The Godfather and Al Pacino

For some reason, I have been watching a lot of the Godfather movies lately. The first two, of course. I saw Godfather III on Christmas break whatever year it was that it came out. Man, it stank. In light of the quality of the first two movies, memories of Godfather III should be repressed. Just pretend it didn't exist.

I made a project of watching The Godfather and Godfather II during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college while back at home (I was all cultured from having gone to college and was renting all kinds of arty movies -- fell sleep during Last Temptation of Christ). I hadn't seen them in a long time, but recently caught a lot of both of them, first on WGN and then on our local WB affiliate. I'm guessing that these movies are highly appealing to channels with a lot of time to fill and not much quality TV to put on because people like me will watch some of them if we catch them and they're probably cheap to show at this point. Plus they're looong (especially if you show commercials every 3 minutes, like WGN). Anyway, I watched about 1/2 of The Godfather last week when The Muse was out of town and then, for some ungodly reason, stayed up until 1:30 last night watching Godfather II. Don't ask me why, I can't really tell you. But I did really enjoy it.

Two things struck me about the movies.

First, and this is no insight at all, but they're both really good. And The Godfather II is even a sequel. I think that my favorite part is the part of the first one between the time that Vito Corelone gets shot and the time that Michael Corelone shoots the guys responsible in the Italian restaurant. Here's where Michael commits to being part of the family business. Until then, he resisted it. He went to college. He was dating Diane Keaton, not someone like Talia Shire. He enlisted in the Marines when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (to Sonny's dismay, as shown at the end of Godfather II -- everything was to Sonny's dismay).

But then his father is shot and, really, all he wants to do is prevent his father from getting shot again. At the scene at the hospital, you can see how Michael would be much better at running things than Sonny. He quickly figures out that someone's going to try to come kill Vito from the absence of anyone around. He convinces the nurse to him move Vito. He drafts the baker Enzo to pretend that he is a bodyguard with Michael when the hitmen come (there's that brilliant shot of poor Enzo's hands shaking so much that he can't light a cigarette after the hitmen leave). Then he's the one who decides that he needs to kill Solazzo and the dirty cop when no one else thinks he should and he's the one who explains how to spin it for the newspapers. He is very decisive and smart and is willing to go to the mat to protect his father.

Then you get the scene at the restaurant. There is so much good stuff in that scene. Solazzo wants to talk in Italian and Michael goes along, having a hard time finding the words because he isn't that fluent. He's going along with the old ways. Finally, he says in English that he just wants to make sure that no one tries to hurt his father again. He's doing it his own way. Solazzo says he just wants a truce. OK, here is the point when everything changes. Michael could have just said OK, that would have accomplished his goal, apparently. But now he's committed, he's going to be this person hadn't meant to be. He goes in the bathroom and he gets the gun. Then he stops and smooths his hair and heads back out. He disappears from view and then we see him through the mirror, kind of like it's not really him, like when he disappeared from view, he became someone else. He goes out, waits for a minute, then shoots the two guys dead. Now, when Clemenza told Michael what to do, he said to just let the gun fall from his hand. Instead, he starts out the restaurant, still with the gun, then he eventually throws it to the floor, like he had forgotten what to do. He kind of holds his hand up, too. (Jeff Goldblum basically ripped this move off in The Fly after he arm-wrestled the guy in the bar and broke the guy's arm.)

The movies are just exceedingly well put together and the stories are good.

The second thing that struck me about the movies is just how good of an actor Al Pacino is, or used to be. Marlon Brando's performance of course is really famous, one of the most famous ever. The movies, though, are Al Pacino's movies. They are mostly about his character and he carries them, particularly Godfather II, which is almost completely about Michael.

Since these movies, Pacino has become a yeller. I haven't seen a lot of his movies, but he has some pretty famous loud lines -- "Say hello to my little friend!" "Hooah!" -- and he seems to like to play the obnoxious guy.

And he wasn't like that at all in the Godfather movies. About 75% of his lines are almost whispered and he gets a lot of mileage out of not saying anything. By The Godfather II, there's a lot of menace in him being silent. It also makes the few tines that he blows up that much more effective. I think that the only time that he really detonates is in Godfather II, when Kay -- Diane Keaton -- tells him that she didn't lose their third baby to a miscarriage, but instead had an abortion because she didn't want to bring another one of his children into the world. He's really frightening in that scene because he's out of control and he's always been totally under control before. Even when he tells Fredo that he knows that Fredo was the one who tried to kill him, he doesn't come off as crazy, he comes off as intense and terrifying. Given Pacino's later acting choices, he seems like he is almost consciously trying to not do Michael.

So I guess the Godfather movies deserved their Oscars. They're awfully good. Plus they've got Abe Vigoda.