visit to his father at the hospital...

Godfather II is a more complex idea. In their own way, each of the killings at the end of the movie has been justified, but at the same time they can be seen as pointless gestures. The question "Do you have to kill everybody?" is a crucial one from Tom Hagen. Michael's cold response to him and to Fredo just shows he's become almost completely soulless. Hyman Roth's machinations include the attempted hit on Michael and Kay and would clearly have included another attempt on Michael sooner or later. Michael is correct to note that Roth "has been dying of the same heart attack for years" - but at the same time, it's clear that Roth is on the run by the end. Killing Roth means sacrificing one of Michael's main guys just to make a public point. Frankie Five Angels isn't even a threat at the point that he dies. If anything, he was understandably outraged at the way he was being treated, particularly after the Rosatos tried to kill him. His situation at the end is pathetic - he's honor bound not to tell the Feds anything and he's blown up the only case they had against Michael. So he did betray the family by testifying, but in the end, he did more damage to the Feds' case than he did to the family. Having him kill himself seems almost mean-spirited.

The death of Fredo is really the final spike in the coffin of Michael's soul. Granted, Fredo took sides against the family, something he'd been expressly warned not to do back in the first movie. He acted as an informant for Hyman Roth and Johnny Ola, giving them what they needed to try to hit Michael and Kay. I'm not sure how much I believe Fredo that he didn't know this was going to be a hit, particularly given that he either killed the two hitmen himself or he had them killed. Michael is correct to know that the discovery of the bodies means that someone is trying to cover their tracks - the only one in that position was Fredo. Fredo then spent a lot of time lying to Michael to cover up any connection to that hit. Once Michael realizes what really happened, Fredo's days are numbered. Michael's offer to take Fredo home from Cuba is a ridiculous one - Fredo doesn't trust him at all, particularly after knowing that Michael had manipulated Carlo into staying close to him so he could kill him at will when he dropped his guard. Fredo's attempted explanation to Michael is both a sad and scary moment. It's sad because Fredo's frustration is so understandable and so naïve. It's scary because Michael treats him even more coldly than he treated Carlo from that point forward. Even when he purports to forgive Fredo, we can see that he's just biding his time and patiently waiting for a moment to eliminate him. Killing Fredo at the exact moment when Roth and Frankie are dying is another pointed message from Michael to his enemies - that no mercy will ever be shown to anyone who crosses him. Sadly, that same attitude is what Michael brings to Kay when she betrays him. So in the end, Michael's efforts to protect his family don't just cause him to lose his family - they result in the loss of what was left of his soul.

There are two scenes in Godfather II that I have interpreted in a different manner than was intended by Coppola, but I think the interpretation is consistent with the world we've seen being created. The scene where Senator Geary is found in the brothel with the dead prostitute is clearly intended to play the idea that Geary was drugged and set up. Coppola has said as much directly, and the shot of Neri is a direct statement about this. But I've also considered the notion that Geary was capable of having done this himself and just happened to do it in the wrong place. It's a little darker of a thought and I grant that it's not what Coppola had in mind. The other difference I've had is with the ending flashback in II. I understand that the intention of the scene is to take the viewer back to a happier time for the family, when everyone was still alive and young and Don Vito was still there. The earlier script for the scene, which would have been used had Brando agreed to do the movie, makes this even clearer. But by staging it the way he did, Coppola provided an ironic retroactive indication of Michael's soullessness. Michael very calmly tells his family that he's signing up for military service and essentially walking away from them for his own reasons. When both Sonny and Tom try to talk him out of it, Michael coldly shrugs them off. When the family goes into the other room to surprise the Don, Michael stays by himself, choosing to finish his cigarette rather than be with the family. The film's closing image of Michael alone on his estate just reinforces the idea. For all of his discussions of family, Michael has always been a loner. The killings he has participated in throughout the movies have been less about love for his family and more about a chess game of power. The one emotion Michael seems to be able to feel is that of anger.

When it comes to Godfather III, it's a very strange experience for me. The Michael we see in III bears almost no resemblance to the Michael we saw in the first two movies. I don't know that I buy his change of heart. Because the Michael in II, I agree, would never have allowed Kay to handle anything about the children's upbringing, be it schooling or anything else. In the end of II, they're having to sneak Kay in just to visit, and even during that innocuous time, Michael comes in and calmly closes the door in Kay's face. It's true that Anthony and Mary would have grown up scared of him, but I doubt they would have been permitted to have much contact with their mother. She would have been a distant figure to them. So a big part of the premise of III is problematic to me.

