Buy at Amazon USA Buy at Amazon Canada THE GODFATHER: THE COPPOLA RESTORATION (Blu-ray) TG TGPII TGPIII Image A A A- Sound A A A- Commentary A A A+ Extras A+

September 22, 2008|Begging your pardon for recycling an old and insubstantial review of The Godfather trilogy, written under the same conditions I find myself writing this one: rushed. But I feel an urgent need to pre-empt potential disappointment in this definitive and landmark Blu-ray release. Truthfully, I'd rather be discussing the films' use of oranges as portents of death; or my new theory that The Godfather Part II is as much a direct influence on Friday the 13th as Mario Bava's Bay of Blood; or how I was blindsided this time around by the emotional wallop of Part III. Another day, perhaps. It's a testament to the brilliance of the new editions, though, that this set rebooted my curiosity about a series I had begun to take for granted. The key word to remember in evaluating these discs is "restoration"--that's the project's subtitle and its MO. Under the supervision of Robert A. Harris, the first two films have been 'put back' the way they were rather than remastered to make them more compatible with a contemporary sensibility. And the results are like a time machine, but better, since Harris and co. have gone so far as to correct mistakes made by the lab in the initial processing. (No need to cry revisionism: they simply carried out instructions that were previously ignored.) The films are suspended in their moment on Blu-ray, in presentations prolific in grain because that is the nature of the beast--particularly this beast, whose dark canvas emphasizes the pointillist relationship that grain has to celluloid. These highly organic 1.85:1, 1080p transfers bring into relief for the first time on home video Michael's rapid eye movements before he executes Sollozzo and McCluskey, as well as the chiaroscuro contours in a tableau of Michael and Fredo against the bay window of the Corleones' Lake Tahoe estate--two shots in fact singled out in an accompanying featurette on the restoration(s) to illustrate the renewed texture of the image. I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the courageously blown-out whites in scenes of vérité naturalism, or the revitalized palette in general: the films remain the colour of nostalgia (albeit less prosaically golden), but bright primaries now stand out as they would in the mind's eye. Overlooking stubborn but unobjectionable bits of print schmutz, I have minor gripes with this "Coppola Restoration." In The Godfather, some of the establishing shots--an aerial view of Graumann's Chinese Theater, Clemenza's car on the expressway--continue to be in a sorry state of disrepair, gritty and out of register. (I suspect it's an optical issue--both of these examples intersect with lap dissolves.) Part III has a cinnamon cast to it that, like everything else about the piece, is a degree or two off from what it's trying to emulate, and there's a strange pulsing of black level in a reverse shot of Kay as Michael breaks bread with her in the dining room of their Sicilian hideaway. Despite that only the first two films were officially restored, all three represent a quantum leap in quality from their 2001 DVD counterparts, at least visually. I listened to the 640 kbps core of the 5.1 Dolby TrueHD tracks and couldn't tell to what, if any, extent the audio was retooled; I want to say that LFE usage was toned down across the board, but that might be a by-product of the downmix. For what it's worth, ADR is more noticeable in Part III than ever before--one comes away certain that Sofia Coppola was forced to loop almost her entire performance. The Godfather and The Godfather Part II additionally feature centre-channel mono options that sound just as beautiful as the more expansive alternatives. Moving on to the fourth and final platter, joining the abundant content from the 2001 box set, we have a fresh batch of HD supplements prepared by Zoetrope regular Kim Aubry. My problem with this material is the same one I had with the Dirty Harry extras: I don't much care what the likes of Richard Belzer and Trey Parker have