Sight and Sound 2022 Top 20

I took a class in grad school on the archetype of "captivity narratives" and of course The Searchers was a major text...it's a very rich, if uncomfortable, film in that way.

I got into movies seriously in the mid to late 90s so the 1992 list was my introduction to the canon (once I realized the AFI list was limited, to say the least...)

1. Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. La Regle du Jeu (Renoir)
3. Tokyo Story (Ozu)
4. Vertigo (Hitchcock)
5. The Searchers (Ford)
6. L’Atalante (Vigo)
6. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
6. Pather Panchali (Ray)
6. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)

I like the 1982 list...

Citizen Kane
The Rules of the Game
Seven Samurai
Singin' in the Rain
8½
Battleship Potemkin
L'Avventura
The Magnificent Ambersons
Vertigo
The General
The Searchers

First one I ever came across was the '72 list (in The Book of Lists) while in high school:

1. Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. La Règle du jeu (Renoir)
3. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
4. 8½ (Fellini)
5. L’avventura (Antonioni)
5. Persona (Bergman)
7. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
8. The General (Keaton)
8. The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles)
10. Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
10. Wild Strawberries (Bergman)

Just 17 voters, I think.

Oh I'm moved by Fredo. "I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says!" is a big part of my vocabulary.

"It's the way Pop wanted it."

"It's not the way I wanted it!"

Oddly, I thought Sonny was the most empathetic character in the first GF. Probably has to do with the heat Caan brought to the role. I've always thought he was the standout among a cast of standouts.

The last hug between Sonny and Michael is the most emotional moment for me, yeah.

Cazale's untimely death was such a massive loss to film acting

rewatching it a few years ago it occurred to me that the emotional journey of watching michaels character has become totally reversed, the shock of seeing him transform into a killer ghoul is replaced by the shock of seeing him as a normal friendly guy at the wedding, shopping with Kay, etc, before he's become the "actual" character that i remember & hold in my mind when i think of the film. i also realized i cant remember the first time i saw the godfather, and so cant even remember what my thoughts & feelings might have been watching him go through that transformation for the first time without knowing what was going to happen, which bummed me out a bit

cazale as fredo obv the performance that never loses its potency, impervious to rewatching

The final scene in GF2 is a masterful recapitulation.

'72: peak Bergmania

Fredo's a harder part to play too because he doesn't have any of the menace of the other male Corleones. In the book, they described Fredo as a dream child, a kid who never got in trouble, loved and obeyed his parents. Biggest undoing is his unwavering trust in people, like how he doesn't put it together that Paulie sold his dad out, or how he sides with Moe Greene, not understanding that his family is in actual danger at that point. Or not realizing he was setting his brother up to be killed with Hymen Roth/Johnny Ola.

He's dumb but mostly in the emotionally naive sense, and he doesn't understand that him being passed over is perhaps the greatest thing that could have happened to him, especially after you see what it did to Michael. Cazale captured it perfectly even though he only got a fraction of the screen time

O sorry SPOILERZ

Godfather has been so memed in culture that Michael’s rise is arguably seen as largely a good thing by so many viewers, maybe due to the genuine duplicitousness of his enemies (many of them given even more reprehensible characteristics) when his rise is actually a fall. I don’t think it’s framed as a good thing btw it’s clear it’s meant as a tragedy and these are certainly great films in that respect. It’s hard to view the tragedy as anything other than michael coming into his own, though; kinda like Macbeth or something. He was not really a corrupted good guy as much as there was something in him that was awful and fundamentally evil from the start and it just needed a push in the right context.

The first time I saw the Godfather I was overwhelmed by the atmosphere and (to be honest) how old and musty and weird the film seemed to me. And how long! (Gotta say that it took me a while, until my mid-30s, to become really interested in old movies and the ins and outs of Hollywood, and I didn’t watch a ton of films in general until then; I was somewhere in my late 20s when I saw this.) So the feeling of the movie dominates everything in my memory and the finer points would only emerge with subsequent viewings, through reading reviews or listening to podcasts about it, etc.

If I watched a movie like this for the first time today I’d likely clock much more in the way of subtleties.

Omar otm

Michael's refusal to play ball had less to do with "I am above these reprehensible, evil actions" and more "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me", he didn't like anybody, even his own father, mapping his own life out.

plus, no doubt the war probably fucked him up, he was wounded in action and probably saw some fucked up things.

when i watch it now i see him specifically through the lens of a veteran. he's returning to civilian society without fully processing what he learned about himself while at war, shaken not just by his experiences of violence but also by the side of himself those experiences revealed. back in the states at the wedding around all those thugs and triggermen, he's like a recovering alcoholic trying not to look at the bar. the war made him worried about who he might be and he's afraid to go too far and find out for sure.

otm

while many mobsters were unhinged and might take down a civvy for disrespecting for them, the majority of the victims of violence by mob's hands were other mobsters, who were also pieces of shit, and even then, the rules of engagement were fairly tight, you couldn't just clip whomever you wanted.

