10th Favorite Movie - The Godfather Part I & II

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Along with Citizen Kane and Casablanca, The Godfather is often considered to be the best movie ever made. The Godfather Part II, which director Francis Ford Coppola made two years later in 1974, is often touted as the best sequel of all time with many people even preferring it to the first film. You may think that you remember hearing about or even seeing a Godfather Part III, made 17 years later starring Coppola's daughter, Sofia (who is a much better director than actress). But I encourage you to pretend that never happened. Trust me, it is better that way.

When I was in the 11th grade, The Godfather I & II were not just my favorite movies, they had consumed part of my life. For an english assignment that year, we were to read a book and then see the movie version and draw comparisons between the two. I chose Mario Puzo's book The Godfather, and the films starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, James Caan, Rovert Duvall, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, James Cavale, Bruno Kirby and a host of others that it was based on. The result was a FIFTY page paper. No joke. In a famous Fitelson family story from that time, my dad came home from work for lunch one day to find a teenager he had never seen before sitting on his couch and watching his television with his son nowhere in sight. I was in the computer room in the back of the house working hard on the paper... while we were both supposed to be at school. My friend had heard I was "cutting" and wanted to come along. I'll never forget the feeling I had in my stomach when I heard the front door open and close that day and my dad saying "Well, hello there" to my friend. Sorry about that, dad.

These films are darn near perfect. I think the first one overall is superior to the second, however, my favorite scenes in the series are the ones in the second of Robert De Niro playing the young Don Vito Corleone. It is amazing how De Niro plays the role with Brando in mind (who played Corleone in the first film) but still makes the character his own, all without saying a single word in English. I also have to give a shout-out here to one of favorite actors, the late Bruno Kirby, who holds his own alongside De Niro.

I think a very underrated scene in the second film is the last one of the movie. Everyone talks about the murder in the boat out on Lake Tahoe, which was quite haunting and all, but I think the follow up scene to that is even more powerful. There is a flashback to the time before Michael was involved in "the family business", a family birthday party for Vito. Apparently they couldn't afford to bring Brando back for the scene or he was too busy/flaky, so he does not appear in it. Instead, everyone else is waiting around the table for him to come home. Seeing how the characters have transformed since then - especially Michael - is really moving. I recently saw a list somewhere of the "Best Film Endings" and was pleased to see this scene on there.

I must have said all I have to say back in the 11th grade about these movies, so if you want to hear more, let me know and I can loan you the paper. I still have it somewhere... I think I got an A- on it. The minus was because we were not supposed to go over 20 pages. Whoops. Sorry about that, Ms. Casey.

11th Favorite Movie - Apocalypse Now

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Fresh off the success of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II in 1974, Francis Ford Coppola had to be feeling pretty sure of himself. He had just directed two of the most critically praised and financially successful movies of all time and must have felt that he could take on the biggest challenge. So he did. For his next project, he took Joseph Conrad's book Heart of Darkness (which some said was impossible to put into film) and set it during the Vietnam war. His friend George Lucas was set to direct, Warner Brothers would finance it, and another masterpiece in line with the Godfather films would be made. And a masterpiece was made. But it didn't come about as expected. His wife's documentary film Hearts of Darkness chronicles the making of Apocalypse Now and includes some of these tidbits:

*George Lucas, who was going to direct it at first, bowed out after American Graffitti became a hit, so Coppola stepped in to direct. This supposedly resulted in some bitterness between the two men.

*Warner Brothers refused to finance the film because Coppola wanted to shoot in Vietnam, during the war. So they shot in the Philippines instead, but Coppola wound up financing the film entirely by himself anyways so he could have complete control over it

*The helicoptors they used were on loan from President Ferdinand Marcos who kept having to get them back so they could be used in actual combat

*Shooting was supposed to last 6 weeks, but wound up lasting over a year. Harvey Keitel was originally cast to play the lead role, but two weeks into shooting, they decided to go with Martin Sheen instead, who suffered a heart attack during production and was battling alcoholism. The first scene was shot on his 36th birthday after he had been drinking all day. Sheen says he never intended to break the mirror, he was drunk and was improvising and urged Coppola to keep the camera rolling. Brando showed up overweight and didn't know any of his lines. A typhoon destroyed a lot of the sets and pushed back shooting schedules. 200 hours of film were shot, and it took almost 2 years to edit.

Somehow, amidst all of this chaos - perhaps because of this chaos - one of the greatest films of all time was made. Most of the characters in Apocalypse Now are insane, so maybe the insane shooting conditions actually helped.

