In these exclusive interviews, Francis Ford Coppola describes how with his masterpiece The Godfather he visualised the intricate web of influence, manipulation and violence that underpinned the world of organised crime – and showed how it reflected the US.
On 14 March 1972, the iconic crime epic The Godfather premiered in New York. With its haunting score, its subtle, evocative cinematography, its endlessly quotable dialogue and its powerhouse performances – which served to revive Marlon Brando’s career and make a star of a young Al Pacino – it is now widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.
Accused of glamorising crime and the Mafia before it was even released, it went on to be seen by many as the definitive gangster film. But not by its director. “I’ve always felt The Godfather was really less about gangsters, than about power and powerful families, and the succession of power, and the Machiavellian way that real power works in the world,” Francis Ford Coppola told the BBC’s Barry Norman in 1991.
Coppola was just 29 years old when he was first offered the chance to direct an adaptation of Mario Puzo’s bestselling 1969 novel. The story centred on a fictional New York Mafia family in the post-World War Two years, led by patriarch Don Vito Corleone (the eponymous Godfather of the title), as they try to ensure their survival in the brutal and treacherous world of organised crime. When the Don is betrayed, his youngest son Michael, who had hoped for a life away from the Mob, gets pulled into the family business, as a war between the different crime families breaks out and they fight for control.
Coppola initially did not warm to the book. He wasn’t much interested in the Mafia, and when he first read it, he was put off by some of its more lurid aspects.
“To me originally, and anyone who remembers the original Godfather book, it had a lot of sleazy aspects to it, which of course were cut out for the movie, and I didn’t like it very much for those reasons,” he told Sir Christopher Frayling in a 1985 BBC interview.
But being from an Italian-American background like its author Puzo, he did understand the culture, tradition and family rituals the story was steeped in. And, as he reread the book, he saw there was much more to it than just a potboiler about crime, sex and revenge. The story had themes that were classical in their nature, a powerful father and family bonds, a son yearning to escape his fate, old-world values clashing with a changing society, honour and betrayal, and how power corrupts the souls of those who wield it.
“Obviously I was more interested in those themes but those themes could apply to a Shakespeare play, or any piece that deals, you know, Greek drama even really, that deals with those bigger themes, and that’s more where I had my attention on,” Coppola told Barry Norman.
He and Puzo drew out these themes as they worked together on the screenplay. Coppola told the BBC that at the heart of the film lies an examination of power dynamics, the corrupting influence of powerful families and a commentary on the way the US operates on the world stage.
Parallels with the US
The first film’s timeline, which spans from the 1940s to the 1950s, coincides with an era where the US is emerging from the ashes of World War Two, and becoming a dominant force on the global stage. The Corleones, a family bonded not just by blood but by their immigrant background, represent an America that is both insular looking and ruthless in its application of force and influence in its own self-interest.
In the film, Don Corleone (played by Marlon Brando) will, depending on the situation, negotiate, bribe, intimidate or resort to savage violence to ensure that his family’s interests and power are maintained. Likewise, the US, faced with what it saw as the threat of the Soviet Union, was being accused of using clandestine operations or bribery to destabilise rival countries, forming alliances with other nations, promising them its protection and fighting proxy wars in other countries, to ensure US interests prevailed.
Michael (Al Pacino) explicitly makes this parallel to his girlfriend Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) when he tells her he is going to work for his father, saying to her “My father is no different than any other powerful man, any man who’s responsible for other people, like a senator or a president.”
“Do you know how naïve you sound,” Kay says. “Senators and presidents don’t have men killed.” To which Michael, ever the realist, replies: “Who’s being naïve, Kay?”
Don Corleone, who had fled Europe following the murder of his family, like many immigrants is rooted in the traditions of the culture he came from, while his son Michael who has grown up in the US, is more assimilated into the changing, post-war world.
A good college student who has come back from fighting for his country, initially Michael comes across as an idealist, and appears to be clear-sighted as to what his family does and how he is different from them. When he tells Kay the story of how his father got his godson, the singer Johnny Fontane, out of his contract – by having a gun held to the head of his bandleader – Michael reassures her saying “That’s my family Kay, that’s not me.”
“It seemed to me that Michael Corleone in the first Godfather, like America, started really with some ideals, freshness, and although he came from Europe, as America really was born out of Europe, there were these new ideals and new directions which was so inspiring,” Coppola told Barry Norman in 1991.
Vito Corleone, and Michael after him, are not mere criminals but power brokers who understand that influence is as essential as violence to manipulate and control situations in their favour. Vito understands that the essence of power is the ability to compel others to act against their own best interests, and he distils this idea down to a line which became synonymous with the film: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
A cultural touchstone
As the film progresses, Michael slowly assumes his father’s role. He begins to exercise power through coercion, blackmail or violence. Yet he, like his father, still clings to the trappings of respectability, often seen through his relationships to the Catholic Church, businesses or politicians, to provide a cover of legitimacy for his behaviour.
When Michael ruthlessly consolidates his power and deals out what he sees as justice to his enemies, this veneer of respectability is brought into sharp focus. Scenes of him renouncing the devil at his nephew’s Christening are intercut with a jarring montage of brutal murders he has ordered of people he sees as threats.
Coppola felt that the betrayal of ideals – that Michael seemed to represent at the beginning of the film – act as a metaphor for America’s own conduct on the world stage. “As [Michael] grew older, as illustrated by the second movie, like America, as it really began to function in the world and deal in the responsibilities and manipulations of power, he began to construct, I feel, almost a hypocrisy. Which is to say ‘I’m doing this for good, I’m doing this for the family, I’m doing this for good things,'” said Coppola.
Michael justifies his actions with the supposedly “good ends” of protecting his family, which he conflates with his own strategic criminal goals and, as the film saga shows, ultimately fails to keep his family safe. At the time he was working on the Godfather, pictures of the brutality and anarchy of the war the US was conducting in Vietnam and its horrific human cost were filtering back, leading people to question what the US was doing there.
Coppola draws this parallel with Michael’s dubious claims for his own motivation and the US’s stated aims of fighting for freedom and democracy overseas, while relentlessly pursuing its own foreign policy objectives. “His actions were certainly like America, saying we want democracy, we want freedom, all these good things but much of the behind-the-scenes actions, necessitated by politics meant we were in a way staining ourselves, like Michael Corleone, like the soul of Dorian Gray was being stained.”
After its release, The Godfather became a huge critical and commercial success. It won three Oscars, including for best picture and best adapted screenplay, and its success prompted an equally lauded sequel two years later, The Godfather: Part II, which went on to win another six Oscars.
The film has become an abiding cultural touchstone that can be seen through many different lenses, a metaphor for US capitalism, a commentary on the American Dream and even a critique of the motion picture industry itself. Indeed, in a sign of how rich the story is for possible interpretations, John Hulsman and Wess Mitchell’s 2009 book, The Godfather Doctrine, argues that the film is really a parable for precisely the pragmatic foreign policy approach that US should adopt in a post 9/11 world.
However you view it, the film is, among other things, a story about power, how to gain it, how to keep it and how the pursuit of it will inevitably come at a cost to yourself and those you love.
Coppola was writing the screenplay at a period when the US emerged as a superpower, and felt that the country was increasingly justifying using any means to shape global events in its favour.
The first film ends on a sombre note with a shot of the door closing on Kay as Michael, who has just lied to his wife about his murderous actions, is crowned the new Don. Coppola seems to be offering a stark warning – just as Michael’s actions corrupt the person he once believed he was and come at a terrible price for those he loves and wants to protect, so this behaviour could do the same to the US.
