STUDIO: Paramount
RELEASE DATE: September 23, 2008
STARRING: Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Robert De Niro, James Caan, John Cazale, Eli Wallach, Andy Garcia, Joe Mantegna, Bridget Fonda, and Sofia Coppola
WRITTEN BY: Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo
DIRECTED BY: Francis Ford Coppola
FEATURES: Commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola
Godfather World (HD)
The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn’t (HD)
...when the shooting stopped (HD)
Emulsional Rescue - Revealing The Godfather (HD)
The Godfather on the Red Carpet (HD)
Four Short Films on The Godfather
The Family Tree
Crime Organization Chart
Connie and Carlo’s Wedding Album
2001 DVD Archive:
Behind the Scenes
The Filmmakers
Additional Scenes
Acclaim & Response
Trailers (HD)
Photo Gallery
Rogues’ Gallery

The Godfather trilogy sucks. It's the most overrated pile of trash that Hollywood has produced in the last four decades and its influence isn't nearly what so many people claim it to be. Of course, I'm 100% kidding. But I thought I'd try and get your attention before the love-fest truly got underway. The hyperbole is going to flow like red sauce at an Italian wedding. Like a lot of people who write about cinema, The Godfather movies are one of the main reasons I do what I do. I've long said and written in hundreds of reviews that it's the filmmakers who have an eye for attention to detail that are the true masters of the form. I believe that this basic tenet of criticism that fuels how I feel about cinema comes, in a lot of ways, from The Godfather (and, of course, Hitchcock, my other major influence.) The realistic attention to detail in The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II is simply mind-boggling. Coppola and his team took a world that most of us will never know and it made it feel like our family. It's a metaphor for capitalism. It's Shakespearian in its dissection of a King with three sons. It's about you and me. Just the first twenty minutes of the first film - the wedding - features universal details that set-up a unique story. The underbelly of the business of the mob and America is going on underneath a wedding that could be your family's. The combination of the familiarity of a family wedding with what was going on underneath that detail, including the simply stunning cinematography by Gordon Willis, has never looked better than it does in high-definition Blu-Ray. I've seen The Godfather dozens of times. I can quote it in my sleep. I feel, honestly, like I had never completely seen it until I did on Blu-Ray. It's a must-purchase and one of the first things I'll grab should the fire alarm ever go off.

We don't need to get into the plot of any of The Godfather movies. If you're unfamiliar and need a plot recap, all I can say is that I'm jealous of the experience you're going to have as you see the films for the first time. Go to Wikipedia for that. What we do need to discuss is why we're even here again, writing about movies that have been analyzed to death and already available in several forms on DVD. What's happened is that the team behind The Godfather, under the guidance of Coppola himself, have remastered and restored the films for the generation that's grown up seeing The Sopranos in high definition. They have meticulously gone back to original film elements and corrected some of the colors and remixed a lot of the picture. The Deadbolt's Reg Seeton has already brilliantly written about the standard definition version and commented that some of the colors felt too bright, a complaint that has been heard across the internet. Check out his detailed look at the standard set here. And hardcore, technophile fans shouldn't miss a stunningly detailed comparison of the various versions here..

I haven't seen the restoration in "old-ray", but I think the problem with the video that Mr. Seeton and others have noted could be because these films were restored with a Blu-Ray and film presentation in mind. (FYI - the movies will play in Chicago at the Music Box starting on October 3rd. I'll be able to see that restoration next week at a screening and possibly comment more then. Don't miss it if you're nearby.) On Blu-Ray, the picture is as stunning as anything I've seen and Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits notes the Blu-Ray's similarity to seeing it on the big screen here. Yes, the wedding is bright (maybe too bright) and there is some undeniable grain in moments. I can completely understand the criticism that some of the brights are too bright and darks are too dark, but the high definition restoration brings out detail that I never saw in the dozen or so times I watched it in standard definition. It's the visual detail of these Blu-Ray versions that is simply overwhelming. Even just the color of Al Pacino's eyes looks different - more detailed and more intense. It's this simple - I went back and forth between the last release upconverted on my player and these restorations to compare the picture, concerned about a few of the reports I had heard, and I will never watch the other versions again.

Some have also commented that there is still some noise and grain in a few scenes and I say to them that they're not really understanding how high-definition should work. It's not supposed to look like Transformers. The Godfather is a film that was shot on a relatively low budget by a dp who was known as "the prince of darkness" for his love of blacks and grays in his color palette. And the restoration is largely to make the film look like it did on the screen in 1972 instead of how it has for years on VHS, cable, and even standard DVD. Many classics have been over-polished on Blu-Ray, including recent releases for Patton and Dirty Harry, which causes the actors to look a bit too plastic. Not this time. To these eyes, ones that have seen these movies repeatedly, The Godfather looks perfect. As for audio, I went back and forth between the 5.1 track on my standard Godfather and the Blu-Ray version and, I have to admit, I didn't notice a significant difference. For me, the upgrade is visual, which is not to say that the audio is ever a problem.

Many of the special features on The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration are in high-definition themselves, including a great series of interviews with some of the many, many people inspired by these classics. The final disc of the four-disc Blu-Ray set says it all in little print right there on the disc itself - "291 minutes." Nothing related to The Godfather is in moderation. That's almost five hours of interviews, featurettes, and more. All of the old featurettes from the 2001 release of the trilogy have been imported along with an interesting new series of featurettes. The most interesting is called "The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't" and runs about half an hour. All the detail you need to know about the making of the film has been well-documented, including on the imported featurettes from the previous release, so the studio wisely focuses on interviews in the new featurettes, many of which are available in HD on the Blu-Ray version. Check the list at the top of this review or head over to Reg's review for more details on the special features. The real gem, "Masterpiece", features interviews with people like Guillermo Del Toro, Kimberly Peirce, David Chase, Alec Baldwin, and Steven Spielberg about the history and impact of the film. That influence is expanded on in the just-as-good "Godfather World" with the great line from Baldwin - "It's like a drug. It takes away your free will. You're gonna watch it whether you planned on it or not."

I know how he feels. I love The Godfather movies so much that I have to admit that I tear up sometimes watching them and not during emotional moments, but purely at the beauty of the filmmaking. This is what cinema is all about. These are films that don't stand the test of time, they actually improve every time you see them. I imagine it's close to the way Shakespeare's plays or classic novels aged and, yes, The Godfather deserve comparison with Shakespeare. If you don't like The Godfather films, you simply don't like movies. And if you don't have this set next to your Blu-Ray player, it's simply not doing its job.