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Thread: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

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    Default Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    If you don’t know why you haven’t been on the internet long enough.

    Cast alone wins it... Pacino, Duvall, Caan in early iconic roles. Keaton (who I talked to on a bench for 3 hours in Brentwood once outside a Starbucks), Vigoda, Brando’s last great blast but not his swan song.

    Am I missing anyone?
    Last edited by enoch; April 06, 2021 at 11:05 PM. Reason: Lol martins

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    Vladyvid's Avatar Wizard of Turmish
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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    I like the Goodfellas better. Joe Pesci is killing it, then compare that to Brando's mumbling and Pacino's blank stare. I may not have the best taste or whatever so you can say i know nothing and its fine, but remember that there are millions of people for whom the peak of drama in art is gonna be the Twilight series.

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Quote Originally Posted by Vladyvid View Post
    I like the Goodfellas better. Joe Pesci is killing it, then compare that to Brando's mumbling and Pacino's blank stare. I may not have the best taste or whatever so you can say i know nothing and its fine, but remember that there are millions of people for whom the peak of drama in art is gonna be the Twilight series.
    Goodfellas is often held up against godfather especially as a crime drama. I think one of the essential elements missing is family. We barely see his kids and his brother (the babysitter gets more time). Godfather does it so well. The sojourn in Italy. The brothers. Their relationships. Scorsese is a genius but Coppola was an artist. I think if he had kept making movies they would have not been great. Genius was a work during godfather.

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    The Godfather is pretty great. Godfather II is better, the film that made De Niro (won the Oscar for best actor) into a major star.

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    The debate between the 2 is a tough one. Has De Niro. But no Brando. Adding De Niro does mix some goodfellas in.

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    I think one of the essential elements missing is family
    Depends on what you mean by family, doesn't it? For me, the entire movie is about family. The movie starts out by showing his actual family with his father and mother wanting him to continue his schooling instead of working for made men. Then you see his family become those same mafiosos and then eventually he meets a woman and has a family of his own and that becomes the family that he ultimately cares about. The entire movie centers around Henry Hill's changing definitions of family and culminates with him finally choosing the family he created over his mafia family.

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Quote Originally Posted by Akar View Post
    Depends on what you mean by family, doesn't it? For me, the entire movie is about family. The movie starts out by showing his actual family with his father and mother wanting him to continue his schooling instead of working for made men. Then you see his family become those same mafiosos and then eventually he meets a woman and has a family of his own and that becomes the family that he ultimately cares about. The entire movie centers around Henry Hill's changing definitions of family and culminates with him finally choosing the family he created over his mafia family.
    Group dynamics not one man's journey of abandonment and looking out for himself. Choosing his family seems more kind of. No one likes Karen. I hate meta gaming.

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    A true masterpiece. I would also like to mention John Cazale's performance in 1 & 2.
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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Not my cup of tea. Not in my top 10 movies ever.

    Even someone like me who doesn't like mafia movie cannot deny GF is a great movie, and many people put it in their top 10s. I can see why.

    The cast is very sound, Pacino who has a lot of charisma playing a locked down character who slowly unfolds is interesting-the balance of personality restrained by excellent direction steers the entire film and I never saw him do such a patient reveal again ever. In later outings I think he tends to burn everything down, I think it really only played well in Scarface (where it seemed perfect for the coke-murder fiend Tony). Otherwise he's been a bit typecast since and he actually bores me most of the time. No denying he grabs your attention and is a skilled actor though.

    Brando has more charisma than the rest of the cast combined (and they are not lacking), and was already in an utterly self destructive spin in his personal life. His performance is so unstructured its practically making fun of the director but somehow Coppola not only did not crash this Titanic of a film into the iceberg that was Brando's ego, he gets Brando to power it.

    Michael's rise steers the film, Vito's decline powers it, and I think that's down to brilliant direction because it'd be extremely easy to imagine this set up going wrong. I have no idea how this worked, but a guy with tissues in his cheeks playing full "spicy-meat-a-ball" stereotype hit every note right so you don't even see Brando, he's literally Vito in every scene. Very few actors can be so completely transparent, that their massive egos never show from behind the character they portray. I would say Daniel Day Lewis and Kate Blanchett are the two nowadays who pull it off and neither is hiding a monster ego like Brando.

    The story which is breathless low brow crime porn but it becomes very compelling because these massive personalities never make a false step. I mean McBeth is at bottom a pretty low tier murder porn but its how you tell the story. Coppola takes enough time to make it practically an episodic procedural on Crime Family succession and dispute resolution. I don't think there's been a worse book made into a better film, Silence of the Lambs was an equally book by an equally author, but as a film its not as good as GF.

