"The Godfather"
Francis Coppola's "The Godfather" is the beginning and ending of mafia cinema. It's not the only wonderful film about organized crime, but it's the richest and grandest. It looks inside the family of a crime organization so deeply, that we don't think of them as bad guys per say. There are no scenes of prostitution where women are being degraded. No ones life being ruined by drugs or gambling. We see complete relationships inside the closely knit structure of a crime family.
Marlon Brando is Vito Corleone. A soft spoken man whose words are regarded as commandment. A much feared man with much power. In the opening sequence, an undertaker is asking for revenge against the men who raped and beat his daughter. The godfather tells him if we would have come and asked in friendship, than the scum who hurt his daughter would be suffering this very day. We sense his manipulation in this scene. His power to suck someone in under his thumb, owing to him.
Brando's character is the heart and soul of the Corleone family, but not of the film, really. That is Michael, played by Al Pacino. The story is a study of a man's transformation from good to evil. During the wedding sequence at the first of the movie, Michael tells Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) that that is his family, it's not him. And by the ending of the movie he is lying to his sister about the death of her husband, and people are kissing his hand calling him godfather.
Coppola makes all the characters alive and he details their personalities so well that we feel we know each and every key member of the film. Its rich storytelling of the internal operation of a crime family that is close, but not close enough. We are given insight to the problems in the family and the mistrust (Michael doesn't even trust his brother/consigliore Tom Hagen with certain issues). The moral of the story is told by Michael in one line, "Never take sides against the family". And he means it.
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