I've read an earlier version of the scripted ending for II, which incorporates some elements of III, but in a more satisfying way. In this version, following the death of Fredo, the story would have moved ahead in time to around 1970, at which point Michael would be living in isolation at the Tahoe compound with Connie. His diabetes is almost casually mentioned, and it's clear that his health is in decline. Michael has a brief interaction with his son, who is visiting from college, from which we cut to the Marlon Brando version of the flashback. The script ends with a transition from young Michael's insistence of "I won't be a man like you" to a closing shot of old Michael walking on the grounds of the compound with Anthony. It is for these later scenes that the shots of the disused compound in the opening of III were done. From what I can tell, nothing but the establishing shots was ever done - but this would have been a fascinating ending to II. It probably would have obviated the entire third movie.

Regarding actors not reprising their roles or being replaced, this issue is all over both II and III. Coppola had intended both Brando and Richard Castellano to be in II. Brando's fight with Paramount at the time meant that Coppola had to rewrite the flashback to keep him off camera - to my mind, it made the scene stronger. Castellano's demands weren't just about money - Coppola says there was an issue about wanting to be able to rewrite his dialogue, and that ended the whole discussion. Coppola responded by saying the Clemenza character had been killed, and then replacing him with Frankie Five Angels. In this case, it probably would have been stronger to have had Castellano there, but Gazzo gave a great performance. For III, RAH's note about Winona Ryder is correct. She was completely exhausted when she showed up in Rome and could not do the movie. So Coppola used his own daughter - and his commentary on III is a revealing portrait of what happens when a father watches critics dissect his daughter's performance. Her performance was frankly not good - but he took the criticism and the nasty comments very personally. I don't think I'm imagining his continuing anger over the situation on that commentary. As for Robert Duvall, yes, he wanted a much larger salary than they were prepared to offer him. So he went off to do Days of Thunder instead and Coppola replaced him with George Hamilton. This is another situation where the movie would have been stronger had we still had Tom Hagen around. I would frankly love to have seen what a script with Hagen looked like. I don't know that this would have changed Connie's arc - the movie makes a point about how she turns into a kind of mother-wife support system for Michael, just as she did in the early script ending for II. It's not a long jump to see her becoming more and more ruthless herself in her older incarnation.

Coppola's commentary on III includes an interesting discussion around the end credits of what he and Puzo had in mind for a fourth movie before Puzo died. Their idea was to do something like II, only centered around Sonny and Vincent. There would be flashbacks to young Sonny's rise to become Don Vito's successor in the 30s and 40s, and there would be a story set in the 1980s to show the family's complete decline under Vincent. I don't believe they got very far with this idea before Puzo died, but I would have been curious to see what they could have done.

 

[Paul Penna]

The overhead view of Hollywood is stock footage from an M-G-M musical. We were able to return to the original 3-strip material for a new capture, rather than working a few generations down as had been cut into the working OCN. The aircraft landing was also stock footage, and we returned to the original element duped for the film. RAH

No wonder they look so good! There's also some beautiful period NYC color footage. There's one shot filmed under the El that blends rather seamlessly with the next, newly-filmed one because they found a matching black Packard sedan.

 

[Richard--W]

Just to play devil's advocate, quite literally.

The killings in The Godfather at its climax are all extremely logical and cunning moves by Michael Corleone. Given that everyone thinks that the Corleone family is on the run and no longer has any moxie, a coordinated hit on the heads of all five families and Moe Greene to boot is an extremely powerful message. The killing of Tessio is justified on the basis that he was conspiring to kill the Don. The killing of Carlo is justified on the basis that he conspired with Barzini to kill Sonny - and he admits this openly to Michael in the end. Granted, Michael's soul takes a huge beating from all of this - and the man we see at the end of the movie is someone the young Michael probably would not recognize. And to think the whole fall starts with his visit to his father at the hospital...