    One possible false note is James Caan, he's got huge presence too, likeable and realistic, and some skills as an actor but in a coupe of scenes I feel like he's just not Italian, he's an actor playing an Italian. There's literally not another character I think "thats not "real life"", suspension of disbelief is effortless with such compelling work.

    From memory the camera work was a great mix, heaps of dark rooms for dark work (very film noire, eg the top-lit opening scene), a lot of 1930's flat eye level camera work (nice nod to old gangster films from the Cagney Bogart era). The gauzey look for Sicily was sappy (I was reminded of it by Breaking Bad's Mexican Sepia trope) but it did the job, you felt like Michael went 40 years back in time and tasting his father's early life.

    I seem to remember some Orson Welles type high angle shots for some of the violent shooting scenes (I think of Mo Green and that weird angle, I think there's some stairs with that multiple murder sequence) that worked so well its now part of the gangster vernacular (eg Untouchables stairway scene). So its a mix of old and new, but it works, it doesn't break the spell, and in a gangster movie where you are expecting multiple shootings they still manage to be horrible, rather than ticking over a kill count like a cheap video game. Once again Caan is the false note here, how many dudes jumped out of exactly the right toll booth? It was a tiny bit Loony Tunes.

    I just took a look at YouTube and the last scene sums it up well, that out of focus door shutting on Keaton is a very nice modern touch that manages to be gangster flavoured: dark work in a dark room, the door shuts on her.

    I don't like this stuff, but as movie making goes its a skilled job where they got the director, the actors and the cinematographer (whoever it was no idea) exactly right and someone kept the studio off their backs so they could make a fine film. I mean its so long but its not boring at all. I'd say the stars are Coppola, Brando and Pacino in that order.

    I think GF II went nowhere new, it was a loveletter to the first film. Maybe a well made film deserves a sequel but frankly if it were never made film-making as an art would be no poorer.
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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Quote Originally Posted by Gromovnik View Post
    A true masterpiece. I would also like to mention John Cazale's performance in 1 & 2.
    Can’t believe no one called that out. Was low hanging fruit so I left it. So good.

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Quote Originally Posted by Vladyvid View Post
    I like the Goodfellas better. Joe Pesci is killing it, then compare that to Brando's mumbling and Pacino's blank stare. I may not have the best taste or whatever so you can say i know nothing and its fine, but remember that there are millions of people for whom the peak of drama in art is gonna be the Twilight series.
    Quote Originally Posted by enoch View Post
    Goodfellas is often held up against godfather especially as a crime drama. I think one of the essential elements missing is family. We barely see his kids and his brother (the babysitter gets more time). Godfather does it so well. The sojourn in Italy. The brothers. Their relationships. Scorsese is a genius but Coppola was an artist. I think if he had kept making movies they would have not been great. Genius was a work during godfather.
    This was a pleasant exchange, a polite disagreement where both of you offered great reasoning.

    Personally, if we're talking about crime drama as a whole, and not about the cinematic medium of movies more strictly (in which case I'd put Goodfellas slightly above Godfather but Casino beneath both), then I would place The Sopranos at the very top.

    It might sound unfair, but the truth is that a *quality, well-written* television series over multiple seasons allows the viewer to explore the depths of character development and narrative arcs far more than a 2-hour film, no matter how outstanding the latter may be. By the time you're finished watching six series of the show you have more than just a general idea of how Tony Soprano, his family, his enemies, and members of his crew became who they are by the series' end, but even just the first season of 13 episodes allows you to understand and reflect on them more thoroughly than you could with a single movie.

    By the time The Godfather ends, the audience is capable of connecting with or even sympathizing with Al Pacino's Michael Corleone given his personal tragedies and betrayals, including the car bomb that killed his first wife in Sicily. However, he is still a distant, illusive figure at the end of the film, especially in the closing shots where he lies to his wife Kay about his role in the demise of his brother-in-law Carlo, who had abused his sister Connie and betrayed the family. He lets her ask this one question and denies his involvement. The viewer is then pulled back with the camera angle from Kay's point of view as she stares at the Don receiving tribute and kisses on the hand as the door to his office closes, barring her from his world.

