![]() This is not the honourable actions of Don Vito and his ilk this is destructive, greed-driven aggression. As the civilian’s livelihood is incinerated, our ‘heroes’ gasp at the splendour of their handiwork. The earliest crime we see all four commit on screen is the torching of a newspaper stand, in response to its proprietors refusal to pay local hood Bugsy protection money. Their plight as enterprising criminals in Prohibition-era America may be compelling, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are extortionists, thieves, murderers and rapists. The same cannot be said for the gang in Once Upon a Time in America. ![]() No victims of theft, fraud or protection rackets.” Roger Ebert said the same when he wrote, in his retrospective review of The Godfather, “Don Vito Corleone … emerges as a sympathetic and even admirable character during the entire film, this lifelong professional criminal does nothing of which we can really disapprove… we see not a single actual civilian victim of organized crime. Puzo admitted his sympathies for the Corleones when, reflecting on the success of the film, he attributed his decision to “ them out to be good guys, pretty good guys, except that they committed murder every once in a while”. It has little to do with the reality of organised crime. Which is all well and good if you want the audience to root for your protagonists, as Coppola and Puzo did. They may have lived on lavish estates, and been driven in luxurious vehicles, but their income came from honest, hard-working American capitalism, based on the age-old maxim of supply and demand, whether it be gambling, liquor or prostitution. They were sleek, elegantly-dressed family figures who operated according to a code of ethics. For once, gangsters were not anti-social hoodlums profiteering from a flagrant disregard for laws enacted to protect the common man. Wellman’s The Public Enemy were often laughably didactic (witness the rhetorical “What are YOU going to do about it?” in Scarface).Ĭhief among the many virtues of The Godfather, according it its devotees, is the non-judgemental attitude it takes towards its central characters. The onscreen tracts which bookended pictures like Howard Hawk’s Scarface or William A. It also had meant no crime could go unpunished, and characters who broke the law must be seen to repent before a suitably dramatic penalty, whether it was life behind bars or death in a hail of bullets. The Hays Code had meant audiences were shielded from all but the mildest profanity and violence on screen, with sex practically nonexistent. Once Upon a Time in America shows it as it really is.Īrguably the greatest shift forward in progress for American cinema in the second half of the twentieth century was the ending of Motion Picture Production Code, colloquially known as the Hays Code in honour of Will H. The Godfather glamorises organised crime. The following are a number of reasons why the disproportionate affection for The Godfather, at the expense of Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, is a matter which should be rectified, or at the very least debated, by any serious film fan.ġ. Yet it is nowhere near as well-regarded as Coppola’s film. ![]() ![]() Leone’s film depicted young, poverty-stricken immigrant life in New York, as well as the rise and fall of criminal enterprise, buttressed by ensemble casting, stirring music and a demanding running length. A film which tackles similar themes in an aesthetically comparable way with ever greater success is Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America. It is not even the greatest crime film ever made. It is simply an acknowledgement that The Godfather is not the greatest film ever made. To say another film is greater, however, is not a damning indictment. It bridges a gap between the snobbish older generation of critics for whom every modern film is a debasement of the art form, and the younger generation of audiences who may have been forced to watch Citizen Kane in class once, but struggled to keep their eyes open. Most critics compile a list of the movies which they have most appreciated in ascending order on any given year, and the Academy Awards – arguably the most universally recognised seal of approval for any creative field – are a constant source of controversy, with those shamefully overlooked far more likely to be mentioned in conversation than the times the Oscars actually got it right.Īnd yet The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola’s breakout film, occupies a strange space in the public consciousness, a consensus comparable with that of the sacred cows in Hinduism from where the idiom is derived. Comparing works of art is an often self-defeating endeavour, and yet it is inherently compulsive when it comes to film.
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