Godfather II is a more complex idea. In their own way, each of the killings at the end of the movie has been justified, but at the same time they can be seen as pointless gestures. The question "Do you have to kill everybody?" is a crucial one from Tom Hagen. Michael's cold response to him and to Fredo just shows he's become almost completely soulless. Hyman Roth's machinations include the attempted hit on Michael and Kay and would clearly have included another attempt on Michael sooner or later. Michael is correct to note that Roth "has been dying of the same heart attack for years" - but at the same time, it's clear that Roth is on the run by the end. Killing Roth means sacrificing one of Michael's main guys just to make a public point. Frankie Five Angels isn't even a threat at the point that he dies. If anything, he was understandably outraged at the way he was being treated, particularly after the Rosatos tried to kill him. His situation at the end is pathetic - he's honor bound not to tell the Feds anything and he's blown up the only case they had against Michael. So he did betray the family by testifying, but in the end, he did more damage to the Feds' case than he did to the family. Having him kill himself seems almost mean-spirited.

The death of Fredo is really the final spike in the coffin of Michael's soul. Granted, Fredo took sides against the family, something he'd been expressly warned not to do back in the first movie. He acted as an informant for Hyman Roth and Johnny Ola, giving them what they needed to try to hit Michael and Kay. I'm not sure how much I believe Fredo that he didn't know this was going to be a hit, particularly given that he either killed the two hitmen himself or he had them killed. Michael is correct to know that the discovery of the bodies means that someone is trying to cover their tracks - the only one in that position was Fredo. Fredo then spent a lot of time lying to Michael to cover up any connection to that hit. Once Michael realizes what really happened, Fredo's days are numbered. Michael's offer to take Fredo home from Cuba is a ridiculous one - Fredo doesn't trust him at all, particularly after knowing that Michael had manipulated Carlo into staying close to him so he could kill him at will when he dropped his guard. Fredo's attempted explanation to Michael is both a sad and scary moment. It's sad because Fredo's frustration is so understandable and so naïve. It's scary because Michael treats him even more coldly than he treated Carlo from that point forward. Even when he purports to forgive Fredo, we can see that he's just biding his time and patiently waiting for a moment to eliminate him. Killing Fredo at the exact moment when Roth and Frankie are dying is another pointed message from Michael to his enemies - that no mercy will ever be shown to anyone who crosses him. Sadly, that same attitude is what Michael brings to Kay when she betrays him. So in the end, Michael's efforts to protect his family don't just cause him to lose his family - they result in the loss of what was left of his soul.

There are two scenes in Godfather II that I have interpreted in a different manner than was intended by Coppola, but I think the interpretation is consistent with the world we've seen being created. The scene where Senator Geary is found in the brothel with the dead prostitute is clearly intended to play the idea that Geary was drugged and set up. Coppola has said as much directly, and the shot of Neri is a direct statement about this. But I've also considered the notion that Geary was capable of having done this himself and just happened to do it in the wrong place. It's a little darker of a thought and I grant that it's not what Coppola had in mind. The other difference I've had is with the ending flashback in II. I understand that the intention of the scene is to take the viewer back to a happier time for the family, when everyone was still alive and young and Don Vito was still there. The earlier script for the scene, which would have been used had Brando agreed to do the movie, makes this even clearer. But by staging it the way he did, Coppola provided an ironic retroactive indication of Michael's soullessness. Michael very calmly tells his family that he's signing up for military service and essentially walking away from them for his own reasons. When both Sonny and Tom try to talk him out of it, Michael coldly shrugs them off. When the family goes into the other room to surprise the Don, Michael stays by himself, choosing to finish his cigarette rather than be with the family. The film's closing image of Michael alone on his estate just reinforces the idea. For all of his discussions of family, Michael has always been a loner. The killings he has participated in throughout the movies have been less about love for his family and more about a chess game of power. The one emotion Michael seems to be able to feel is that of anger.

When it comes to Godfather III, it's a very strange experience for me. The Michael we see in III bears almost no resemblance to the Michael we saw in the first two movies. I don't know that I buy his change of heart. Because the Michael in II, I agree, would never have allowed Kay to handle anything about the children's upbringing, be it schooling or anything else. In the end of II, they're having to sneak Kay in just to visit, and even during that innocuous time, Michael comes in and calmly closes the door in Kay's face. It's true that Anthony and Mary would have grown up scared of him, but I doubt they would have been permitted to have much contact with their mother. She would have been a distant figure to them. So a big part of the premise of III is problematic to me.