    SPOILER ALERT:

    LOL. Compare that to what we know, think and feel about Tony Soprano by the time Season 1 ends. It's still 1999 and we have mapped out Tony's entire ethos, his needs and desires, inclinations, bad habits, foibles, pitfalls, mistakes, grief and trauma from childhood until the present day. The viewer is forced into revulsion at his brute force tactics and bloody violence in maintaining power and order in the underground world governed by the mafia, but is equally forced to sympathize with him as he divulges everything to his female psychiatrist, with whom he has deeply conflicting sexual desires for and almost gets her killed while also trying his best to save her life once his therapy sessions are discovered by others. He's forced to come to grips with the reality that his own mother Livia had borderline personality disorder all along and tried to have him assassinated by convincing his uncle Corrado Soprano that he was backstabbing him, leading to a mob civil war before Uncle Junior was suddenly arrested and thrown in jail with associates. The season ends with Tony and his family fleeing a thunderstorm to have a quiet meal at his friend's newly refurbished restaurant that had burnt down because of him, telling his wife and kids to remember these moments because they wouldn't last forever. This is foreshadowed by the family of ducks who left his pond in the first episode, leading to his series of anxiety attacks and therapy sessions where he discovered his fear of losing his family. This was made all the more acute when he saw the ducks flying away again in episode 5, the day his daughter knew he lied about fighting or killing the man he'd been tracking during their otherwise innocent road trip to find out where she would go to college. She no longer trusted him after that.

    You want to talk about family, now that's family!

    Aside from that, Tony's rocky relationship with his wife Carmela Soprano is so much more complex and multi-faceted than relationships with wives in either the Godfather or Goodfellas. The Goodfellas was just slightly better than the Godfather in that aspect in terms of strong but somewhat inconsequential female characters. LOL. Compare that to Carmela, who is more than just the boss of the household, but has a near fling with a priest while Tony's banging his Russian mistress, and who generally steers Tony behind all his major decisions, acting almost like his informal chief advisor. She is involved right in the middle of the gritty muck of his life, to the point where she slams the door on the face of his Uncle Junior (attempting to visit while on house arrest), not one to forgive him for attempting to kill her husband and his own nephew Tony.

    Now that's drama baby, yeah!

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Look I see your point Roma but I think Goodfellas Casino and Sopranos walk a path GF opens artistically. In terms of greatness it's really hard to create the formula and performances like Pacino's and the rest.

    Once that formula is built it's workable for Tony Soprano to be a mobster with an interesting psyche and looking at him as a human is not a thematic dogs breakfast.

    if Bogart turned around in Petrified Forest and started mumbling about his anxiety it'd be laughable, the narrative flow would be flushed away like a broken dream. Coppola sets up a paradigm where Michael' illusive (and somewhat elusive) character can nevertheless reveal his disquiet and internal conflict as he transforms into, if not his father, then his father's fitting heir.

    the trope of James Gandolfini on the couch is dangerously close to farce (was Analyse This made first?), credit to the show that they pulled it off so that's a substantial dramatic achievement. Such explicit character excavation is definitely made possible by Coppola languid almost wordless but beautifully articulated moral development two decades earlier.
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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    Look I see your point Roma but I think Goodfellas Casino and Sopranos walk a path GF opens artistically. In terms of greatness it's really hard to create the formula and performances like Pacino's and the rest.

    Once that formula is built it's workable for Tony Soprano to be a mobster with an interesting psyche and looking at him as a human is not a thematic dogs breakfast.

    if Bogart turned around in Petrified Forest and started mumbling about his anxiety it'd be laughable, the narrative flow would be flushed away like a broken dream. Coppola sets up a paradigm where Michael' illusive (and somewhat elusive) character can nevertheless reveal his disquiet and internal conflict as he transforms into, if not his father, then his father's fitting heir.

    the trope of James Gandolfini on the couch is dangerously close to farce (was Analyse This made first?), credit to the show that they pulled it off so that's a substantial dramatic achievement. Such explicit character excavation is definitely made possible by Coppola languid almost wordless but beautifully articulated moral development two decades earlier.
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    Interesting summary, I disagree about II, I think III had a chance to be a great film, tried some new stuff but everyone seems to agree it fell short. Seems harsh to blame Coppola's daughter like that but she wasn't a Great actor, so he should get some blame for that. Fancy directing your own daughter getting seduced ouch.
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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Coda improved things a little. Blaming Sofia was good because it got us The Virgin Suicides and thus Trip Fontaine. Closing the Radness Loop/

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Not sure we can get away with putting a gangster movie - even a really, really ridiculously good-looking one - on the pedestal of “Greatest Drama of All Time”.

    I think the guilty allure of the modern gangster epic also tends to obstruct the resolution in a way that becomes insurmountable. The protagonist can’t ultimately win because he’s really a villain, in some sense total scum that can’t be redeemed. Redemption isn’t out of the question on realistic grounds but dramatic ones. The don can’t stay out of the game because if he did he’d have nothing to offer the story. What makes a monster like Tony Soprano appealing to the audience is that he’s *our* monster, and the seedy underside of our collective imagination wants him to go rip the other monsters limb from limb. How to conclude such a story well? I don’t think anyone’s really come up with a completely satisfactory way.

