Tragedy, melodrama, gangster movies and a luxuriant anthropological analysis of family ties and how they affect the fate of individuals: Francis Ford Coppola's '
The Godfather'
is all this in the magic of an amalgam that 50 years later still captures the bulimic spectator on the hunt for news on the many platforms available.
Listen to "From Skepticism to Success: The Godfather 50 Years Ago" on Spreaker.
Impossible, as always, to identify the recipe for critical success (the American Film Institute took it to second place in the ranking of the 100 best films of all time, behind only the legendary Fourth Estate by Orson Welles) and the public (it grossed in the world over a billion dollars and in Italy it remained the highest grossing ever until the arrival of Avatar in 2009) of this magnitude.
Especially considering the premises.
Mario Puzo was the author of the bestseller but, against the will of his agent, he sold the rights for 80 thousand dollars because he was full of gambling debts;
Coppola, whom Paramount - itself in crisis - did not want, came from one of its various commercial defaults and wanted a film that would lift it;
Marlon Brando was not well seen and was imposed by Coppola himself;
Al Pacino was a third choice because he was considered semi-unknown (he had only played Panico in Needle Park but in the character of the heroin addict Coppola he had seen, rightly, a lot of talent);
Cosa Nostra tried to put a spoke in the wheel of making the film until the word mafia was never pronounced (and so it was);
The film got 10 nominations and three Oscars, with a controversial double tail: Pacino believed he deserved the award for the leading actor since he was on stage more than anyone, and Brando, who instead won it, sent a Native American to collect it, Sacheen Littlefeather, who read a statement from the actor against the mistreatment of American Indians in the film industry.
