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Will someone please explain to me why The Godfather is considered to be so good?

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If you can't recognize what makes Citizen Kane and the Godfather 1 & 2 good art then you simply don't know or care much about cinema. That's ok. I know fuck all about ballet. Of course, I don't presume to denigrate the Nutcracker and expect others to respect my opinion of it.

Just because you watch movies and have opinions about those movies doesn't mean I have to respect your criticism of a film.
 
slayer202 said:
and here I thought that taste in music and movies was subjective :hmm:
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It is. But taste often transcends into a means of self-expression that then devolves into plain old fanboyism when someone challenges it. Some people treat their tastes like a badge of honor.

When The Dark Knight came out, for example, it was quickly voted (by fanboys) to the top spot on IMDB. The Godfather fanboys wouldn't have any of that and started downvoting The Dark Knight and trolling the boards in order to keep their own film in the top spot. The Dark Knight fanboys wouldn't have any of that and responded by doing the same in return. All the downvoting removed both movies from the top spot and finally resulted in The Shawshank Redemption taking the honor.

People like to talk of refined tastes and cultivation and maturity but that's what it boiled down to when those tastes were pushed.
 
I found the first Godfather boring and the second I literally could not finish. Too fvcking boring, most overrated ever.
 
Zeze said:
Pretty much this.

It set the precedence of mob culture in all subsequen media too. The Don, granting wishes on daughter's wedding day, an inside look into a true mob family- all sons & daughters, the dynamics, power struggle, etc.

Also you'll realize the how Marlon Brando acted so well with the context: Check out any interviews with him in the same year movie was released. He's a full handsome younger man who talks fast, cracks jokes with the talk show host, with a full of spirit. (Think Brad Pitt)

That whole 'grandfatherly' Don Coleone was acted BRILLIANTLY. That droopy mouth look was achieved by putting cottonballs inside his cheeks.
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There's a lot of subtlety and subtext that goes on in the story and the acting helps to convey this. One of the best parts for me is in the car ride back from the meeting of the mafia bosses that ends the war. Duvall makes the gaffe of trying to correct Brando's character when he said that Barzini would be smart enough to use guys with clean records when it came to drugs. Brando just gives that look that tells you how Duvall's character missed a very important piece of information. There is a lot going on in that short time that movie has to convey to the viewer. You need to understand that Duvall missed picking up a key clue. That the Don is pretending to be weak and coniclliatory while in fact he used the meeting to draw out information to use to end the war once and for all to setup the family's dominance.

If you read the book, the book goes a long way in trying to explain the underlying messages and subtext that goes on during the meetings and dialogues. But with the movie, you don't have the luxury of explaining things piecemeal to the audience. I think that the film did a good job with making these points come across. (Another one that comes to mind is Sonny's outburst in front of Sollozo. This is the cartharsis for the entire mafia war as it revealed a difference in opinion within the family, a weakness that Sollozo tried to capitalize on).

Another problem as people have already said is that this movie set so much of the mafia movie standards and cliches that what it did so well and broke ground upon no longer jumps out at us today.

The cinematography is very well done too. They shot the film in a lot of different environments but the end result looks very good. Some of the wedding scenes were shot at night and other scenes were shot during a snowstorm. They made good use of the locations like with Sicily and some of the sequences and camera shots were pretty good (like the assination attempt of Brando's character).

Overall, it's a very solid movie.
 
IceBergSLiM said:
1) Cast
2) acting
3) score
4) story (first of its kind to portray the mob underworld)
5) its ability to cover the entire gamut of human emotion, power , lust, revenge, loyalty, trust, respect, betrayal, family ties, tradition, death ....etc etc etc.
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Hit the nail right on the head.

OP & GF should be beaten if they're too stupid to comprehend why this is a great movie. Same goes for 2. Whoever made the 3rd should be shot.
 
IceBergSLiM said:
1) Cast
2) acting
3) score
4) story (first of its kind to portray the mob underworld)
5) its ability to cover the entire gamut of human emotion, power , lust, revenge, loyalty, trust, respect, betrayal, family ties, tradition, death ....etc etc etc.
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Good bullet point, but it certainly isn't the first to portray the mafia--plenty of Gangster movies were popular from the 40s through the 60s.

Also--the Godfather is pure fantasy. There is nothing about it that is accurate regarding cosa nostra.

For that, check out Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, and yeah: The Sopranos.
 
JulesMaximus said:
I think the thing about 'The Godfather' that makes it so great is that it was one of the first movies ever to present a realistic look into what it is like to be in the mafia. It is an epic movie spanning decades and the cast was incredible for its time.