    Case in point the Sopranos episode “Employee of the Month” where Tony’s psychiatrist is raped by a man she later finds out is an employee at (I think) a restaurant. She then has the opportunity/temptation to appeal to Tony for revenge but stops herself in a tense moment of moral panic. As well done as the episode is, and as clear-eyed as it is about the uncertain footing the characters are navigating, the fact remains that even such a hard-fought moment of clarity will pass, swept away by the underlying narrative force of the premise. Soon enough, Tony will be back, with even greater scumbags to whack, and the show will go on.

    Does this make for ridiculously gratifying entertainment? It certainly can. Does this set of motivations and premises poise a story for entry into the canon of Greatest Dramas Evar? I’ve got doubts.
    Last edited by chriscase; April 14, 2021 at 05:16 PM.

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Quote Originally Posted by chriscase View Post
    Not sure we can get away with putting a gangster movie - even a really, really ridiculously good-looking one - on the pedestal of “Greatest Drama of All Time”....
    I completely agree, crime porn is not my cup of tea, but allow me to play devil's advocate.

    I don't think we can dismiss a work with a John Oliver-esque "come on people its [year/genre/other indicator]". If we use that logic we can deny Romeo and Juliet as being a great romance (its teen angst with a ludicrously avoidable death scene) Hamlet as being a tragedy (first estate problems) or even the Iliad (our hero is a rapist berserker, and I am supposed to care if he lives or dies?). So lets dispose of that argument by saying "come on people its 2021, gangster films can be high art now".

    I think gangster movies generally rank with Schwarzenegger movies for cultural refinement, but GF is a special case, a genre widening/renovating work. It manages to tick the gangster boxes and include a huge amount of non-gangster material and techniques and tropes so as to make the genre much more widely appealing and relevant.

    Drama comes from Attic "to act". There are many ways to act, from straight rote repetition of lines (nods to Arnie), to charismatic representation of the self, either through simply playing oneself, or "inhabiting" a role through method acting (nods to Arnie and Al Pacino in Scarface) to chameleonesque transformations like Daniel Day Lewis achieves, and whatever the hell Brando is doing half the time. In between are variations and shades of the art, such as classic Shakespearean stagecraft in its various epochs (eg Olivier-McKellen theatrics).

    Godfather hits these targets for mine, nearly all the actors (using a variety of techniques) manage to deliver their lines in a way that doesn't alienate the audience from belief they are witnessing real exchanges (I mean some drama does want to alienate the audience by breaking the fourth wall, that's a whole other kettle, but GF does not want to, and it succeeds very well). Contrast this with the Sopranos which is self consciously putting mobsters in contexts where they are a fish out of water eg on a psych's couch. I've seen Youtube videos where "mobster experts" claim Tony Soprano would have been dead in 9 days not 9 seasons if he went to a shrink, so its an implausible premise, albeit an interesting dramatic trope to explore character. .

    I'm gonna mention Brando again because his acting in GF is something else. the guy is a stage actor with a huge ego, capable of brilliant perfoemances using the heavy handed "method", but also capable of beautiful work (eg in Julius Caesar, where he played right up to the level of Mason and Gielgud). Have a look, Gielgud is in the Pantheon of Shakespearean greats and Mason is a fine film actor, but Brando is alive and well as Mark Antony, and his funeral oration is delivered with blood and subtlety well mixed. In GF he is unhinged, I don't know if its method acting or LSD but he vanishes and Vito is conjured in his place. He is great charismatic actor, with very good acting skills when well directed, but it can go horribly wrong. Apocalypse Now is as a stupid a bit of nonsense as I have ever seen, just some dude mumbling. Last Tango is sick pointless porn, all style and literally no substance, an extended wank frankly. Somehow this runaway madman pulled out one of the best bits of character acting in US film history.

    The story is horrible, but if its told well any story can be dramatic, that is to say the vehicle of good acting performances. It definitely satisfies a number of dramatic appetites, it has a massive star in Brando, a hunk in Caan, a new face in Pacino, a sweetie in Keaton so its actually a satisfying Hollywood blockbuster (it also has exotic locales! violence! sex is off screen!).

    It has very interesting character development, why would a war hero become a crime boss? Other films have "honour among thieves" as a theme, but GF (as mentioned above) goes deep into the role of family and the Sicilian code as a source of loyalty and cohesion. Yes its voyeuristic, like a gratuitous native dance scene in an Indiana Jones movie ("look at these weird foreigners and their ways" "gross, a fish in a vest!") but its also presented as a working system, with real emotional consequences and political ramifications. "Look how they massacred my boi" is quite a sad moment, and its a twist because we, like the undertaker, know Vito as fearsome rather than human, and we're not sure WTF is going on until he breaks down.