Michael was bestowed the Navy Cross, which means more than likely he killed or aided in the killing of many soldiers, many of them civilians who probably didn't want to be there. yeah, there's rules of engagement there too, but often amounted then to "see a guy wearing a different uniform, and shoot". that shit will fuck you up more than killing someone named Johnny No-Neck who robbed one of your street men.

I saw a 25th anniversary screening of The Godfather when I was 18, and it didn't make much of an impression on me. I found the story hard to follow and didn't care about the characters. Not long after, I saw Part II out of a sense of obligation and mostly felt similar about it. (For context, my favorite filmmakers at the time were probably Woody Allen, Robert Altman, and Mike Leigh.) I'm sure I'd get more out of it if I watched it now, though I haven't gotten around to it.

I definitely didn't follow everything the first time I watched it, mostly because it was my first exposure to mob-related cinema, so I didn't even get the tropes of the genre very well.

I read the book not long after and it made a lot more sense on my next viewing, though Puzo had somewhat of a maddening tendency to overexplain things

that and mentioning how people's sphincters released when they died

I had the odd experience of seeing GF2 before I saw GF.

"who the fuck are all these people"

Saw Godfather for the first time as a maybe 14-year-old and it played beautifully. Saw Godfather II as probably a 19- or 20-year-old and it felt like an obligation.

when i watch it now i see him specifically through the lens of a veteran. he's returning to civilian society without fully processing what he learned about himself while at war, shaken not just by his experiences of violence but also by the side of himself those experiences revealed.

ewatching it a few years ago it occurred to me that the emotional journey of watching michaels character has become totally reversed, the shock of seeing him transform into a killer ghoul is replaced by the shock of seeing him as a normal friendly guy at the wedding, shopping with Kay, etc, before he's become the "actual" character that i remember & hold in my mind when i think of the film

so OTM. You see the change when he return from Italy months (presumably) after Appolonia's death.

XP

https://www.35milimetros.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/TheSearchers_imaginario03.jpg

Both those Godfather/Searchers analogies are perfect--the closing door I had already picked up on, but I'd never thought about the returning-from-war parallel.

the key dividing line between the normie michael and mob michael is obv the restaurant assassination but what turns him truly cold, point of no return, is when apollonia is murdered yeah. difference between the godfather and other films of course is that the family in this film is the femme fatale of sorts, which is luring him away from a decent life and on the path to destruction.

The best Michael-before-the-fall moment might be the coda to II, where he announces his enlistment (to the befuddlement of Sonny).

Which is a big part of why I've always said it's better to the see the two original films back-to-back, rather than the chronologically reordered TV version. The extra scenes are nice to have, but you lose those present-past transitions.

Agreed.

When Michael visits Kay at the school, he already looks sunken and hunched.

The best part of Michael's arc might just be Brando's expression when he gets out of hospital and they explain to him what Michael's done

I can visualize that perfectly: Tom tells him (hesistantly) "It was Michael who shot Sollozzo," then Brando weakly waves him away.

I get that it's beautiful to look at on the big screen (and the soundtrack is the best thing about it for me; I couldn't not see it after looking at the music choices). But I don't see anything very profound in HAL, and what engages your intellect in this?
― xyzzzz__, Monday, January 9, 2023

I'm probably not going to express my ideas here very well, but:

besides the overwhelming visual impact of viewing it on a big screen and the soundtrack, what engages me most is its story about leaps in evolution that seem almost impossible, its vision of the past, and its stunning imagination of the future. HAL's dysfunction is focused on a moment in the middle of the film - possibly predicting something we as humans are going to be facing in the not too distant future - but the span of time in the movie is so vast

xp Cazale's great in that scene too. Fredo knows that he's dead weight, and that the family's had to make a deal to ensure his protection, and there's that hint of embarrassment as he repeats the line that they're using to save face. "I'm going to learn the casino business." "Yeah..."

If Fredo has driven to that toll booth instead, and saw the fedoraed men with Tommy guns, he'd have probably waved and said "hey guys!"

I love Dan S's posts.

Xpost His handling of the gun probably an accurate depiction of what would happen if most inexperienced people tried to quickly pull and shoot

his anguished PAP! PAP!!! when Vito's shot is masterful acting.

Very visceral

Have you all spent the entire day talking about The Godfather?

A little bit. Mostly I puttered around in the kitchen in honour of my favourite film.

You never know, you might have to cook for 20 guys someday

what engages me most is its story about leaps in evolution that seem almost impossible, its vision of the past, and its stunning imagination of the future. HAL's dysfunction is focused on a moment in the middle of the film - possibly predicting something we as humans are going to be facing in the not too distant future - but the span of time in the movie is so vast

― Dan S, Tuesday, 10 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I find the dystopian aspect of it pretty poor and really divorced from politics into something really nihilistic and teenage. Technology -- whether it's a book or a computer -- has always been with us and it's always breaking and sorta dysfunctional when it's mass produced. It's a lot more banal and everyday relationship with tech.

OTOH I only watched it once and spent time rolling my eyes at it. I didn't see it at an impressionable age. Vast ranges of time is an ok idea though I think I wasn't interested by then.

Always remember Mark S saying somewhere on here that in Kubrick's future they still hadn't sorted the Visible Panty Line.