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ProfiSinema / Cinema News
"The Godfather": Amazing and incredible coincidences when creating a cult tape
07.04.2015 19:54:00
Today, April 7, 2015 marks the 76th anniversary of director and screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola.
This is a great opportunity to remember what amazing coincidences preceded the creation of the legendary film saga "The Godfather", what the shooting in the film gave to the performers of the main roles and how they influenced their future careers (many of the actors were not stars at that time) and what followed the release of the tape.
Amazing and inexplicable coincidences sometimes accompany the birth of immortal works of art.
One Sunday afternoon, resting at home in San Francisco, director and screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola was reading the New York Times.
An advertisement for a book by Mario Puzo caught my eye.
Deciding that this was the intellectual work of a new Italian author, he cut out the note to make inquiries later.
Suddenly, his friend Peter Bart looked in on him along with producer Al Ruddy, a stranger before.
In the conversation, Peter shared his impression of Mario Puzo's book "The Godfather".
"Wow," Coppola exclaimed, " I just saw her advertisement."
At that moment, the phone rang.
The caller was Marlon Brando, who had to give his opinion about the script of "The Conversation", written with him in mind (and subsequently received the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974).
All the events happened almost simultaneously!
And just a few months later, the Paramount studio, having paid two million dollars for the film adaptation right, entrusted the shooting of the Godfather to 32 year old director Francis Ford Coppola.
Al Rudy was appointed producer, and Marlon Brando got the main role in the film.
"It still seems strange to me how it all came together that day at my house," Coppola recalls.
Francis Ford Coppola was born on April 7, 1939 in Detroit (Michigan) in a family of Italian Americans.
His father was a musician, and therefore they often moved from city to city.
Before entering college, Francis changed 25 schools, each of which he later remembered as a short film.
"There were five of us in the family.
My mother was extremely pretty, and my father was a very handsome man with a brilliant profession;
I remember he wore a tuxedo.
We were brought up in the belief that Italians are carriers of great culture," says Coppola.
At the age of nine, he wrote a note to his mother: "Dear Mom, I want to be rich and famous.
I'm so unhappy.
I donot believe that this will happen."
At the age of ten, he fell ill with polio, and was paralyzed for a year.
He watched TV, listened to the radio and thus created for himself a kind of pseudo real world, in which a significant role was assigned to technology.
And today Coppola is convinced: "My disposition to the profession of a director – to the profession of a person who remotely manages production, is rooted in something that gave me inner satisfaction in those childhood years."
At the age of 16, Coppola became interested in theater.
At the same time, he watched the Soviet film "October", and under the impression of what he saw, he began to study Eisenstein.
"And, you know, for several years he was my godfather.
I got the necessary knowledge for a director from Sergei Eisenstein, and my directing career was built on this."
After graduating from Hofstra College, and then from the film school of the University of California at Los Angeles, he first appeared in the film credits as a sound engineer for Roger Corman, who in 1962 became the producer of Coppola's first feature film with a budget of 40 thousand dollars.
It was called "Madness 13".
During the next seven years Coppola wrote the script, and then revisits the directing, taking off the musical Comedy "You're a big boy" (1966), "Rainbow Finian" (1968), and won the audience success of the film "the rain People" (1969).
"It was a very difficult time for me, - says the Director, - no one in that period did not offer me a job.
It was then that I made the "Godfather" - solely in order to earn a living."
The Paramount company, which offered Coppola the production of the film, relied, firstly, on his Italian origin, secondly, on the ability to use inexpensive methods of film production, and of course, on literary abilities, given his experience as a screenwriter.
Mario Puzo once admitted that he constructed his novel based on an analysis of the fundamental properties of a bestseller, and the success of the book was caused by calculation rather than inspiration.
The talented screenwriter Coppola, having seriously reworked the original source and removed many potentially spectacular moments from it, introduced the key theme of family for Americans into the usual genre of a gangster film.
The result stunned everyone, including the author of the book and the producers (even despite the fact that the budget of the picture increased during the filming from one to five million dollars).
Significantly surpassing " Gone with the Wind "and" The Sound of Music " - the commercial leaders of the rental," The Godfather " collected $ 86 million, thereby opening a new era in American cinema – the era of films with a large investment of capital, bringing unthinkable profits – blockbusters.
