Word: coppolas
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Previously best known for his performance as the retarded ex-football player in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People, Caan offstage is an exuberant put-on artist and stand-up comedian. He also has a bit of Sonny in him. "I was the toughest guy at P.S. 106 back in New York," he likes to boast. "I was expelled from a private school for throwing some kid out a window. He wasn't really hurt. It was only a 1½story fall, and he landed in a flower garden...
...American film before The Godfather has ever caught so truly the texture of an ethnic subculture. Director Francis Ford Coppola knows his subject so well that he imparts an almost visceral understanding that does not permit easy judgments. Coppola gets it all down, and gets it right: the Don dancing proudly with his daughter on her wedding day; the informal ritual of family dinner, and the whole preoccupation with food. Even the dialogue has the unmistakable cadence of the street, as when a Corleone lieutenant describes an untraceable revolver as "cold as they come." The characters become neither stock villains...
...fact that Coppola scrupulously humanizes his characters does not mean that he sentimentalizes the Mafia. The men are racists and hypocrites. They form a so ciety closed to women, who are indulged, protected, finally depersonalized. One may admire the Godfather for his refusal to traffic in dope, but his reasons are practical, not moral: he stands to lose all his political contacts, because they - not he - consider narcotics "a dirty business...
...Coppola extends this moral masquerade even further, using the Mafia as a metaphor not only for cor ruption in business, but for corruption in all centers of power, emphatically including government. "My father is no different from any other powerful man," Michael tells his WASPish girl friend Kay. She says, "You're being naive. Senators and Congressmen don't have people killed." Replies Michael: "Who's being naive now, Kay?" When the Don expresses regret that Michael could not have been "a Senator, a Governor," the son promises him, "We'll get there...
...COPPOLA'S DIRECTION is among the best that ever has been done in American film. He's created some puerile nonsense previously, but knowing the territory here seems to have given him the spark plug he's needed. (What could a Coppola expect to do with Finian's Rainbow anyway?) Every scene--even the most violent--is played for character, and timed with the perfection needed to bring off such cocky middle-distance lensing. Coppola knew that in Gordon Willis he had the best colorist in current Hollywood credits. So he lets Willis react to the setting in color while...