Genres: Crime | Drama Countries: USA Actors: Marlon Brando Don Vito Corleone Al Pacino Michael Corleone James Caan Santino 'Sonny' Corleone Richard S. Castellano Pete Clemenza Robert Duvall Tom Hagen Sterling Hayden Capt. Mark McCluskey Richard Conte Emilio Barzini Al Lettieri Virgil Sollozzo Diane Keaton Kay Adams Abe Vigoda Salvadore "Sally" Tessio Talia Shire Connie Gianni Russo Carlo Rizzi John Marley Fredo Rudy Bond Carmine Cuneo Directors: Francis Ford Coppola Certification: Argentina:18 | Australia:R | Austria:16 | Brazil:14 | Canada:13+ | Canada:AA | Canada:PA | Chile:18 ...  show all  Argentina:18 | Australia:R | Austria:16 | Brazil:14 | Canada:13+ | Canada:AA | Canada:PA | Chile:18 | Colombia:18 | Denmark:15 | Finland:K-16 | Finland:K-18 | France:-12 | Hong Kong:IIB | Iceland:16 | Ireland:18 | Israel:PG | Italy:VM14 | Japan:R-15 | Mexico:C | Netherlands:16 | New Zealand:R16 | Norway:18 | Peru:18 | Poland:15 | Portugal:17 | Portugal:M/18 | Singapore:M18 | South Korea:18 | Spain:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 | UK:X | USA:R | West Germany:16  hide  IMDB Rating: 9.2 out of 10 (285295 votes)

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Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael, respectively. It is the late 1940s in New York and Corleone is, in the parlance of organized crime, a “godfather” or “don,” the head of a Mafia family. Michael, a free thinker who defied his father by enlisting in the Marines to fight in World War II, has returned a captain and a war hero. Having long ago rejected the family business, Michael shows up at the wedding of his sister, Connie (Talia Shire), with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), who learns for the first time about the family “business.” A few months later at Christmas time, the don barely survives being shot by gunmen in the employ of a drug-trafficking rival whose request for aid from the Corleones’ political connections was rejected. After saving his father from a second assassination attempt, Michael persuades his hotheaded eldest brother, Sonny (James Caan), and family advisors Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) that he should be the one to exact revenge on the men responsible. After murdering a corrupt police captain and the drug trafficker, Michael hides out in Sicily while a gang war erupts at home. Falling in love with a local girl, Michael marries her, but she is later slain by Corleone enemies in an attempt on Michael’s life. Sonny is also butchered, having been betrayed by Connie’s husband. As Michael returns home and convinces Kay to marry him, his father recovers and makes peace with his rivals, realizing that another powerful don was pulling the strings behind the narcotics endeavor that began the gang warfare. Once Michael has been groomed as the new don, he leads the family to a new era of prosperity, then launches a campaign of murderous revenge against those who once tried to wipe out the Corleones, consolidating his family’s power and completing his own moral downfall. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards and winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather was followed by a pair of sequels.

“I believe in America” — and America embraced The Godfather, turning it into a landmark artistic triumph and blockbuster hit. The movie was initially planned as a low-budget adaptation of Mario Puzo’s Mafia family best-seller, and young director Francis Ford Coppola was hired because Paramount thought he would be easy to control. Instead, he fought the studio to cast little-known Al Pacino as Michael Corleone and foundering Marlon Brando as Don Vito, and he turned The Godfather into an operatic period epic about family, honor, and American economic success (the word “Mafia” is never used); in return, he was almost fired during production. The finished film’s narrative drive and imagery were astonishing. Beginning with the opening sequence intercutting Vito’s sepulchral study with the bright wedding outside, Coppola renders the Corleones threatening in their business and appealing in their closeness as they negotiate the legacy of Vito’s prosperity. Gordon Willis’ shadowy cinematography infused the film with shades of black, brown, and gold, contrasting bleak Family dealings with warm family loyalty. The famously extreme violence, particularly the horse head and Sonny’s tollbooth demise (echoing 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde), revealed the cost of protecting the family honor; the baptism montage elevated Michael’s corruption to diabolical proportions as he consolidates his business power. Highly anticipated and critically revered, The Godfather became one of the biggest box-office hits of all time, adding several catchphrases to the cultural lexicon, revitalizing the gangster genre, turning Pacino into a star, and reviving Brando’s career. Nominated for 10 Oscars, The Godfather won Best Picture, but Brando snubbed his Best Actor prize and Coppola lost Best Director to Cabaret’s Bob Fosse. Willis’ cinematography wasn’t even nominated, and although Nino Rota’s memorable music did initially receive a nomination, the Academy rescinded it when they discovered that Rota included material in the score from one of his earlier compositions. In 1998, the American Film Institute named The Godfather one of the three greatest American films ever made, testifying to its enduring artistic legacy.

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