The success of the film exceeded all expectations.
Immediately after its release on the screen ,in1972, "The Godfather" won the Academy Award for best film of the year, for best screenplay and for best Actor (Marlon Brando).
Marlon Brando was born on April 3, 1924 in Omaha (Nebraska).
His father was a traveling salesman, his mother was a theater actress who left the stage because of her addiction to alcohol.
At the age of 16, his parents sent his son to a Military academy in Minnesota, which he called a "military madhouse".
In the spring of 1943, Brando moved to his sister in New York, where he worked as a waiter in a cafe, an elevator operator in a department store, until he entered the Acting Studio, which was directed by director Erwin Piscator.
But he didnot last long there.
Piscator, calling Brando "completely wild and out of control," pointed him to the door.
Marlon tried himself on Broadway.
He made his debut in the play "I love my mother", and was noted by the audience, and after the successful performance of the role in the play "Tram" Desire", critics broke out with enthusiastic reviews, predicting a great future for the young actor.
"He created not only a role model, but also a completely new style of acting," director Bobby Lewis said at the time , " Since then everyone has wanted to play like Brando."
For the first time, Marlon Brando got to the cinema after the transfer of the Tram "Desire "to the screen in 1951 by E. Kazan.
Many immediately began to identify him with the role of a rude and insensitive boor - so organically the actor merged with the role.
In fact, Brando hated his hero, like the author – Tennessee Williams.
He was shy and sensitive in those years, and he was disgusted by the false image of him imposed by criticism.
A year later, the same director invited Brando to play the main role in the film "Long live Zapata!", after which offers to shoot literally fell one after another.
Marlon starred in the film L. Benedek "The Savage" (1953), D. Mankievich "Julius Caesar" (1953), E. Kazan "In the port" (1954), for which he received his first Oscar, becoming the youngest winner...
But he reached the peak of his creativity when he starred with Francis Ford Coppola in The Godfather.
Having played the head of the Corleone gangster clan (following the Stanislavsky system, as it was understood in the school of E. Kazan), he reflected in his hero the power and superiority of the mafia at the beginning of the picture, and after the attack, which almost cost him his life, he turned overnight into an old man whose suffering is "bottomless".
Twenty years later, Brando recalled: "When I first watched The Godfather, I saw how many mistakes I made during filming, and years later, after watching it on television, I decided that it was a good film."
However, the actor refused the Oscar awarded to him for the role of Vito Corleone, thus protesting against discrimination against American Indians.
He always amazed others with his unpredictability.
And in my personal life, too.
Marlon Brando was attracted to women with exotic looks.
His first wife was an Iranian, his second was a Tahitian, and his third was a Guatemalan.
He has nine legitimate children, and, they say, six more, whom he does not want to recognize.
"I have loved a lot in my life.
It doesnot matter that the relationship always ended in nothing.
I always considered love to be an inevitable good or an inevitable evil"…
After "The Godfather", Brando brilliantly played with Bernardo Bertolucci in the film "Last Tango in Paris "(1972), with A. Penn in" The Bends of the Missouri "(1976), and again with Coppola in" Apocalypse Now "(1979), a picture that received the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
By the way, "Apocalypse Now" was filmed with the funds received from the rental of "The Godfather".
Vito Corleone's son, who became the new "Godfather" after his death, was played by the theater actor Al Pacino, unknown to the general public.
"The producers didnot like my choice of actors, they didnot like a lot of things," recalls Francis Ford Coppola.
"Ugly and unpresentable," they said.
But the director was persistent, thanks to which it was possible to reveal the main line of Puzo's novel.
The example of Michael Corleone clearly demonstrated the ability of the criminal business to destroy all the good that is in a person.
Al Pacino managed to uncover a terrible metamorphosis that occurred with an educated, kind and honest young man who became a cruel and cold blooded killer, who, according to his own understanding, manages the destinies of others.
Al (Alfred) Pacino was born on April 25, 1940 in New York.
His father, a bricklayer by profession, left the family when the boy was barely two years old.
He was brought up by his grandmother, as his mother was afraid of losing her job.
At the age of six, Pacino already dreamed of becoming an actor.
He was not allowed to walk alone on the street, and in order not to be bored, he acted out scenes that he had seen in the movies in front of the mirror.