If you want to check out some other mafia flicks go rent 'Goodfellas', it is one of my all time favorite mafia movies, 'Casino' is another great.
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From what I've gathered, that's not really true. In fact, its more the opposite. The film influenced the mafia more than the mafia influenced it. Before it, the mafia was more paranoid assholes that would fuck each other over and had little resemblance of what people think of as far as ideals or things like that, and they adopted much of that later when pop culture portrayed it. It also glosses over a lot of the real day to day crime aspects, and as such makes it pretty unrealistic.

Personally I'm not really into mob or crime shows/movies, so I've never been that high on the Godfather films. I can see the quality, and for their time they certainly did set a pretty high note (I can't think of any mob movies that compare, and just roll my eyes at films like The Departed; Goodfellas is about the only other mob movie that I found all that entertaining; Casino was ok but aside from a couple of scenes it was actually annoying to me as there's too much Sharon Stone being psycho and other silliness), but it just doesn't really interest me much.
 
I loved goodfellas and the sopranos. Tried to watch the godfather and found it so boring I had to turn it off. Maybe I'll give it another try sometime.
 
i tried to watch the godfather for the first time about a year ago. i sat through it, but was extremely bored the entire time. i didn't even bother trying to watch part 2 because part 1 was just boring as shit.
 
darkswordsman17 said:
From what I've gathered, that's not really true. In fact, its more the opposite. The film influenced the mafia more than the mafia influenced it. Before it, the mafia was more paranoid assholes that would fuck each other over and had little resemblance of what people think of as far as ideals or things like that, and they adopted much of that later when pop culture portrayed it. It also glosses over a lot of the real day to day crime aspects, and as such makes it pretty unrealistic.

Personally I'm not really into mob or crime shows/movies, so I've never been that high on the Godfather films. I can see the quality, and for their time they certainly did set a pretty high note (I can't think of any mob movies that compare, and just roll my eyes at films like The Departed; Goodfellas is about the only other mob movie that I found all that entertaining; Casino was ok but aside from a couple of scenes it was actually annoying to me as there's too much Sharon Stone being psycho and other silliness), but it just doesn't really interest me much.
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Christ, you guys would pick apart a supermodel... 🙄

Her elbows are too pointy!!!
 
darkswordsman17 said:
Are you kidding? How was what I posted nitpicking? I pointed out that you're basically very wrong. I wasn't even an asshole about it either.
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You stated your opinion... nothing more.

Real-life influences:

Large parts of the novel are based upon reality, notably the history of the so-called 'Five Families', the Mafia-organization in New York and the surrounding area. The novel also includes many allusions to real-life mobsters and their associates, and Johnny Fontane is based on Frank Sinatra, Moe Greene on Bugsy Siegel, for example.
 
preslove said:
If you can't recognize what makes Citizen Kane and the Godfather 1 & 2 good art then you simply don't know or care much about cinema. That's ok. I know fuck all about ballet. Of course, I don't presume to denigrate the Nutcracker and expect others to respect my opinion of it.

Just because you watch movies and have opinions about those movies doesn't mean I have to respect your criticism of a film.
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Wasn't asking you to respect it. Was asking you to explain the quality of film (through your knowledge of cinema)-which you didn't. So, thanks for the worthless post. 🙂

Hehe, I knew I'd stir up a shit-storm with this post, but seriously-we just couldn't get into it. And I sit through 3 hour operas, symphony concerts, and chamber music all the time (I'm a professional musician). So it's not a matter of my attention span or my reception to subtlety in general; though I have no training whatsoever in film so maybe I'm missing something here. Was hoping someone would explain it to me. A few of you made an attempt-thanks. It does make some more sense to me now, though it (the film) still doesn't really do it for me.
 
slayer202 said:
It's hard to accurately judge it because it's been so hyped up over the years. I don't think it's one of the best films ever made, but how far behind, I'm not sure. I'm personally not a big fan, but I don't dislike it.

The Sopranos is great because it's a comedy. And you can't compare TV to a movie. With the Sopranos you probably have 50 hours to get to know the characters, vs. 2-3 in a movie.
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JulesMaximus said:
WTF? 😕
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Yeah...what??
 
I believe it was one of the first well done mobster movies that didn't pull any punches as far as violence and such. If you've seen a bunch of mobster movies before then you won't get it and never will.
 
It took me watching it more than once to appreciate it. It took me til mid 2000s to watch it for the first time.
 
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