'Godfather' hits theaters

Coppola's classic returns to big screen after 25 years

By Michael Zilberman
Daily Arts Writer

In the early '70s, two movies by two NYU film-school brats have brought upon a revolution in gangster film, molding it from pulp into a legitimate - and uniquely American - art form. Scorsese's "Mean Streets" turned wiseguys into fast-talking, hyperviolent eternal adolescents, equal parts childish bravado and guilt. Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" took a grandiose, operatic approach to the matter, presenting to us the Mob royalty as a mythical compound of Old World values in an unwelcoming environment.

REVIEW
	The Godfather Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak

It could be the acting - the still fresh-faced Al Pacino and the slightly inhuman Marlon Brando. It could be the cinematography, bathing everything in lush old-photograph browns and yellows. It could be that in their derision toward a new, remorseless, drug-dealing Mafia, the Corleones assumed tragic hero qualities because of their refusal to adapt. In some peculiar way, the audiences related to that. Related enough to make "The Godfather" the highest-grossing film of its time, to instigate ongoing debates on Mob glamorization and to warrant a 25th anniversary re-release.

After what Coppola did with his creation in "The Godfather Saga" (re-cutting all three films in chronological order, from Vito's childhood to Michael's lonely demise), audiences could expect the anniversary edition of the original to have undergone some drastic changes; "Star Wars" it isn't, thankfully, and the modifications are limited to a touched-up soundtrack.

Since "The Godfather" was a period piece to begin with, it fares better in the here and now than, say, "The Graduate" (also in current re-release). The film's themes and concerns are not locked into the decade that gave birth to it; Its mythic underpinnings contribute to its staying power - a stylish meditation on loyalty and honor, it has a decidedly timeless atmosphere.

The first installment of what wasn't yet meant to become a trilogy, "The Godfather" is not without its share of rough spots. The Sicilian section is stylistically different from what precedes and follows it - and not in a good way: Coppola seems to momentarily transform into Sergio Leone, then jolt back. Seen through the prism of Diane Keaton's later performances, her turn as a meek American wife here is a bit bland and inexpressive compared to the raging, highly vocal passions swallowing up the rest of the characters.

Several years and a masterpiece ("The Conversation") later, the director would revisit the Corleone clan, with triumphant results, in "The Godfather Part 2."

The original remains the original, however; in an age when the gangster film is fast dissipating into the fragmented trash from which Coppola helped it rise - now with an increasingly obnoxious self-reflective twist - for all the pomp and pathos, "The Godfather" looks better among its spawn than it ever did by itself.

Marlon Brando and Salvatore Corsitto in Coppola's classic, "The Godfather."

Pacino and Brando in "The Godfather."

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