Death by Adaptation - The Godfather
Paramount PicturesOne offer Mario Puzo, writer of The Godfather, could never refuse, was to see his work adapted to the big screen. His creation of Sicilian mobsters roaming the streets of America with honour and rage in their hearts is surprisingly versatile and emotive. That much is presented in the work provided by director Francis Ford Coppola. To adapt such a rich book takes time and scope. A perspective of the creative mind is presented through cool tones, big blowouts for communal events, and a knack for giving life to the lowliest of characters. Coppola and Puzo are a fantastic pairing, and it is only with the beauty of hindsight that audiences can truly appreciate how great a team the two were, and just how effective it makes The Godfather.
To discover that best of all is to see the rise and rise of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino). Depicted as a stunning war hero in the novel, the casting of Pacino makes perfect sense. The cool head that can fly off the handle at any given moment. He is more reserved in The Godfather, but it is a skill Pacino would often offer in features like Heat and Carlito’s Way. Michael provides Coppola the opportunity to adapt the dark horse of the family. A respectfully rebellious man in the books, turning away from father Vito Corleone not out of disrespect, but out of a desire to do something different. In the books, this is played out in a dignified and intense manner, a mere underscore for the relationship Pacino and Marlon Brando would carry out so well on-screen. What they lack is the build-up and explanation before it.
That much, Coppola can never offer. Not here, not in The Godfather II, and certainly not in The Godfather III. It is the beauty of the written word that Puzo employs more often than not. His credibility as a writer is founded on how seamless a transition his writing takes. Readers are moved from time frame to time frame, and it is only until a character mentions a date or the narration takes a specific time that Puzo ever reveals where or when his timeline takes place. A vague guide of the 1930s and 1940s is apparent, but to consider this story takes a decade to tell, it certainly does not show. The Godfather has that seamless ability as an epic of the genre and as a titan of literature to escape without having to deliberate the dates and specifics of its characters.
Not that Puzo or Coppola would need to. Where Puzo has intense dialogue that feels assured and accidentally inspiring, Coppola brushes off the excess and nails his marks. His ensemble does too. Taglines and iconic scenes are dependent, primarily, on dialogue directly extracted from the book. There is no denying the scope and responsibility Coppola has in using such scenes for his adaptation, but The Godfather makes good use of those opportunities. Brando particularly, who bears the brunt of these moments, is given a great scope to play with and offers such incredible choices in his mannerisms and his on-screen stature. He embodies Don Corleone with all the resourceful simplicity and reserved tact founded on the Puzo transcript.
It is the faithfulness to the text that steers Coppola and his cast through this feature. Impossible it may be to see it the first time through, the stalwart efforts of Diane Keaton and Talia Shire as Kay Adams and Connie Corleone respectively is integral to the core structure of the supporting performances. James Caan is indispensable and truly gifted in his role as Sonny Corleone. Robert Duvall embodies such an important character, yet his side-stepped feel in the feature gives him less presence, but just as much impact as Puzo’s novel. The Godfather’s adaptation is more about picking and choosing the battles of what must make it to the screen than anything else. The Johnny Fontaine and Hollywood subplot is still there, but fractured and is primarily used to take up some of Duvall’s screen time.
That is the best way to adapt The Godfather, though, a book that had so much going on behind the scenes but had the benefit of a chaptered structure to keep tabs on everyone in different times and places. It would be a grand misstep to dedicate so much time to one character in the feature film. Side-lining certain stories is the inevitable downfall, then. So long as the core of a family fighting for their position at the head of the pack is delivered, then Coppola can fill in the blanks elsewhere. Puzo had such variety in his writing and such skill in his know-how of the world he had created that any adaptation of The Godfather would be primed and ready. It is a book ready-made for the big screen. A book so strong in its subplots, yet sophisticated when streamlined by Coppola.
No story should be simplified, but it is in accepting that process that Coppola and Puzo collaborate for one of the finest features made. Puzo’s book is a stretch better than the feature that came from it, but The Godfather is a versatile text. What makes the film so great is absent in the book, and what made the book so enticing is translucent in the adaptation. These two creatives have similar intentions for the Corleone family but have different ways of getting results. That much is assured in the conclusions they find, the supporting performers they pull in and the characters they focus on. Where Puzo studied the clunky parts and spinning cogs behind the Corleone family, Coppola set his sights on the immediate relations. It matters not that Johnny Fontane and Nico Santos are largely sidelined by Coppola, nor does it matter that Puzo gave less time to Connie Fontaine than Coppola does with Talia Shire’s performance. Neither is setting out to one-up the other, and the resultant effect of that is a classic piece of literature brushing shoulders with an exceptional body of filmmaking.
The Godfather is quality wherever it is consumed, a surprisingly touching piece of fiction that looks deep into the heart of the American Dream, and likes what stares back. The Corleone’s integrate themselves into the American system, and like it or not, Puzo makes it a convincing ride. He compares it well with their homeland of Italy. Nowhere in the text does he say one is better than the other, and nowhere in the film does Coppola state the superiority of Europe or the Americas. It is the equal balance not just in storytelling, but in scope, that guides Puzo and Coppola to their heights as artists. The Godfather has a hefty story to it, filled with guts and gore and, at times, glamour, but it is the artist at the heart of it that shines the light on all the ugly set pieces, the double-crossing villainy and the camaraderie at the heart of it all.