I've read an earlier version of the scripted ending for II, which incorporates some elements of III, but in a more satisfying way. In this version, following the death of Fredo, the story would have moved ahead in time to around 1970, at which point Michael would be living in isolation at the Tahoe compound with Connie. His diabetes is almost casually mentioned, and it's clear that his health is in decline. Michael has a brief interaction with his son, who is visiting from college, from which we cut to the Marlon Brando version of the flashback. The script ends with a transition from young Michael's insistence of "I won't be a man like you" to a closing shot of old Michael walking on the grounds of the compound with Anthony. It is for these later scenes that the shots of the disused compound in the opening of III were done. From what I can tell, nothing but the establishing shots was ever done - but this would have been a fascinating ending to II. It probably would have obviated the entire third movie.

Regarding actors not reprising their roles or being replaced, this issue is all over both II and III. Coppola had intended both Brando and Richard Castellano to be in II. Brando's fight with Paramount at the time meant that Coppola had to rewrite the flashback to keep him off camera - to my mind, it made the scene stronger. Castellano's demands weren't just about money - Coppola says there was an issue about wanting to be able to rewrite his dialogue, and that ended the whole discussion. Coppola responded by saying the Clemenza character had been killed, and then replacing him with Frankie Five Angels. In this case, it probably would have been stronger to have had Castellano there, but Gazzo gave a great performance. For III, RAH's note about Winona Ryder is correct. She was completely exhausted when she showed up in Rome and could not do the movie. So Coppola used his own daughter - and his commentary on III is a revealing portrait of what happens when a father watches critics dissect his daughter's performance. Her performance was frankly not good - but he took the criticism and the nasty comments very personally. I don't think I'm imagining his continuing anger over the situation on that commentary. As for Robert Duvall, yes, he wanted a much larger salary than they were prepared to offer him. So he went off to do Days of Thunder instead and Coppola replaced him with George Hamilton. This is another situation where the movie would have been stronger had we still had Tom Hagen around. I would frankly love to have seen what a script with Hagen looked like. I don't know that this would have changed Connie's arc - the movie makes a point about how she turns into a kind of mother-wife support system for Michael, just as she did in the early script ending for II. It's not a long jump to see her becoming more and more ruthless herself in her older incarnation.

Coppola's commentary on III includes an interesting discussion around the end credits of what he and Puzo had in mind for a fourth movie before Puzo died. Their idea was to do something like II, only centered around Sonny and Vincent. There would be flashbacks to young Sonny's rise to become Don Vito's successor in the 30s and 40s, and there would be a story set in the 1980s to show the family's complete decline under Vincent. I don't believe they got very far with this idea before Puzo died, but I would have been curious to see what they could have done.

These are trenchant observations, most of which I agree with, some of which I don't. Part 2 is a richly textured film that achieves greatness, but it would have gained from the participation of Richard Castellano. He would have gained more by making a deal with Paramount than by walking away. I understand why he did it, but I firmly believe he made the wrong decision. A little loyalty to Coppola was called for. Gazzo's Frankie Five Angels is an admirable substitution, but the loss of Clemenza is felt.

The film everybody wanted to see, and that was never even considered by Coppola, Puzo or Paramount, was the story of Vito Corleone as the young Don of crime in the 1930s. Indeed there is a large chronological gap between the Vito in Part 2 and his older counterpart in Part 1. A novelist named Ed Falco writing with the permission of the Puzo estate covered these years in The Family Corleone (published in 2012), which I haven't read. But it would have been fun to see Brando or DeNiro play the Godfather again in a 1930s story by Coppola and Puzo. I'm surprised Paramount didn't just cut them out and run with it.

 

[Tom Logan]

But by staging it the way he did, Coppola provided an ironic retroactive indication of Michael's soullessness. Michael very calmly tells his family that he's signing up for military service and essentially walking away from them for his own reasons. When both Sonny and Tom try to talk him out of it, Michael coldly shrugs them off. When the family goes into the other room to surprise the Don, Michael stays by himself, choosing to finish his cigarette rather than be with the family. The film's closing image of Michael alone on his estate just reinforces the idea. For all of his discussions of family, Michael has always been a loner.

I read this moment differently in the context of the entire story (Parts I and II): Michael enlisting was his best (and, it turns out, final) attempt to reject the family business and lead a non-crime life. That decision isolated him outside of the family, and the image of him sitting alone at the table while everyone else greets the Don illustrates that. It's crosscut with post-fratricide Michael alone on the compound, and the horrible irony is that his character's journey back into the family--by way of the family business--has left him, again, isolated. It's the tragedy of his family's business that the logical extension of its protective ethos--kill anyone who threatens the family--means Michael can never escape isolation.

