My blog surrounding crime films and their effects on their viewers would not be complete without at least mentioning what is aguably the pinnacle of the crime genre. The Godfather sets the standard for all timeless crime films, with its seedy characters who only reveal what you need to know. Starting at the start, The Godfather is the story of a mafia family named the Corleone’s, it follows their seemingly stable life at the top of the gangster underworld to other families trying to wipe them out one by one. The protagonist is Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) the son of mafia boss Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), Michael refuses to join the family ‘business’ and joins the army to fight in World War 2. Upon his return he appears at the wedding of his sister and soon after learns that his father was almost shot dead by gunmen who were trying to run the drug trafficking that was dominated by the Corleone’s. Michael takes it upon himself to reinstate the balance of power and take revenge on the gunmen who tried to take out his father.
The time frame of this film is directly proportionate to the height of organised crime in America. The beginning of Vito Corleone’s empire is right before prohibition allowing him to create a name for himself through alcohol as well as drugs and murder. By the time Michael re-appears prohibition has ended and the Corleone family is set in stone as the top family running New York. Throughout the film we are almost provided with a timeline of America’s long and bloody criminal past from the early 1900’s.
The director Albert S. Ruddy is extremely intelligent in using the only member of the family who does not wish to follow the footsteps of his father into crime to commit the most crimes throughout the film. Creating a sense of irony in that the only outstanding citizen in the family, goes onto be groomed as the next ‘Don’.
‘Michael: You gonna kill all those guys?
Sonny: Hey, Mikey, stay out of this, all right?’
This quote is before Michael realises what he is becoming increasingly involved in it is astonishing how quickly he changes and accepts responsibility of the family.
‘Michael: My father is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator.
Kay Adams: Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don’t have men killed.
Michael: Oh. Who’s being naive, Kay?’
He is now aware of how corrupt America has become and uses this to his advantage in that he understands what the family can get away with and what they can’t. Ruddy expertly shows this change over the space of the first half of the film allowing for the second half to portray how he struggles to keep his sanity due to the immense pressure placed upon his shoulders. We begin to see cracks in Michael’s sanity and he often lashes out on his wife Kay, not seeing his children, focusing all of his attention on the business and constantly looking out for people trying to disrespect the order of his family’s crime organisation running the New York underworld. In addition to this Ruddy uses corrupt police officers to represent exactly how twisted the justice system had become in America during this period.
‘Michael Corleone: Where does it say that you can’t kill a cop?
Tom Hagen: Come on, Mikey…
Michael Corleone: Tom, wait a minute. I’m talking about a cop that’s mixed up in drugs. I’m talking about a – a – a dishonest cop – a crooked cop who got mixed up in the rackets and got what was coming to him. That’s a terrific story. And we have newspaper people on the payroll, don’t we, Tom?’
This quote follows Michael killing a corrupt police officer and he is trying to justify his actions by suggesting he has done the city of New York a favour by removing one more corrupt police man of the streets, when in reality the only reason he is dead is because he tried to be greedy and take more of a cut than was agreed with the Corleone’s. Throughout the film we see many different justifications for killing somebody, whether it is because they are trying to put a stop to the Corleone family or they are a rival gang and would have killed somebody else first. This relates back to my previous blog post surrounding the effects of films on their viewers, this could imply that doing something wrong in order to prevent another crime is acceptable when in reality this is not true.
To me this film is truly a masterpiece and there are many different aspects of family values and morals that can outweigh the fact that its main attention is crime. For instance we constantly see Don Corleone drilling family values into Michael’s head, family is everything and without them you have no body. Also we see the loyalty boundary being broken quite often and this leads to extremely serious consequences. These morals are ones that everybody could use and that provides the relate ability of the film to its viewers.
‘Don Corleone: I knew Santino was going to have to go through all this and Fredo… well, Fredo was… But I, I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life, I don’t apologize, to take care of my family. And I refused to be a fool dancing on the strings held by all of those big shots. That’s my life, I don’t apologize for that. But I always thought that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the strings. Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone, something.
Michael: Another pezzonovante.
Don Corleone: Well, there wasn’t enough time, Michael. There just wasn’t enough time.
Michael: We’ll get there, Pop. We’ll get there.’
This quote typifies my point in that it shows how much his family means to the Don, family comes before the business it just so happens that the family is the business. The Don knows that he has done wrong and didn’t wish for his son Michael to follow in his footsteps but now he has there is equality in respect. Without respect there is no order and without order there will never be success. This film is an incredible balance of outstandign morals and seedy underworld criminal activity. 
George Percy Babble About Film 