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Week 1 – the Godfather

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Week 1 – the Godfather Week 1 – The Godfather Introduction Bill: Okay. Hi, everybody! Welcome to our Week One panel lecture with Professor Jon Lewis; I’m Teaching Assistant Bill Fetch; and this week, of course, the assigned film is Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. One of the major ways that we’re approaching this film is through a lens called the auteur theory, and what auteurism meant in 1970’s Hollywood, which was, as we’ll find out, a very tumultuous decade for Hollywood filmmaking. But we’ll get into that more later here. I’m here with Professor Lewis now, so we’ll start answering and asking some questions. The Godfather’s Relationship to the Auteur Renaissance Bill: One of the basic questions I think we have to address is the roots of the significance of The Godfather in relation to what becomes the auteur renaissance. Can you speak about that a little bit? Jon: Yeah. It’s the – you know, Godfather is this sort of landmark film for a handful of reasons. One is that it’s the first film directed by a film school, American film school-educated director, to really hit it big. And it comes at a moment in Hollywood history where you’ve got about a generation-long box office decline. Godfather comes along and it’s this huge success; it’s the most successful film since Gone With the Wind in 1939; so an unprecedented success. And the studios are really looking for an answer to their problems at the box office, and then along comes this movie and, at least briefly, they decided that these young filmmakers coming out of film schools. So, now, why auteurism? Well, the auteur theory, which was an argument actually put forward by French film critics in the 1950’s and 60’s was that one can find a kind of continuity in important quality films, in American film history, by looking at the works of individual directors who somehow, despite a Hollywood system that’s all about business, that somehow they can put their artistic signature on films anyway. So it’s people like Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock; and then, people like Coppola, who are in film school in the 50’s and 60’s are studying this auteur theory, so when they finally get their chance to direct, they really actually believe this stuff; that to be a real film artist, you have to be able to put your artistic signature on to what is otherwise a studio project. So, Godfather is a gangster film; there have been gangster films since 1915. So how do you make this gangster film yours? And Coppola put his signature on it and then, as we’ll see later in the term, we’ll see directors like Martin Scorsese, we’ll see Stephen Spielberg, William Friedkin, Terrence Malick, these directors who are directing films in genres that have been made before, but they are unique to this one artist’s sensibility… Bill: Personal vision at play. Jon: Absolutely. Coppola’s Auteur Signature Bill: So on that note, let’s talk about some of the ingredients of Coppola’s auteur signature. Jon: The ingredients of Coppola’s signature are maybe less distinct than Scorsese’s, which we’ll talk about in Week Two. But certainly for the Godfather films, he’s interested in a kind of central thematic of family and business, and he’s really interested in the sort of impossibility in the contemporary era of balancing the two. So there’s a kind of thematic interest in that. There’s also a sort of thematic interest in assimilation; this notion of a kind of immigrant culture assimilating into American life, especially American capitalism. Visually, it’s a little more distinctive. In other words, we can recognize this visual signature not only in the Godfather films, but also we’ll see this in Apocalypse Now, where the same visual style that he uses for the gangster films he uses for the war film. And one of the key, what is called chiaroscuro, or Rembrandt lighting, which is the dramatic difference in light and dark in the frame. So, as you’ll see in, especially when Sollozzo holds Tom captive after he attempts an assassination on Vito, you know, that scene is sort of a primer on chiaroscuro lighting; but we’ll see it later in one of the famous – the beach party scene in Apocalypse Now. And that’s one of the keys to auteurism is seeing how a director uses the same kind of visual signature in two very, very different films, but that signature makes it immediately recognizable as his film. The other thing about Coppola is he’s very fond of set pieces, so there are these very elaborate sort of theatrical five, ten, fifteen minute scenes that are very unusual in contemporary filmmaking, which is about cutting fairly quickly. And he moves very much away from that and uses a lot of deep focus photography and puts a lot of pressure on his actors and on the mise en scene, on the design of the scene to make meaning in a film; and this is unusual, but something you’ll see in all of his films. The Dichotomy of the 1970’s Auteurist Film and Prototype Blockbuster Film Bill: Staying with Coppola as a topic of conversation, but shifting things a little more broadly; it’s interesting that Coppola seems to bring a European art cinema approach to essentially an American business model. And it strikes me as ironic that he at once invents the 70’s auteurist film and a prototype for the modern day blockbuster. The Godfather was hugely successful financially and culturally. Can you speak to that seeming dichotomy a little bit? Jon: Well, the seeming dichotomy does him in. I mean, for a director whose success in the 70’s was unparalleled, his failure in the 80’s was equally unparalleled. So, you know, part of the European sensibilities is what he’s seeing at UCLA when he’s going to film school. You know, there really isn’t a body of American work in the 50’s and 60’s that’s really catching him. What is is the French new wave, the British new wave, German expressionism, Italian realism – these are the things that really grab him. So he has an artistic sensibility that’s actually born of a university experience as opposed to directors and previous generations who just, you know, they apprenticed, you know. So, of course, they made movies like the previous generation. Coppola arrives, and he’s drawing from everyone; from Kurosawa, a Japanese filmmaker, to F. W. Murnau who is making German films in the 20’s. So I think the artistic sensibility comes from there. You know, Godfather was going to be a blockbuster anyway. I mean, the only thing Coppola could have done to screw it up – yeah, yeah it was a hugely popular book; it was a best seller. Everybody – it had – it’s what the industry calls a “previously sold” property. In other words, everybody knew it, everybody wanted to go see it. And unless the reviews came out and said, “Don’t see it. It’s terrible.” Which it clearly isn’t… well, the film was going to be a success. So it became the kind of prototype blockbuster and even had a sequel. It was one of the first “serious” movies to have a sequel. And the sequel is arguably even better than Godfather I – you should all see Godfather II; it’s really good. Bill: But maybe hold on Godfather III for now. Jon: Maybe hold on that, yeah. But anyway, it’s, in a way, he has nothing to do with why it’s a blockbuster, but he has everything to do with why it’s a European sensibility. The Use of Violence in The Godfather Bill: So, maybe to switch gears to the way violence in the film is staged. It seems to be cinematic or cinematically staged. It’s a logical part of the narrative, but not necessarily a point to the film. Can you speak about how violence in Godfather is used? Jon: Yeah. I mean, we’re going to see a lot of violent films this term because American cinema is violent. I don’t think I could do “contemporary American film” without showing films that have their fair share of violence. So then it’s, how do different directors use violence differently? And I do think that Coppola is interested in this idea of a set piece. So a lot of the violence – Sonny getting assassinated at the toll booth, Luca Brasi getting killed at the bar, the attempted assassination on Vito, the killing of Sollozzo, and McCluskey in the restaurant – I mean, all of these are set pieces. So actually, you’re kind of rooting – and, of course, the brilliant final montage where Michael gets rid of all of his rivals – you know, we actually sort of root for the – in a way, we root for the – get engaged by the cinematic expertise behind the violence. So I think Coppola uses violence as a revelation about what’s wrong with American culture or even what’s wrong with gangster culture. Really, he kind of uses it as a kind of theatrical technique; which is arguably different from Scorsese, who we’ll see next week. He uses it in a kind of, I would say, quasi-religious thematic. I think Coppola’s less interested in what it does with the plot than how it’s staged.
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