‘Greatest’ Film Ever Made is Digitally Improved
By JIM BECKERMAN, STAFF WRITER
WHAT: “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II,” restored versions.
WHEN: Friday to Oct. 2. See filmforum.org for schedule.
WHERE: Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St., Manhattan; 212-727-8110.
HOW MUCH: $11 per film.
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Some day, and that day may never come, people may stop loving “The Godfather.”
They may tire of hearing “The Godfather” waltz, imitating Marlon Brando’s mouth-full-of-marbles voice and quoting juicy lines like “Leave the gun, take the cannoli” and “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
But that day is not now, judging from advance interest in the newly restored versions of “The Godfather” (1972) and “The Godfather Part II” (1974), being shown in 35mm at New York’s Film Forum in both separate and tandem screenings, in conjunction with new DVD and Blu-ray releases from Paramount on Sept. 23.
“These are some of the most iconic movies ever, and they’re getting a lot of incredible response,” says Bruce Goldstein, director of repertory programming for Film Forum, the venerable Village art cinema.
The new versions of Francis Ford Coppola’s twin gangster epics have undergone frame-by-frame digital restoration, under the supervision of cinematographer Gordon Willis. And a good thing too, says Goldstein, considering that these are two of the best-looking movies ever.
“Both films have a very special look,” Goldstein says. “I was struck, as a kid, by what they looked like, and the mood they created. But in 36 years, negatives can get faded, can shrink. They’ve gone back to the original elements, and fixed what’s wrong.”
These films, which Stanley Kubrick among others called the greatest ever made in America (purists tend to discount 1990′s “Godfather Part III”), have aged in other, more interesting ways.
When the first “Godfather” came out in 1972, critics pointed both to its bloody, brutal realism – the bodies riddled with bullets, that gruesome horse’s head – and to its cynical portrayal of the underworld as a vast corporate enterprise. “The Godfather,” they said, was an antidote to the romanticized, glamorized gangster films of the 1930s. No one, wrote critic Pauline Kael, would want to become a gangster after seeing the toadying, obedient foot-soldiers of Don Corleone. “They have less freedom than we do,” she said.
Well, surprise. “The Godfather’s” image of the Mafia has proven so irresistibly romantic that a whole cottage industry has sprung up in its wake “Goodfellas,”"Donnie Brasco,”"The Sopranos,” each one promising in turn to show the real, unvarnished truth about the mob that its predecessors glossed over.
Meanwhile, two generations of viewers have taken Michael, Sonny, Fredo, Tom Hagen, Don Vito Corleone and their assorted henchmen and hangers-on to their hearts as their ideal famiglia much to the concern of some Italian-American anti-defamation groups.
“When you come to think of it, ‘The Godfather’ is one of the great family films,” Goldstein says. “Though not one to take the family to.”
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E-mail: beckerman@northjersey.com
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