The Godfather Collection [Coppola Restoration] [4 Discs] [Blu-ray]

Francis Ford Coppola

Overview

Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael, respectively. It is the late 1940s in New York and Corleone is, in the parlance of organized crime, a "godfather" or "don," the head of a Mafia family. Michael, a free thinker who defied his father by enlisting in the Marines to fight in World War II, has returned a captain and a war hero. Having long ago rejected the family business, Michael shows up at the wedding of his sister, Connie (Talia Shire), with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), who learns for the first time about the family "business." A few months later at Christmas time, the don barely survives being shot by gunmen in the employ of a drug-trafficking rival whose request for aid from the Corleones' political connections was rejected. After saving his father from a second assassination attempt, Michael persuades his hotheaded eldest brother, Sonny (James Caan), and family advisors Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) that he should be the one to exact revenge on the men responsible. After murdering a corrupt police captain and the drug trafficker, Michael hides out in Sicily while a gang war erupts at home. Falling in love with a local girl, Michael marries her, but she is later slain by Corleone enemies in an attempt on Michael's life. Sonny is also butchered, having been betrayed by Connie's husband. As Michael returns home and convinces Kay to marry him, his father recovers and makes peace with his rivals, realizing that another powerful don was pulling the strings behind the narcotics endeavor that began the gang warfare. Once Michael has been groomed as the new don, he leads the family to a new era of prosperity, then launches a campaign of murderous revenge against those who once tried to wipe out the Corleones, consolidating his family's power and completing his own moral downfall. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards and winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather was followed by a pair of sequels.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/23/2008
UPC:	0097361386447
Original Release:	2008
Rating:	R
Source:	Paramount
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby AC-3 Surround Sound]
Language:	English
Time:	14:00:00
Sales rank:	15,016

Special Features

Godfather World HD; The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't HD; When the Shooting Stopped HD; Emulsion Rescue Revealing the Godfather HD; The Godfather on the Red Carpet HD; Four Short Films on the Godfather HD; ; The Godfather: The original, provocative director's commentary; The Godfather Part II: The original provocative director's commentary; The Godfather Part III: The original, provocative director's commentary; Supplements: Making of The Godfather; Additional scenes; Filming locations; The Corleone family tree; The Music of The Godfather; The Godfather historical timeline; Profiles on the filmmakers; Photo galleries and storyboards

Editorial Reviews

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 sequel to The Godfather is an audacious tour de force believed by many critics and movie fans to be superior to the original film -- and with good reason. Coppola resisted the urge to make a conventional sequel; instead he crafted a film with dual story lines that bookend the events of the first Godfather. In one narrative Al Pacino returns as Michael Corleone, now deeply entrenched as the leader of a Mafia “family” whose influence extends to the lavish casinos of Eisenhower-era Las Vegas. Locked in a desperate struggle with shrewd Jewish mobster Hyman Roth (played brilliantly by veteran acting teacher Lee Strasberg), Michael also clashes with those closest to him, including wife Kay (Diane Keaton) and brother Fredo (John Cazale). The alternate plot features Robert De Niro as Michael’s father, Vito -- the character played by Brando in the first movie -- who is seen as a young man coming to New York from Sicily and locking horns with a fellow countryman, the neighborhood crime boss. Coppola develops the parallel stories with equal vigor and intensity, although the showdown between Michael and Roth, quite properly, forms the film’s unforgettable climax. More atmospheric and introspective than The Godfather, Part II is less a slam-bang gangster film than a Greek tragedy in contemporary settings. Michael Corleone grapples with the consequences of his decision to lead the family “business,” sacrificing his most intimate relationships -- and even his very soul -- to the compulsive desire to retain power and destroy his enemies. With their dual-story concept, Coppola and co-writer Mario Puzo make certain we realize that Michael’s fate was, to a large extent, sealed by the choices his father made decades before. Thirty years after it was made, this extravagant, epochal sequel remains vital and gripping, and it may well be the greatest film Coppola has ever made.

Barnes & Noble - Ed Hulse