In the early 60s, he played with a group of friends in a cafe in Greenwich Village, and then walked around the audience with a hat.
His mother did not approve of this choice, and died when Al Pacino was 22 years old, without blessing him.
He entered the Acting Studio of Lee Strasberg, but did not study for long, because he had nothing to live on.
He worked on the stage of small Broadway theaters, and was even awarded several theater awards, which, however, did not allow him to gain either wealth or fame.
And, only after the release of the film "The Godfather", he immediately received both.
Lee Strasberg once remarked that Al Pacino is not an actor of representation, but of experience, who does not so much play his characters as become them.
Perhaps that is why he rejected so many offers in his life, as most actors never dreamed of.
Extremely selective in creativity, unassuming in everyday life, he prefers to lead a reclusive lifestyle, not letting anyone in there, with rare exceptions.
In the 70s, he met with actress Jill Kleiberg, in the 80s with his partner in the "Godfather" Diane Keaton, and in recent years, he was next to actress Linda Hobbs, whom he never made happy with marriage, despite all the efforts on her part.
Al Pacino was nominated for an Oscar seven times, and only in 1992 he received a golden statuette for the role of a blind colonel in the film"The Smell of a Woman".
Diane Keaton (Hall) was born on January 5, 1946 in Los Angeles.
She entered the theater school "Neiborhood Playhouse" (New York).
Thanks to her good vocal skills, she received a role in the first production of the most popular musical "Hair" (1968).
The world of cinema was opened for her by Coppola, inviting Kay Adams to play the role of Michael Corleone's wife.
Keaton ironically calls her place in The Godfather "musical accompaniment", but her role is extremely important for the film.
Kay is the first American woman to join the Italian Corleone clan.
She married an educated, intelligent and decent man for love, not assuming that after some time her gentle Michael would turn into a cold, soulless monster, cynically cracking down on unwanted, even related people.
Kay leaves her husband when she realizes that his life position is unacceptable for her.
A separate character in the film is music.
Sentimental hits that sound on the record and on the radio are intertwined in the picture with various Catholic rites, the paradoxical reflection of which is a certain mafia ritual.
The composer of all Fellini films, Nino Rota (1911-1979), felt and reflected the task set by the director in an amazing way.
From lightness to drama, from an unobtrusive background to an amazing filling of the entire screen space.
Our compatriots who managed to watch "The Godfather" only 20 years after its release on the screen, all these years hummed the melody of Nino Rota (remember, "Talk to me in the midnight silence"), which miraculously leaked even through the "iron curtain".
Mireille Amiel in the magazine" Cinema "wrote:" The direction of the film is on top, all the nails are in place, and all the guns hanging on them shoot at the right moment...", and the critic of the same "Cinema" Dominique Rabourdain noted: "The success of" The Godfather " gave Coppola complete freedom…The result from the point of view of cinema technique (the work of the cameraman and artists) is simply incredible.
This is a real movie for everyone, which can satisfy both the mass audience and the critics."
In 1974, Coppola shot the continuation of his epic – "The Godfather 2", which received six Oscars in the same year: for the best film of the year, director, best supporting actor (Robert De Niro), best music, best film adaptation, the work of artists.
The British Academy Award for Best Actor was presented to Al Pacino.
"In the second part of The Godfather, I wanted to implement ideas that were not fully embodied in the first film," says Francis Ford Coppola in an interview, " I was worried that many saw the first part as a romanticization of the mafia.
In fact, I wanted to present Michael Corleone as a monster – this is how he looks at the end of the first part (...)
In the second part, each scene echoes what was shown in the first.
And at the same time, it is different from the first one.
I did the first part as a hired director.
I didnot write the book on which the film was made, and at first I didnot like it.
I'm not interested in the history of the Mafia itself.
I donot like violence in movies"…
In 1990 ,The Godfather 3 was released, filmed with the same film crew and dedicated to the life of Michael Corleone in Sicily and revenge on the murderers of his wife.
This film completes the one of a kind gangster saga, narrated by the outstanding master Francis Ford Coppola .
Author: Elena Smekhova (The Godfather of the gangster saga afterword to the book "The Godfather"by Mario Puzo)
Views: 6401 |
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