The Wasteland Reviewer

Outside the Wasteland: The Godfather (1972)

Film can mean so much more than just entertainment on a screen, right? Outside the Wasteland is my new avenue to express my thoughts on films that have truly made an impact on my life. This is not about how great the films are or even how much I love them. This is an expression of how these films have made a direct impact on my life including my love of film, my personality, my world view, and just an overall lasting impression that deeply affected me.  This is a doorway into The Wasteland Reviewer through the films that have shaped me.

The Godfather (1972)

What was that R-rated movie I watched as a kid that made such a lasting impression on me? There could only be one…The Godfather. This film has a deep connection to my background and my upbringing. I spent almost all my formative years living with my mom, brother, and my maternal grandparents. It was like growing up with three different parents in the household. My grandfather was the son of two Italian immigrants and led a strong ethnically Italian-American household. This was my background. This was my culture. That is exactly why my grandfather made my mom show me The Godfather…when I was 10 years old.

How did that affect me? Well…I am a functioning adult, so it obviously didn’t screw me up at least. But what it did do was open me to a whole different type of movie. They weren’t animated with ogres and donkeys. There weren’t any wizards and witches. I wasn’t whisked away to Middle Earth. I was transported into a family that was familiar enough to me. My family might not be a bunch of mobsters (maybe a few of them though…) but the family I grew up with was certainly ethnically Italian-American. Seeing an Italian family acting like an Italian family. They put family first and had family dinners like my family did. This was the first time I ever saw the importance of representation on screen. This is such a significant idea in culture in 2024 but for a 10-year-old back in 2001, I felt it for the first time. There is no way that a 10-year-old could possibly understand the complexities of The Godfather in its entirety, but this was the first time I connected to a film in a deeper way (even if I didn’t realize it fully until later). If a director like Steven Spielberg or Roman Polanski or Billy Wilder created The Godfather, it would not be the same. Having someone like Francis Ford Coppola behind the camera is what made it speak its truth as an Italian American film. The importance of deeper connection became more apparent to me during a journey through Martin Scorsese’s filmography…but that is for another article.

What other life lessons can The Godfather teach a 10-year-old? This was a film I watched with my grandfather, brother, and mother. This is a violent film for sure. There are plenty of things that occur in this film that you certainly wouldn’t expect to see as a 10-year-old. The horse head (which was an actual horse head!). Domestic violence. The assassination of Sonny at the bypass tollbooth. That scene is a brutal film for any viewer…let alone a kid. James Caan is shot with SO many bullets over the course of that scene. This murder is quite disturbing for sure. But I saw it all. Then there was one scene that I had to cover my eyes for. Out of all the violence in the film, what did I not see? A pair of breasts. On Michael’s wedding night, he goes to bed with Apollonia, and she removes her shirt, and it cuts. A few moments of breasts seem so insignificant in a film full of brutal and bloody deaths and serious violence (even domestic violence). But this was probably the first time I had experienced that uniquely American disconnect between sexuality and violence. Our society is full of violence in so many aspects of culture and media, but sex still is this taboo that must be avoided at all costs. That was one of the most interesting aspects of my first viewing of The Godfather that sticks out to me.

What did watching The Godfather mean regarding my evolution as a cinephile? Obviously at 10-years-old, that was not something I was thinking about. I would never have considered the fact that I checked this legendary film off my watch list. But most of my viewing habits up to that point were animated films, fantasy films, action films, and specifically James Bond films (that will be a whole other article to dive into). But this was really the first prestige cinematic drama I had ever watched. The Godfather is such a complex narrative with many moving pieces and those complexities reach far into thematic elements and character dynamics. Some of those elements connected with me based on familiarity (like I mentioned above) but so much of this film was lost on me at the time. But who could blame me? I was 10 years old. The Godfather has become one of my favorite films over the years and as I have gotten older, my appreciation and love for the film have grown. The filmmaking of Coppola is astounding and impressive. The acting across the board is top tier with one of the most impressive ensembles ever put to film. Seeing so many Italian Americans on a screen certainly means something to me. The music is some of the most iconic and moving scores ever put to a film. The themes related to violence, family, tradition, assimilation, and The American Dream brings so much depth. The Godfather is one of the greatest films ever made…but it means so much more than that to me.