The Godfather – Film Review

By BylineTom Gurin on

“I believe in America.” The opening line lays the groundwork for the rest of this epic cinematic masterpiece. The story feels less like a plot and more like spending a few years with a family attempting to make a name for themselves in the United States. Ironically, the vast majority of the film takes place within the confines of their mansion or otherwise lurking in shadows, hiding from whatever is outside. Indeed the philosophy of the Corleone family is to cohere as much as possible and to minimize contact with outsiders. As Don Corleone tells Sonny following an apparently inappropriate outburst, “Never tell anybody outside the family what you’re thinking again.”

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The overall beauty of this film is in the way it makes us feel like a member of the family. Whenever the front gate is closing we always seem to be on the inside. We are brought into this family simultaneously with Kay (Diane Keaton), girlfriend of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino). In the first scene, the wedding, Michael insists on having Kay in the family portrait and so in a way invites us to be a part of the portrait that Coppola paints with this film.

There are far too many factors that contribute to the brilliance of The Godfather to cover in this post. However, I would like to highlight one technique that Coppola uses to great effect: parallelism. Throughout the film there are parallels in composition and in costume that imply parallels in the story. Firstly, notice the similarities between these two frames:
In the first frame, Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is assuring Johnny Fontane (Al Martino) that he will get him the lead in an upcoming picture. In the second frame, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) is attempting to convince Jack Woltz (John Marley) to give the role to Johnny. Notice the similarities. In both shots the Corleone family member is farther away, facing toward the camera. The other person in the conversation is closer to the camera and facing away, with the head tilted to the right. In both cases we can see the light from the camera’s left bouncing off of the face of the Corleone. By making the compositions of these shots so similar, Coppola transfers Don Vito’s power and influence to Tom. We see him in the same way that we saw the Don just a few minutes ago, so we have no doubts that he will eventually get what he wants. It doesn’t hurt that Duvall imbues his acting in this scene with a particular confidence, I think more so than in any other scene, adding to the effect.
Coppola also uses parallels in costume with Michael’s love interests. The effect of this is a connection for the audience between the two characters. They seem more similar this way and it is easier for us to accept that Michael can be in love with both. In addition, it allows the portion of the movie during which we are jumping back and forth between America and Italy to feel more cohesive. In the wedding scene, Kay is wearing a dress unlike anyone else’s:
She is wearing orange whereas almost every other dress at the wedding is a shade of pink. Later, she is also wearing a standout color when she visits the Corleone home and is met by Tom:
 
Also notice that in both shots she is holding hands with another character. This parallels the first sight Michael has of Apollonia:
 
She is wearing a dress of color unlike anyone else’s. On top of that, she is holding hands with another person. While the movie alternates back and forth between New York and Sicily, the similarities we see between Michael’s love interests make these very different settings mesh together more easily.
Another instance of parallelism in The Godfather occurs a little bit later in the film, when two people very close to Michael are assassinated: Sonny (James Caan) and Apollonia (Simonetta Stefanelli). When Sonny drives to his death, he creates a cloud of dust as he backs up then speeds out of the driveway:
 
Within two minutes he is blasted to bits by a dozen machine guns at a toll booth. Three scenes later, Michael is teaching Apollonia how to drive and she raises a similar dust cloud as she speeds and bumps over the dirt. The similarities between these two scenes foreshadow the next, in which she is killed by a car-bomb. We feel a building tension just seeing her in a car after what happened to Sonny, let alone seeing her driving in the same reckless manner. Coppola makes the audience feel uneasy, but at first we are not entirely sure why. Only when the second death occurs do we make the connection.
           The final example I would like to point out is nearer to the end of the film, when Don Vito Corleone is in the process of transferring his power to his son Michael. This is another costume parallel. In the first shot we have Don Vito in the backseat of a car driving away from the congregation he called of all the heads of the five families regarding the drug business and peace negotiations.
 
In the very next scene we see Michael wearing almost exactly the same outfit, in close proximity to a car, and looking in the same direction relative to the camera–slightly to the left. We can even see light bouncing off of the top of the car in the same portion of the frame as the headlights of the trailing car above:
 
 
Of all these similarities, however, the most striking feature is the hat. Throughout most of the movie all of the important men of the Corleone family are seen wearing suit and tie, or at least some semblance of formal wear. But very rarely do we see this type of hat. Its appearance in these two adjacent scenes is not coincidental; it symbolizes a transfer of power from father to son, much as Coppola drew on the Don’s power earlier in the film to make Tom seem more powerful during his conversation with Woltz.
The careful use of parallelism throughout this film has different effects depending on how Coppola is utilizing it. It is just one of many techniques Coppola used masterfully to make The Godfather into the brilliant cinematic work that it is.

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Author: Tom Gurin

Tom Gurin is an American composer, multimedia artist, and carillonist based in Switzerland. He was a 2023 laureate-resident at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, and the 2021-2022 recipient of a joint Fulbright-Harriet Hale Woolley Award at the United States Foundation in Paris, where he completed residencies in both music and sculpture. He is a Fellow of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation. A graduate of the Royal Carillon School in Belgium, Gurin served as Duke University Chapel Carillonneur until summer 2021. He studied composition at Yale University, the École Normale de Musique de Paris, and privately with Allain Gaussin. He is currently a master’s student in electronic and multimedia composition at the Haute École de Musique de Genève. Contact him online here.