Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) marked a transition in
American film-making, and its success - as a work of art, as a creative
'property' exploited by its studio, Paramount Pictures; and as a model
for aspiring auteurist film-makers - changed Hollywood forever.
Jon Lewis's study of The Godfather begins with a close look at the
film's audacious visual style (the long, theatrical set pieces; the
chiaroscuro lighting, the climactic montage paralleling a family baptism
with a series of brutal murders). The analysis of visual style is paired
with a discussion of the movie's principal themes: Vito and Michael's
attempt to balance the obligations of business and family, their
struggle with assimilation, the temptations and pitfalls of capitalist
accumulation, and the larger drama of succession from father to son,
from one generation to the next.
The textual analysis precedes a production history that views The
Godfather as a singularly important film in Hollywood's dramatic
box-office turnaround in the early 1970s. And then, finally, the book
takes a long hard look at the gangster himself both on screen and off.
Hollywood publicity attending the gangster film from its inception in
the silent era to the present has endeavoured to dull the distinction
between the real and movie gangster, insisting that each film has been
culled from the day's sordid headlines. Looking at the drama on screen
and the production history behind the scenes, Lewis uncovers a series of
real gangster backstories, revealing, finally, how millions of dollars
of mob money may well have funded the film in the first place, and how,
as things played out, The Godfather saved Paramount Studios and the
rest of Hollywood as well.
