Word: coppolas
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Francis Ford Coppola, who directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay, probably felt the grudge of conscience more than Puzo. If he cuts a key line--"A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns"--he compresses most of Puzo's legends until their grain of truth is revealed. All that remains in his Sicilian scenes, for instance, is the animal vitality of the settings and natives, and the treachery which kills Mike's Sicilian bride in a sabotaged auto...
...Coppola has done much more than cover Puzo's sloppier tracks. He has managed to pick up the loose stitches and thread together an epic family chronicle, expressing its conflicts with an immediacy and a love for detail of location and character that can only come from the deepest rapport with the subject matter. Comparisons have been made with Gone With the Wind, and snots have sniffed at the melodrama which can't be separated from the tenets of the retold crimes. No matter. There's heart to the work, and it starts to beat when the Don says...
...VOLUME of mash-notes couldn't hold sufficient praise for the wonders Coppola's worked with his actors. Marlon Brando, with a receded hairline, grey pencil moustache, jowls hanging off a twisted mouth, and a voice cracked from years of command, is Don Corleone. Brando plays the character totally from within, making him physically expressive and, as a result, extraordinarily complex. He walks as if his shoulder blades were pinned back behind him (which can't hide an old man's paunch in front). But the sensibility beneath the authority is surprisingly agile; the Don can suddenly break into mimicry...
Enormous Pains. Brando's stunning performance seemed to spur the entire cast. Coppola, working from the emotional inside of his subject, was able to succeed as few American film makers have in evoking the texture and variety of an ethnic subculture. He took enormous pains to project a believable period milieu, using old cars, plastering buildings with correctly dated posters and handbills, even making sure that such minute items as pencils and lipsticks were authentic. He and his cinematographer emulated the visual style of the period, eschewing zoom lenses, fast cuts and jarring closeups. They used many longer tableau...
...full of raw energy that might have been expected. It is far more than an efficient action melodrama - more, even, than just a good solid movie. It is a movie that exemplifies what is great in the Hollywood tradition. Out of all the false starts and chaos and hassles, Coppola has created something that promises to open a rewarding new phase in Brando's career and put Coppola in the forefront of American film artists...