The story is simple: Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is called on to travel from Saigon into Cambodia by boat to assassinate U.S. Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has gone insane. Along the way he meets a score of colorful characters, played by Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishbourne (he lied and said he was 17 at the time of filming but was actually only 14!) , and Robert Duvall, who steals the show as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore. The movie has an incredible drawing power and makes the viewer feel the characters' fear, insanity, and longing to meet Kurtz at the end ("this is the end..."). Much has been said both positively and negatively about the end of the film and Brando's performance. He has a few long monologues which are not easy to decipher. This is my take: the movie is about the darkness that lies within every person. It is about "the horror" that is in the world and what it does to the human psyche. If you take the three officers in the movie that we spend the most time with - Willard, Kilgore and Kurtz - all of them are insane in one way or another. The movie begins by showing Willard's dark side when he punches the mirror in his hotel room. Then we meet Kilgore, who orders his soldiers to surf while bombs are going off all around them. Finally, we meet Kurtz who has become like a god to the natives. The horror of war has made each of these men what they are.

One interesting note: Apocalypse Now is one film that cannot make the claim "none of the animals seen here were hurt during the making of this film". The bull that is butchered at the end is a real bull being slaughtered, but it was not the film crew that decided to kill it. They filmed a real sacrifice that some of natives on the Philippines were performing and used that footage in the film. This continues to produce some controversy and many film lovers refuse to see it because of this scene.

I must comment on which version of the film I prefer. In 2001, Coppola released in theaters a version he called Apocalypse Now: Redux which added about 50 minutes of new footage to a film that was already two and a half hours long. I do not recommend this version, except to the biggest Apocalypse Now fans who have already seen the other version. It has a few scenes which really drag on and it also includes a scene in which Willard steals Kilgore's surfboard and then jokes around about it with the other guys on the boat like a bunch of frat boys. This scene seemed completely out of character for Willard and should have remained cut, or at the most, included as an extra (deleted scene) on the DVD. This version also includes a 20 minute scene at a French colonial plantation right before the finale at Kurtz' compound which disrupts the building intensity of the river journey. I cannot bring myself to believe that Coppola is touting this Redux version as the "official" Apocalypse Now. If you have not seen this movie and have a choice, get the original theatrical version and stay away from the Redux.

12th Favorite Movie - Goodfellas

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Many of the remaining movies on my list were at one point in my life my favorite movie. With Goodfellas, it was 1991 when it first came out in the theater. I saw it 4 times in the theater, which to this day is the most times I have ever seen one movie during its original release period. I think that had a bit to do with how old I was at the time - 17. See, I had wheels and freedom, I had money for tickets but was not burdened with a job, and other technological time-wasters like DVD and Facebook and iTunes and Playstation hadn't been invented yet. It seems like of all the people who go repeatedly to see the same movie in the theater, the 15-17 year old crowd does this the most. Once you get to college, there is other stuff to do and spending $10 on laundry or pizza often seems like a better investment.

I'm not quite sure if this movie is what really got me interested in film (compared to just movies), but it is possible. It certainly got me interested in Martin Scorsese. After seeing this, I immediately rented Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, neither of which came CLOSE to impacting me in the way Goodfellas did and neither of which I have seen since. I have seen most of Scorsese's movies and I think this is his finest work. I was actually a bit disappointed with The Departed... the way critics and people everywhere were gushing about it, I wanted to say "haven't you people seen Goodfellas? This is rubbish compared to that." I think that after seeing Goodfellas, pretty much EVERY Scorsese film has been a letdown for me... especially Casino, which is a sort of sequel to Goodfellas. Both movies are based on the real-life findings of Nicholas Pillegi, who wrote a couple books about gangsters that became these two movies.

So what is so great about this movie? It isn't inspiring, like Shawshank Redemption. It doesn't make you want to be a better person, like Braveheart. It doesn't even really have a positive message. If anything, the message of Goodfellas could be summarized as, "times were great when we were breaking the law, but now everything is pretty lame". The funny thing is, 'pretty lame' is describing a lifestyle that would be perfectly acceptable to most of us. Goodfellas is about wanting to be at the top of the world, getting there, loving it, and then losing everything and being left wondering, "did that really happen?".

I was reading somewhere (I think it was an interview with Quinton Tarintino) that a character who is in the mob but trying to get out (like Jules from Pulp Fiction) is the perfect character to create. Here is why: the dilemma of a character who is stuck doing what they don't want to do but yearns for a better life often parallels our own lives, and the moral/spiritual implications can be strong. Scorsese himself was studying to be a Catholic priest before making Mean Streets, which is also about gangsters - some of which are trying to get out of that lifestyle. The gang member who longs to get out of the mob can parallel our own longings for redemption, to be saved, to be forgiven and absolved of wrongdoing. Perhaps that explains some of the fascination I and others have with gangster movies, including Goodfellas.

Or it could just be the camaraderie, the humor, the unexpected outbursts of violence, and the idea of being able to get whatever you wanted from whoever you wanted whenever you wanted simply because of the power you wield and the fear you instill... and not having to work all that hard to get it. To a race of beings who were once tempted in a garden to be "like gods", what could be more appealing?