to say about The Godfather. Sure, it's fascinating to watch Alec Baldwin's rage bubble to the surface as he ascribes biblical wrath to Michael's vengeance on Vito's would-be assassins, but soliciting his and others' opinions primarily on the basis of name recognition seems a bit tacky in the context of these elegant films. At least they got Sarah Vowell, who classes up the joint considerably even though she's barely around long enough to recount the anecdote from her memoir Take the Cannoli about watching The Godfather piecemeal in secret. Here's another thing that irks me: the mini-docs rarely live up to their titles. Fourteen minutes into the 30-minute "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't", The Godfather has anti-climactically opened to redemptive critical acclaim and box-office success, leaving the interviewees with very little to do but jerk themselves off for the next quarter-hour. (That said, the HiDef clips from Mel Brooks' Silent Movie and the 1969 The Italian Job are gorgeous.) "...when the shooting stopped" (14 mins.) similarly reneges on its promise to discuss post-production in depth, although reliably-eloquent editor Walter Murch salvages it with his insights into Michael's Munchian scream at the end of the third film. (It's pretty brilliant; I don't want to spoil it.) Meanwhile, "Godfather World" (11 mins.) mostly attenuates the B-list love-in, though I thoroughly enjoyed the excerpts from Seth Isler's one-man show "The Godfadda Workout"--wish the whole thing were stashed away somewhere as an Easter egg. "Emulsional Rescue: Revealing The Godfather" (19 mins.) is easily the best piece of the bunch. We learn step-by-step what went into the 4K restorations straight from the decapitated-horse's mouth. You'd think The Godfather's popularity would pre-empt its deterioration, yet that was one of the underlying causes of the same: the picture's negative--a brittle thing to begin with, given that the preponderance of black left very little emulsion behind--was overprinted to meet demand. The starfucking resumes in the inexplicable "The Godfather on the Red Carpet" (4 mins.), wherein attendees of Cloverfield's Hollywood premiere are ambushed with requests to deliver a Godfather soundbite; in what is surely a koinkidink, Cloverfield is also available on DVD and Blu-ray from Paramount Home Video. "Four Short Films on The Godfather" totalling 7 minutes--"GF vs. GF Part II," "Riffing on the Riffing," "Cannoli," and "Clemenza"--are obviously outtakes from the featurettes, the best of which sees Coppola responding to a rhetorical question asked in Ellen Cavolina and Jane Cavolina Meara's fun reference guide How to Really Watch The Godfather: Capos, Cannolis, Consiglieres, and the Truth About the Corleones. For what it's worth, Vowell resurfaces in one of these to celebrate the genius of the oft-quoted "Leave the gun, take the cannoli," but she's trumped by Coppola's revelation that the line itself was an ad-lib. Rounding out the set: a BD-Java version of the surprisingly gratifying Corleone "Family Tree" that incorporates actor bios; a corny "Crime Organization Chart" that offers police dossiers on Michael and co.; "Connie and Carlo's Wedding Album," a dense gallery of stills that capture the cast having candid moments in character; and credits for this massive undertaking. Note that while the subtitled translations of Italian dialogue are no longer burned-in, the copper-tinted, player-generated captions do a nice job of simulating their original font. On the packaging proper: the insert booklet is, illogically, too big for the cardboard sleeve that houses the swingtray keepcase and is thus unlikely to stick around for long after the shrink wrap comes off. Running times for the first two films are lengthened by a 2-minute end-title sequence crediting the Restoration Team, while the old-fashioned Paramount logos have been disappointingly replaced by the current CG one.-BC 1.85:1, 1080p (MPEG-4); English Dolby TrueHD 5.1, French DD 5.1, Spanish DD 5.1, English Mono (The Godfather, The Godfather Part II); English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese subtitles; 4 BD-50s

