“The Godfather” was a very good film. I can see now why it was so infamous. It constantly kept you thinking about what was going to happen next. I liked the actor who played “The Godfather” the most because his accent was interesting.
The film’s color scheme was very dark. You saw mostly the color black throughout the film whether it was the attire that the actors wore or if it was the setting itself. It was important because it gave the film a serious tone. The color brown was used as well mostly because it was worn by some of the mob members.
The shots used in this film varied. I saw how they were able to use the rule of thirds by having a bright light in the upper right hand corner of the screen while a man was walking up the staircase. It caught your eye right away. However most of the time I saw quite a few over the shoulder shots, as well as a two or three man shot because several characters were in the scene.
The use of shadow was clearly seen throughout the film. The first time I noticed it was when Hagen was abducted and was talking with Sollozo in a dark room lit only by a lantern. It was interesting how they set that up so that you could only see about half of Tom Hagen’s face the whole seen. It made you feel the gravity of the situation a little bit more by doing that. As I mentioned earlier they also used shadow to force you to look at a certain part of the screen.
The camera didn’t appear to move all that much in the film. I felt that even if it did it followed the characters so well that it didn’t really appear to be moving.
ECU was used only to give more emphasis on the emotion that a character was feeling. An ECU was used when Michael realizes that something is wrong at the hospital when he sees that there are no body-guards to protect his father.
I think this film is important because it represents a critical era in film. When films first started being made mob films were one of the audience’s favorites to watch. I’m pretty sure that began at least twenty years before “The Godfather” was released but it brought back the mob movie genre back to the screen. I believe that it was successful with audiences because everyone feels like some part of the government or police force is corrupt but they don’t know exactly how. This movie almost satisfies the curiosity that most people have about that kind of thing.
The film’s external goal was to entertain audiences by giving them some knowledge on how organized crime functioned and what it might be like. They did a good job of this and were able to present a story that was believable as well as characters that you could relate with. The internal goal of the film would have to be to show how a good character can end up like Michael did at the end of the film. He was a war hero that turned out to become a merciless mob leader. The theme overall all could just be the phrase “Don’t mix business with family” just because it seemed like when characters got personal with their business things got violent.
ghoward2016 