FILM APRIL 1, 1972
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Hurricane Marlon is sweeping the country, and I wish it were more than hot air. A tornado of praise—cover stories and huzzahs—blasts out the news that Brando is giving a marvelous performance as Don Corleone in The Godfather, the lapsed Great Actor has regained himself, and so on. As a Brando-watcher for almost 30 years, I’d like to agree.
But from his opening line, with his back toward us, Brando betrays that he hasn’t even got the man’s voice under control. (Listen to the word “first.” Pure Brando, not Corleone.) Insecurity and assumption streak the job from then on. They have put padding in his cheeks and dirtied his teeth, he speaks hoarsely and moves stiffly, and these combined mechanics are hailed as great acting. I don’t see how any gifted actor could have done less than Brando does here. His resident power, his sheer innate force, has rarely seemed weaker. His gift of mental transformation, the conviction that the changes are interior and that the externals merely reflect them, is not nearly as strong here as in, say, The Young Lions or Viva Zapata or On the Waterfront or Teahouse of the August Moon. He is handicapped by poor makeup: his hair is not gray enough and his hairline ought to have been altered so that he doesn’t constantly suggest Brando. But the real fault is his own: his laxness, sloth. He has become so lazy in recent years that he is willing to take intent for deed. Corleone has no moments of outburst—the Brando trademark, the leap of flame out of menacing quiet—so his dominance has to come from imagination; muscled by concentration. What Brando manufactures is surface—studied but easy effects.
A few moments ring true. When he hears of the death of his son, an ache starts deep in him and works to the surface through the fissures in the old man’s emotional armor. But generally, as they say at the Actors Studio he used to frequent, he gives us mere indication. It’s only the superficial contrast with the “standard” Brando that is making people gasp.
Compare Brando’s performance with Jean Gabin in virtually the same role in a recent French film called The Sicilian Clan.What authority Gabin had, how the waters of the world parted before him. If it’s argued that Gabin had a headstart by reason of age and temperament, that only proves my point: Brando is being praised because of the difference between him and this role, not because of his achievement in it. The magnificent talent that dozed off some years ago is not fully awakened yet. Like star, like film. The keynote is inflation. Because the picture has so much of the commonplace, it escapes being called commonplace. In no important way is it any better than The Brotherhood (1968), on the same subject. (The word Mafia is never mentioned, but it doesn’t need to be.) The Godfather was made from a big best-seller, a lot of money was spent on it, and it runs over three hours. Therefore it’s significant.
We’re getting the usual flood of comments that the Mafia is only mirror-image corporate capitalism. (All the killings in the film are said to be “business, not personal.”) These high-school analogies ignore, among other things, the origins of the Mafia and its blood-bonds of loyalty, which have nothing to do with capitalism. Almost every one in The Godfather is either a murderer or an accessory, so its moral center depends on inner consistency and on implicit contrast with non-murdering citizens around it. As the picture winds on and on, episode after episode, its only real change is the Mafia’s shift from “nice” gambling and prostitution to take on “dirty” narcotics. (Time, the late 1940s.) Well, I suppose everything’s going to hell, even the morality of the Mafia, but the picture certainly takes a long, long time to get there.
Al Pacino, as Brando’s heir, rattles around in a part too demanding for him. James Caan is OK as his older brother. The surprisingly rotten score by Nino Rota contains a quotation from “Manhattan Serenade” as a plane lands in Los Angeles. Francis Ford Coppola, the director and co-adapter (with Mario Puzo), has saved all his limited ingenuity for the shootings and stranglings, which are among the most vicious I can remember on film. The print of the picture showed to the New York press had very washed-out colors.
9 comments
This movie obviously didn't stand the test of Kauffmann's review, but it has certainly stood the test of time. One of the all-time greats. Whenever it's on TV, I manage to sneak at least a few minutes of it. The series begins to degrade with Godfather II.
- magboy47.
March 17, 2012 at 12:41am
Magboy, this may be the end of a beautiful friendship ) : I'm with you on G1 having stood the test of time. But I'll be a Montague to your movie appreciating Capulet on G2. It's in my pantheon of one of the greatest 3-4 movies, I've ever seen, and like Lehigh did to Duke last night, 2 puts 1 away. In a word, 2's greatness is in its vastness, the spread of its story, the quiet power of De Niro's acting, I believe his greatest role, and finally and ultimately the arc of Michael's ascent coincident with his descent into utter inhuman loneliness. (That gets us over Keaton's glaring weakness as an actress.)
- basman
March 17, 2012 at 9:21am
basman, I certainly agree with you about Diane Keaton's acting. One of the least-deserved Oscars ever was the one she got for her cutesy-quirky, nothing character in Annie Hall. And the only Woody Allen movie I've ever liked is Crimes and Misdemeanors, which I loved. I wouldn't compare G1-G2 to Duke-Lehigh. The Blue Devils were overrated. They lost twice to Florida State. G1 is not overrated. It's the gold standard of mob movies. G2 was a very good movie, but, for me, it was tedious in places. After the Godfather died in G1, I saw no reason to go back into his youth in G2. That seemed like plot padding. And Michael's tryst in Sicily seemed superfluous. And then, of course, there was Keaton's "acting" that had to be endured a second time. My favorite De Niro character is Rupert Pupkin in King of Comedy. He might be the only person alive who could have played that role, because of the quirks in his real-life personality. Jerry Lewis was at his best in that movie, because he wasn't playing the screen Jerry Lewis, but the real one. And Sandra Bernhard was playing Sandra Bernhard to the hilt. Love that movie. What we've got here is a failure to communicate. It all comes down to taste. And I didn't say G2 was a bad movie. It was a very good one. In my opinion it simply didn't measure up to Plato's Idea of a mob movie--Godfather I.