Men love The Godfather; boys love Star Wars. Some guys claim to hold the two franchises in equal regard, but if he knows more of Darth Vader's dialogue by heart than Vito Corleone's, ladies, find a new mate, or compete against Lego for his affections for the rest of your life together. A Godfather man beats up anybody who picks on his sister, can appreciate a good meal, dresses with the goal of looking handsome, and knows to keep his friends close and his enemies closer. If he's apt to murder in cold blood, at least he'll never sit in a La-Z-Boy making "Pow! Pow! Pow!" noises as though flying The Millennium Falcon.

If I live to see the DVD debut of the Star Wars Trilogy, I will most likely spin it, be impressed by the sound, giggle at Chewbacca, write the reviews, and never think about it again, except in the context of relief: no further "when's it gonna come out?" reader e-mails. The Godfather DVD Collection is, as far as I'm concerned, the holy grail. For the record, the package is a black, leathery box containing cardboard-and-plastic slipcases that are decorated with the appropriate dons. Like The Godfather Part III, it's at once classy and cheap. Nevertheless, I actually remarked to a fellow movie site's Webmaster, "I'm so excited about owning it I'm having trouble watching it." But watch it I did, and will again and again, until the films hit the next superior home video format.

Okay, maybe not The Godfather Part III. But I digress...

"I believe in America."
To say that Mario Puzo's The Godfather glamorizes organized crime is to dismiss the trilogy's corpse tally. If The Godfather, in particular, is guilty of glamorizing something, it's the nepotism--and food that's high in cholesterol.

In The Godfather, the old-world values of mafia don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) decide him against entering his patriarchy into the drug trade, raising the ire of the syndicate. An attempt on Vito's life spurs the most levelheaded of his sons, Navy Cross recipient Michael (Al Pacino), to action, and every tangential outcome is pure movie magic. A horse's decapitation (one of the few developments that does not stand up to intellectual scrutiny--also one of the most visceral. (It's a real head.)) Mercurial Sonny's (James Caan) streetside trouncing of his sister's lousy husband. "Leave the gun, take the cannoli." Dark eyes in antiquey rooms. Cinematic history.

I've hammered this particular nail over and over again: most sequels invalidate their predecessors. I think of Aliens, during which we successfully appealed to the screen for Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and Bishop to survive. All four of them die in Alien³, Newt and Hicks before the opening credits have finished! Mario Puzo's The Godfather Part II expands and comments on and completes The Godfather; it's an organic continuation, and even has aspects of a prequel.

"My offer is this: nothing."
If The Godfather charted the decline of the Corleones, the Homeric The Godfather Part II explores both the ultimate rise and fall of their organization in parallel storylines. We track Vito (Robert DeNiro) from his parents' slaughter in Sicily to the formation of Genco, his NYC-based olive oil company, which serves as a front for shady dealings. Meanwhile, we see Michael dismantle everything his father built, ironically in the act of defending and protecting the family name.

This dual-structure is echoed in the approach to scenes specific, such as Jewish boss Hyman Roth's (acting teacher extraordinaire Lee Strasberg) birthday party: Roth allocates his assets to would-be inheritors while cake is cut and served, the surface telling you what's happening underneath--helpful in a film as seesawing as The Godfather Part II. Writers Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola incorporate many benchmarks of fifties politics, including McCarthy's witch hunts, and--as if Camelot's demise were predicted in the Corleones' undoing--there's an execution that echoes Jack Ruby's takedown of Lee Harvey Oswald.

The Godfather Part II is one of my very favourite pictures, but its effectiveness is not isolated: Fredo's (John Cazale) fate is deepened by his confinement to the sidelines in The Godfather; Hyman Roth's Moe Green anecdote adds a tragic quality to Alex Rocco's vein-popping Bugsy Siegel caricature we didn't think much of in the preceding film; etc. Yet although The Godfather and The Godfather Part II are co-dependent, that doesn't stop me from preferring the latter. Nor do Part II's skimpy climax and its obvious use of Mama Corleone (Morgana King). These are things that only really occurred to me on this, my fifth viewing of The Godfather Part II--it's truly spellbinding enough, especially performance-wise (Cazale is guaranteed to break your heart), to blind the critical eye.

"Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in."
The Godfather Part III fails for several reasons, not the least of which is the double-black eye to casting: Paramount's refusal to pay Robert Duvall's salary (Corleone consigliere Tom Hagen was reconfigured as the unfortunately-named "B.J.," a non-descript lawyer played by George Hamilton) and Coppola's decision to replace an ailing Winona Ryder with his own daughter, Sofia. Though she brings a raw ingenuousness to the role of Mary Corleone, Michael's lovestruck teenaged offspring, there's always been a layer of classic artifice to the acting in the Godfathers that is a large part of the films' appeal.

The Godfather Part III isn't ghastly (and we must acknowledge that Part II is a tough act to follow), but Michael's redemption arc, compounded by the onset of diabetes, is light drama at best. The bravura finale is pretty standard (how many more times are we going to see opera alternated with bloodshed?), while the culminating use of "Cavalleria Rusticana," whose overture Martin Scorsese employed indelibly in Raging Bull, only emphasizes that Scorsese, not Coppola, is the more vital Italian-American filmmaker post-Godfather II. If any one character gets a previously-eluded resolution of poignancy, thereby justifying the existence of The Godfather Part III, it's Kay (Diane Keaton), Michael's careworn wife. In The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, she stood still as Michael shut the door on her face; in The Godfather Part III, she walks away with dignity before he can.

On DVD, the 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer of The Godfather is a far better thing than what was re-released to moviehouses in the spring of 1997: a restoration doesn't exist outside the digital realm, you see, and so crystal clear remastered sound accompanied prints that appeared scratched-up beyond repair. If you never saw the subsequent THX-approved LaserDisc or VHS versions, the DVD's going to knock your socks off. Otherwise, you'll be expecting the creamy image, which claims minor wear-and-tear as its biggest detriment, though grain runs a trifle thick. The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix is powerful and age-defying (a car bomb rivals any modern rendering of an explosion), if limited in its dimensionality. Coppola has recorded incredibly listenable longform commentaries for all three Godfather films (that's ten hours of talking!) that double-dip into the supplemental disc's anecdotes with admirable infrequency. The first film's track focuses on his near-firing and, of course, the disputes he had with notorious producer Robert Evans.

Presented at 1.85:1 and enhanced for 16x9 displays, The Godfather Part II sparkles less often on DVD than The Godfather does. Blacks aren't quite as deep and velvety, and those sequences cast in a yesteryear glow (the yellow-hued 'Vito' lighting scheme somewhat resembles that of 'Cuba') can get sooty in the darker areas of the image. Again, owners of the pre-THX'd VHS and LaserDisc releases will be the most impressed. The slightly hollow 5.1 Dolby Digital remix is substantially active when there's a party going on or if it's thundering. Coppola contributes a semi-analytical yakker, often discussing The Godfather Part II in terms of literary tradition. The film has been spread out over two discs to maintain a decent bitrate. Given that the 'side break' occurs at an intended point of intermission, it's a legitimate disruption of the movie's flow.

Heavy grain in the 1.85:1 anamorphic DVD transfer makes 1990's The Godfather Part III look older than its vintage, and the 5.1 Dolby Digital audio is relatively sedate. The LFE channel digs deep after Michael has a panic attack, but when, for instance, a key moment from Part II is recycled, it lacks the oomph it has on Part II's own DVD. Nevertheless, The Godfather Part III sports the primo commentary of the lot: along with redefining the film as not a second sequel but an epilogue, Coppola manages to talk us into being more accepting of Sofia's performance. I should note that each of these DVDs dives straight into its respective Godfather upon start-up--no copyright logos, not even menus, just the MPAA's "R" warning and then the movie proper. Not to worry, these discs do have main menus--a different one the first three times you return to them, as a matter of fact, which is a nice touch. (Caution: Part II's third main menu--on both platters--is a big spoiler.)

