One of the rewards of seeing The Godfather on DVD is hearing Francis Coppola’s remarkably candid and informative director’s commentary. In it Coppola reveals that many of the brilliant elements of the film that seem integral to its genius were in fact afterthoughts, and in some cases, accidents.



Consider, for example, the opening scene, “I believe in America,” in which a grieving undertaker asks Don Corleone for justice in a brutal attack on his daughter. Coppola admits that his original idea was to start with the wedding party outside and only after the setting had been established would he focus on the Godfather himself and the favors asked of him. Instead, a friend who had admired the unusual opening scene in Patton , whose screenplay Coppola had written, asked if The Godfather would begin with a similarly creative opener. Coppola thought about it and came up with the idea of starting with a close-up of the undertaker’s face and then doing a slow pull back shot to reveal that the listener was the title character.

The cat on Marlon Brando’s lap in this first scene was another inspiration. Coppola didn’t plan it, but a feline that had been hanging out at the New York City studio where this interior shot was filmed found its way onto Brando’s lap and became a perfect and ironic prop for the discussion of impending bloodshed.

One of the many comic touches in the first film is the shot of hitman Luca Brasi practicing his tribute to Don Corleone in the garden before being admitted to the inner chamber. In the commentary, Coppola tells us that Luca was played by a professional wrestler who in real life had trouble memorizing his lines. In a brilliant stroke, Coppola turned reality into art by incorporating the rehearsal of the speech into the film’s plot.

Yet another scene that today seems pre-ordained but was in fact an improvisation was the filming of the private meeting between the Godfather and Johnny Fontane. Fontane was another role played by a non-actor, in this case singer Al Martino. In the scene the camera catches Don Corelone face on, but Martino from his back. Coppola says this angle was dictated by the fact that Martino couldn’t deliver his lines convincingly. Furthermore, Brando added his own creative touch to the filming by violently exploding and slapping Martino for not acting “like a man.” Coppola says Brando did this to try to get some genuine emotion out of the wooden Martino.



Coppola also reveals that Paramount’s Robert Evans (later mercilessly satirized by Dustin Hoffman in Wag the Dog ) did not like Nino Rota’s score. Coppola threatened to quit as director unless the Rota score was retained, an act of artistic courage that is hard to contemplate in today’s Hollywood. I suppose Coppola still would have given us a great film had another composer been used. But the music is so intrinsic to the soul and substance of the picture, it’s rather like trying to envision The Godfather with the part of Michael being played by Frank Langella or Daniel Travanti or Martin Sheen, actors who are all the same age as Al Pacino.

Regards,