- magboy47.
March 17, 2012 at 12:59pm
I can live with D.K. when she's essentially playing herself. So I didn't mind her in Annie Hall and quite liked her in looking for Mr. Goodbar. But I think she falls short when her reach exceeds her grasp. When she has to be somebody she's not, she fails badly. I think that's why she's tolerable in G1 for so long as she plays the sweet innocent. But when she has to stretch beyond that, as she grows in her experience of Michael, her acting deteriorates. That deterioration culminates in that terribly acted scene in 2 when she screechingly confesses to aborting her son. Her "acting" there is hysterical and awful, mere deafening histrionics. I'm with you on Annie Hall, which is a sweet movie, being overrated. And Keaton in it, if I think she was ok, still shouldn't have been let anywhere near an Oscar, if it's meant to mean something. I'll plead guilty to a bad analogy. It was first my college basketball game of the year and Lehigh's win is still buzzing in my head. My layman's impression though is if Duke had gone inside more to the Plumlees, and if that freshman kid-- I forget his name--had gotten more untracked Duke would have had a manageable win. Mind you, Lehigh's point guard McCollum just knocked me out. But in fact, I think G1 is overrated and shouldn't be judged better than G1. It may or may not be the gold standard of mob movies or gangster movies, but it's sheer moral fantasy and moral infantilism in its glorying of the virtues of the family and the Godfather's benignity. My only deep problem with G2 is its contrast with G1 in contrasting Michael alone in his desecration of family via fratricide with the glowing family warmth of G1 and and the putative loss of a certain order of humanity portrayed in Viito's fatherly embrace of all who would come to him and pledge ther fealty to him. As though all these guys aren't murdereous thugs, exploitative and homicidal in their lawlessness, which finally gets expression in G2 and particularly in Michael as 2 progresses. Pupkin was ok and so were Lewis and Bernhard, and King of Comedy was a good movie, a good black comedy, but ultimately a small movie, and so in my books less than great. I'd quarrel with you, good naturedly of course. whether "it all comes down to taste." This raises the age old question of whether aesthetic standards have any objectivity. I'm of the school that says they do. Impossible to prove but possibly possible to demonstrate. I'd put the argument at its simplest--and about all I'm capable of--if we can say with confidence that movie X, say, Citizen Kane is a better movie than movie Y, say, Return To Peyton Place, and if we start to try to think through we why we can say that with such confidence and think easily that those who think contrarily are wrong, and start working back to our criteria for judgment, then aren't we getting into the area of objectivity in aesthetic standards?
- basman
March 17, 2012 at 2:43pm
I recently watched The Godfather again and found something that Mr. Kaufman misses here in his review. The movie opens with Don Corleone idspensing his justice, but the setting is his house and his daughter's wedding. This scene is really long, about 15 minutes and it is beautiful. All the italian touches. The music and the guests singing. The wine and the food. The clothes have this feel of old world Italy. As the wedding scene fades we get back to 'America' and the Corleone business. Coppola shows us America in some small ways that speak clearly. The huge compound for Joack Wolz and sees how Hollywood works. There is a subtle touch in the wine glasses. The Italians use regular drinking glasses for their wine, where the Americans use these large fancy wine glasses. As Michael Corleone heads back to Sciliy in hiding he finds a culture that is almost primitive, but steeped in values. The town follows him and his friend on their first date as they get to know this new man in their midst. The final scene is so classic, where the baptism and the acession of Michael Corleone to the head of the family blends these Italian and American touches so wonderfully. Stanley Kaufman is too close to Brando and these actors to see the beauty in this movie and this story. Still a great movie 40 years later.
- CRS9TNR
March 17, 2012 at 2:45pm
There's definitely a place in criticism for contrarianism, but this sure seems like a misfire. It's an interesting topic, how culture becomes canonized. Are we blinded by the years of hype for this movie? Because when I remember watching G1, it seems like a much better film than the one that Kauffmann is describing. It's also interesting to see that the qualification for being a critic for TNR hasn't changed over the years: must dislike everything. ;) I am very fond of Annie Hall, but I'm not much of a cineaste.
- bunthorne
March 17, 2012 at 3:41pm
basman, I agree that there are objective aesthetic standards, especially when you pit, e.g., any one movie against any other movie. But I also judge a movie by what type it is. Godfather I & II are epics about a family--they're big movies, big, good movies (as Hemingway might say). The King of Comedy was basically about one guy stuck in his own world; and you're right--it's a small movie, but a good one of its type. Peyton Place is a bad soap opera, but Soapdish with Sally Field and Kevin Klein is a great soap opera--at times it's hilarious. But compared to Mutiny on the Bounty, Soapdish is a zero (or less). So, you're right. There are objective aesthetic standards.
- magboy47.
March 17, 2012 at 4:32pm
There are objective aesthetic standards I often wonder. However, there are fairly good TNR comments, such as basman's and magboyd47's, mediocre comments such as this one, and really awful comments, which might take the form of ETAOIN SHRDLU. (If I didn't post a non-italic comment after the italic one, it might truly qualify as the aestethic standard from hell.)
- skahn
March 18, 2012 at 6:33pm
Basman: You sum up Keaton's acting in the Godfather series nicely. The scene in which she tells Michael that she had an abortion is terrible, almost embarassing to watch. However Keaton does have one great scene in Godfather Part II - and she doesn't speak a word - after the attempted assasination, when gunmen sprayed their bedroom with bullets - Kay gives Michalel such a look of anger, resentment, and contempt at his inability to outsmart his enemies and protect his family. It's such a great facial expression that in my household "cutting a Kay" for some transgression is enough. You don't want to be at the receiving end.
- dubyadoubte
March 19, 2012 at 12:33pm