Show Business: What Is The Godfather Saying?

• Share

(2 of 2)

Although it is nominally about crime, The Godfather has no more in common with the razzle-dazzle Warner Bros, gangster yarns of the '30s than The Wild Bunch had with Shane. The Godfather's primary concern is not bullets and murders but dynasties and power. In the cool savagery of its ironies, expressed within a traditional framework, it is much closer to, say, Bertolucci's The Conformist. In its blending of new depth with an old genre, it becomes that rarity, a mass entertainment that is also great movie art. &3183; Jay Cocks