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1972 movie, first of the trilogy recounting the story of the Corleone crime family
The Godfather

The Godfather is a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, based on Puzo's best-selling novel of the same name. The ensemble cast includes Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, and Diane Keaton. It is the first installment in The Godfather trilogy, chronicling the Corleone family under patriarch Vito Corleone from 1945 to 1955. It focuses on the transformation of his youngest son, Michael Corleone, from reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss.

Awards Received

1972 Best Picture, by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy Award for Best Picture

Cast and Crew

Robert DuvallTom Hagen
Diane KeatonKay Adams
Al PacinoMichael Corleone
Francis Ford Coppoladirector

Web Pages

The Godfather (1972) - IMDb
The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.
IMDb rating: 9.2
Metascore: 100
Storyline: The Godfather "Don" Vito Corleone is the head of the Corleone mafia family in New York. He is at the event of his daughter's wedding. Michael, Vito's youngest son and a decorated WW II Marine is also present at the wedding. Michael seems to be uninterested in being a part of the family business ...

Video Products

The Godfather DVD Collection, 23 Apr 2004
5-disc box set, includes all three Godfather films plus additional release material
The Godfather, 11 May 2004
The Godfather - The Coppola Restoration (1972), 23 Sep 2008

Articles

Freedom's Flicks: The 20 best libertarian movies of all time, Libertarian Party News, Nov 1999
Reports on The Orange County Register editors' choices for "20 Best Libertarian Movies of All Time"; includes short descriptions for each movie as well as "best libertarian moments" for the top ten
20. The Godfather (1972). When you outlaw drugs and gambling, you get corrupt politicians and cops, murder, and great gangster movies.

Reviews

Arts and Movies, by Mr. First Nighter, The Libertarian Forum, Jun 1972
Reviews of the movies Sometimes a Great Notion (1971) and The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather is one of the great movies of the last several years, and its enormous popularity is eminently well deserved. In the first place. it is a decidedly Old Culture movie, or "movie-movie"; it is gloriously arriere-garde, and there is not a trace of the avant-garde gimmicks and camera trickery ... It is a picture with heroes and villains ... The pace is terrific, the suspense and plot and direction and acting all excellent. Many of the lines are memorable, and "we're going to make him an offer he can't refuse" has already burned its way indelibly into American culture.
Related Topic: United States Presidents
Arts and Movies, by Mr. First Nighter, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Nov 1990
Review of Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990), contrasting it with Coppola's The Godfather's I and II; reprinted in The Irrepresible Rothbard, pp. 414-417
[T]he great classic, the definitive, superb Mafia movie was The Godfathers I and II, in which Francis Ford Coppola poured out a work of genius, grounded in his own and novelist Mario Puzo's cultural history, which he has never approached since ... The key to The Godfathers and to success in the Mafia genre is the realization and dramatic portrayal of the fact that the Mafia, although leading a life outside the law, is, at its best, simply entrepreneurs and businessmen supplying the consumers with goods and services of which they have been unaccountably deprived by a Puritan WASP culture.
Arts And Movies, by Mr. First Nighter, The Libertarian Forum, Jan 1973
Discusses cinema as of 1972, contrasting the intellectuals' choices to those of the bourgeoisie, choosing an "eight best" list of 1972 movies and closing with comments on various movie critics
Certainly the best film of 1972 was The Godfather, which we have already hailed in these pages. The Godfather is us classicists' candidate in the award sweepstakes. Already, of course. both the masses and the intelligentsia have spoken: the masses by perceptively making The Godfather the box-office smash of all time; the intellectuals by rejecting it for avant-gard tinsel ... For best actor it's for me a tossup between Al Pacino and Marlon Brando in our favorite movie. Brando's acting was a mighty and brilliant tour de force, by far the best Brando in that actor's checkered career.
Related Topics: Films, The Oscars
The Godfather trilogy (1972, 1974, 1990), by Stephen W. Carson, Films on Liberty and the State
Short commentaries on films "of particular interest to Austrians and libertarians"
[T]he Godfather movies bring those who are willing to the recognition of the true nature of men in power. Underneath all the pomp and circumstance, all the glad-handing and talk of serving the people, the various gangsters in power over us ultimately always have "an offer that you can't refuse." Lord Acton taught us that "Power corrupts". In surveying mass murder by the state, Professor Rummel updated that to "Power kills". In these three masterpieces by Francis Ford Coppola, we have this lesson re-taught for our times. If you thought these were just gangster films, you missed the point.

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "The Godfather" as of 2 Apr 2024, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.