One thing I noticed about this movie while watching it, was that it was two era's of movie making crashing into one another.

Here you had the golden era, which could span from the 1900's to the 1960's with much attention paid to script and acting. And then you have the modern era with less censorship when it comes to violence, language, and sex.

The Godfather was a meshing of these two era's for me, which made the movie even more enjoyable. I don't think the Godfather could have been made as well as it was in any other decade. It needed to be made in the early 70's.

The same can be said of the second, but not the third, which was shot totally in the modern era and probably suffered a bit from that.