    Its a relevant drama too: crime syndicates have some influence in the US (I feel like Keaton is a nod to Jacquline Bouvuier marrying into the rotten Kennedy mob) and while the crime machine is background (the movie is moslty about the turf war, rather than how they work the turf) and most people know where they can place an illegal bet or visit a brothel.

    I'm no expert on cinematography but even an ignoramus like me could see it was visually interesting and I was struck by the techniques used. I mean I said what I have to say about it above, its feels awkward using language from painting and photography to discuss cinematography but its relevant, about framing and perspective and POV, and the emotional effect of camerawork is very telling.

    I think God Father does pass the test of being "Good Drama" on many levels. The acting satisfies a number or audiences. You want to see Hollywood stars being themselves are using art to transform themselves? Check. Do they dazzle you and make you want to watch them? Check. Is the story interesting both as entertainment, or for deeper reflection, or for escapism, or social relevance (both directly and metaphorically)? Check.

    It passes the basic test that a great majority of people will find it watchable and satisfying, and you can enjoy it for many many aspects and elements. In terms of "art" I think the artists do what they wanted to do, and show great skill and good taste.

    For me the crime porn and Cosa Nostra fetishization is a setback and means its not top ten, but that's a matter of personal taste. I can really see why people do put it in their top 10s though.
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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    The Godfather is great, but im not sure about being the greatest Drama ever unless you are being candid, which is fine, but not accurate.

    At any case, i would consider the Sopranos better on that front, in the genre.

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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    The Godfather was one of the first "great films" that I saw when I was younger, and it's one that I've watched many times. I agree that it's superior to all of the other gangster films that followed, including Goodfellas. But one thing that I was reminded of during some recent reading was how much of a rut Hollywood was in during the years prior to The Godfather. So many of the great films of the 60s came out of Europe, but the 70s belongs to American cinema. Towards the late 60s, the New Hollywood movement begins, and while The Godfather wasn't the first, its success was so immense that it must be acknowledged as one of the anchors of this era. It's the arrival of Francis Ford Coppola, and it's followed by Friedkin's The Exorcist, Polanski's Chinatown, Spielberg's Jaws, and of course Scorsese's breakthrough with Taxi Driver.

    Where The Godfather stands out in that modern American pantheon is in marrying the gravity of its wide narrative scope to the boldness of its dark, visceral presentation. I can respect why someone would personally hold it up as the best drama ever. And yet, I also think that designation depends on a narrow idea of what drama is. It's an essential American film, but also a film whose obsessions—violence and control—are essentially American.

    For me, there's a whole world of films out there, because drama also belongs to the likes of Welles, Ozu, Bergman, Dreyer, De Sica, Kurosawa... There are films that I know I'll want to return to often, but to be honest, The Godfather is no longer one of them. That's not to say its power is diminished in my view, perhaps what I mean to say is that I've found a preference for other types of power in film.
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    Default Re: Godfather is the Best Drama Ever

    Quote Originally Posted by SoggyFrog View Post
    The Godfather was one of the first "great films" that I saw when I was younger, and it's one that I've watched many times. I agree that it's superior to all of the other gangster films that followed, including Goodfellas. But one thing that I was reminded of during some recent reading was how much of a rut Hollywood was in during the years prior to The Godfather. So many of the great films of the 60s came out of Europe, but the 70s belongs to American cinema. Towards the late 60s, the New Hollywood movement begins, and while The Godfather wasn't the first, its success was so immense that it must be acknowledged as one of the anchors of this era. It's the arrival of Francis Ford Coppola, and it's followed by Friedkin's The Exorcist, Polanski's Chinatown, Spielberg's Jaws, and of course Scorsese's breakthrough with Taxi Driver.

    Where The Godfather stands out in that modern American pantheon is in marrying the gravity of its wide narrative scope to the boldness of its dark, visceral presentation. I can respect why someone would personally hold it up as the best drama ever. And yet, I also think that designation depends on a narrow idea of what drama is. It's an essential American film, but also a film whose obsessions—violence and control—are essentially American.

    For me, there's a whole world of films out there, because drama also belongs to the likes of Welles, Ozu, Bergman, Dreyer, De Sica, Kurosawa... There are films that I know I'll want to return to often, but to be honest, The Godfather is no longer one of them. That's not to say its power is diminished in my view, perhaps what I mean to say is that I've found a preference for other types of power in film.

    To Each, His Own.

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