A fifth disc devoted to bonus features leaves no stone unturned. Paramount has finally realized the DVD potential of one of their franchises, not to mention allowed the studio's reputation to be dragged through the mud by various participants in the box set without censor. The fullest section here is Behind the Scenes, two pages of subtitled extras that lead to:

"A Look Inside"
I'd seen this 73-minute retrospective, framed by a story meeting in which Coppola is brainstorming a teary monologue for Michael in The Godfather Part III, twice already on cable, but it's such a captivating mix of candid talking heads and archival footage (DeNiro's screen test for Sonny is like a sneak preview of his turn in Mean Streets) that a taste of it to reacquaint myself left me powerless to hit the stop button. (Just when I thought I was out, indeed.) Chapter-encoded.

"On Location"
Production designer Dean Tavoularis gives us a tour of the trilogy's NYC locations. Black-and-white documentary excerpts accompany his explanation of how Manhattan's Lower East Side was transformed into period Little Italy.

"Francis Coppola's Notebook"
Coppola sits on a couch and pores over his phonebook-thick production binder for our benefit. Budding auteurs, keep your eyes and ears peeled for tips and tricks, particularly on the art of adapting a novel.

"Music of The Godfather"
An audio-only meeting with composer Nino Rota (a spinning cassette deck is the attendant visual), plus a Carmine Coppola interview (narrated by son Francis) conducted on the day of a scoring session for The Godfather Part III. (Carmine Coppola, incidentally, died of a stroke induced by the good news that his love theme for Part III, "Promise Me You'll Remember," was nominated for a Best Song Academy Award.)

"Coppola & Puzo on Screenwriting"
Coppola and the late Puzo separately illuminate their process of collaboration. The piece ends with Puzo divulging his ideas for The Godfather Part IV, a prequel that would depict the childhood years of Sonny, Michael, et al.

"Gordon Willis on Cinematography"
Director of photography Gordon "The Prince of Darkness" Willis concedes, "I may have gone too far a couple of times--Rembrandt went too far a couple of times." Willis' instructional recollections are intercut with awestruck tributes from esteemed peers Michael Chapman, Conrad Hall, and William A. Fraker.

"Storyboards-Part II"
A masterpiece in the planning stages. Step from one thumbnail to the next.

"Storyboards-Part III"
Sequential storyboard drawings edited in time to voices reading the screenplay aloud. Three passages: Vincent's dispatch of Grace's captors; a shadowy meeting; and Michael's Vatican ordainment.

"The Godfather Behind the Scenes 1971"
A 9-minute making-of shot and assembled in the manner of a nature special.

Another loaded section is Additional Scenes, 34 (!) textural deleted odds-and-ends sorted chronologically along the Corleone timeline. (Thus, DeNiro's trims come before any of Pacino's.) Where and how these segments fit in is elaborated by 34 separate text introductions. Because The Godfather Part III was restored by nine minutes for home video, it has the fewest number of omissions--one, to be exact, an alternate opening that started the film off with business rather than pleasure.

Galleries offers trailers for The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and The Godfather Part III, a panoply of tacky Academy Awards ceremony clips (not, alas, Sacheem Littlefeather's rejection of the Best Actor Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando) as well as listings of accolades filed under "Acclaim and Response" and Francis Ford Coppola's personal introduction to the 1974 network-TV airing of The Godfather, which is eerily reminiscent of the SCTV skits in which Coppola is portrayed by Rick Moranis as a paradoxically humble megalomaniac. Assorted stills and villainous headshots can be found in the "Photo" and "Rogue's" galleries, respectively. (Or did I accidentally leave the 1966 Batman in the machine?) Last but not least, read your DVD credits and you might get a dessert courtesy of "The Sopranos".

Rounding out the last disc, besides lengthy filmographies, is an innovative Corleone Family Tree. Clicking on Fredo takes you to his biography (complete with birth and death dates) and links you to a page of same for his wife Deanna. Everything spiders out from Vito, who occupies the centre square, so to speak. For the Godfather newbie, this could prove an addictive interaction.-Bill Chambers

© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.