Thanks for your entire essay. It makes me want to watch the first two again.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I read this moment differently in the context of the entire story (Parts I and II): Michael enlisting was his best (and, it turns out, final) attempt to reject the family business and lead a non-crime life. That decision isolated him outside of the family, and the image of him sitting alone at the table while everyone else greets the Don illustrates that. It's crosscut with post-fratricide Michael alone on the compound, and the horrible irony is that his character's journey back into the family--by way of the family business--has left him, again, isolated. It's the tragedy of his family's business that the logical extension of its protective ethos--kill anyone who threatens the family--means Michael can never escape isolation.

Thanks for your entire essay. It makes me want to watch the first two again.

That's my take too.

 

[Robert Crawford]

These are trenchant observations, most of which I agree with, some of which I don't. Part 2 is a richly textured film that achieves greatness, but it would have gained from the participation of Richard Castellano. He would have gained more by making a deal with Paramount than by walking away. I understand why he did it, but I firmly believe he made the wrong decision. A little loyalty to Coppola was called for. Gazzo's Frankie Five Angels is an admirable substitution, but the loss of Clemenza is felt.

The film everybody wanted to see, and that was never even considered by Coppola, Puzo or Paramount, was the story of Vito Corleone as the young Don of crime in the 1930s. Indeed there is a large chronological gap between the Vito in Part 2 and his older counterpart in Part 1. A novelist named Ed Falco writing with the permission of the Puzo estate covered these years in The Family Corleone (published in 2012), which I haven't read. But it would have been fun to see Brando or DeNiro play the Godfather again in a 1930s story by Coppola and Puzo. I'm surprised Paramount didn't just cut them out and run with it.

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There is little doubt that Castellano screwed up as greed has a tendency to do that to people.

 

[Richard--W]

How do you know he wasn't starving? Most actors are lucky if they get to work and be paid once in a year, and that was certainly the case with Castellano. He saw how much money the film was making and wanted to be better paid. That's not greed. It's necessity. He also wanted creative input or control over the script, which is crossing a line for a supporting player, and frightening to writers directors and producers. If he hadn't crossed that line Paramount might have upped his salary because they recognized his contribution to the success of The Godfather.

 

[Robert Crawford]

That's your opinion, he overplayed his hand and he lost.

 

[Richard--W]

That's your opinion, Robert, based on your vast experience with casting and production.

I miss Castellano in The Godfather Part 2 although I still love and admire the film.

 

[Robert Crawford]

That's your opinion, Robert, based on your vast experience with casting and production.I miss Castellano in The Godfather Part 2 although I still love and admire the film.

You should take your own advice when posting some of your comments as opinion!

 

[Richard--W]

The overhead view of Hollywood is stock footage from an M-G-M musical. We were able to return to the original 3-strip material for a new capture, rather than working a few generations down as had been cut into the working OCN. The aircraft landing was also stock footage, and we returned to the original element duped for the film.

RAH

RAH, can you address the matter of The Godfather Saga and The Godfather Epic For Television? Two expanded versions, slightly different, containing additional footage not seen in the theatrical versions. Were these expanded versions restored, or the footage restored? what was Coppola's and Paramount's position on restoring these versions?

 

[Robert Harris]

RAH, can you address the matter of The Godfather Saga and The Godfather Epic For Television? Two expanded versions, slightly different, containing additional footage not seen in the theatrical versions. Were these expanded versions restored, or the footage restored? what was Coppola's and Paramount's position on restoring these versions?

There was a discussion at the time, as to whether the Saga / Epic footage should be restored / preserved concurrent with the base footage. The cost to restore the first two films and take the third to film as the DC, where it had previously existed only as video, was so great an investment for the studio, that work on the other versions was put off. I believe that all elements have now been accounted for and preserved through the studio's asset protection program.

There is a fine program at Paramount, and things are taken very seriously.

RAH

 

[Richard--W]

Thanks for the explanation.

I'm glad to hear the elements have been accounted for and preserved.

I take it, then, we won't be seeing SAGA or EPIC anytime soon.

I do wish the program would result in more blu-ray releases of Paramount's vintage and classic films.