Claudio's Best Shot Pick: The Godfather (1972)
Wednesday, April 6, 2022 at 10:30PM The next episode of our series, ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot,’ arrives tomorrow night. It’s focused on The Godfather on the occasion of its new restoration. You still have time to participate. For now, as something of a preview, here’s Cláudio’s entry.
;)
The Godfather is one of those canonized classics about which there is nothing new to say. Its themes and visual strategies have been overanalyzed ad nauseam across decades, from Coppola's Viscontian staging to Gordon Willis's shadowy cinematography. Choosing the best shot from such masterpiece and justifying that choice is thus a complicated exercise where one risks obsolescence, repetition, utter failure. Indeed, of this season's best shot challenges, this was the hardest...
After narrowing it down to ten finalists, it became a game of picking which of the flick's themes feels more important today, which formal gesture strikes me as most characteristic of The Godfather as a whole. It's another way of saying that you'll likely get a different answer if you ask me what's the picture's best single shot on another day. So today, my pick is this emphatically symbolic image, which could stand for the entire Godfather trilogy and not just the movie that started it all.
;)
First of all, this is a superb composition, made for the big screen in its focus on tiny details best viewed when projected giant. Second, Coppola makes a quiet murder look both epic and cold, deeply unglamorous even when laden with overarching meanings. Here, he pictures the American Dream as a murder on the back of Lady Liberty, a distant ideal that's the background for detached violence. For all the accusations the film has endured about how it idolizes the gangsters within the story, The Godfather paints their world as either sepulchral or banal.
The same goes for the acts of killing presented throughout. Mostly, they're calculated and presented dispassionately, with careful compositions that reveal a clinical purview of carnage. When they go for pulpier registers, they bypass coolness to fall into disgusting mess. To take another life is never an honorable act and none of these people are heroes or villains. They're humans in all their horrible humanity, inflamed by a false sense of purpose, motivated by empty values and bestial impulses. To me, this shot encompasses all of it.
What's more, the image also serves as an example of this restoration's effects on The Godfather's well-known visuals. Both color and light are brighter this time around, while the blacks maintain their sludgy depth and gain more detail. Gone are the sickly sepias of the first Coppola restoration. The sky over Manhattan is no longer a jaundiced ceiling but as blue as it should be. Somehow, the new saturation makes the murder scene feel even more sinister.
Reader Comments (6)
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
I love your choice, Claudio. The shot feels so empty and devoid of any humanity, which speaks to Michael's unfortunate character arc.
Really enjoyed your twitter thread with your shot finalists. A handful of those were on my shortlist as well. Ended up with a left turn of a shot, but it's ALSO a death scene in a car!
thevoid99 -- A superb line, and it was an adlib too.
bvrs90 -- Thank you. The emptiness is haunting indeed, and I love how the overall film centers itself around Michael's character arc, even in terms of visual strategies. How Al Pacino got nominated for Supporting Actor is beyond me. I know why, but it's such a ridiculous thing.
Ryan T. -- I loved your pick and your explanation for the choice.
Great choice, Claudio. (All your top ten would have been great choices, of course.)
I don't think I ever noticed or at least didn't remember the Statue of Liberty in the background of that shot. And yet, how could I have missed it? Such a perfect ironic counterpoint to the scene.
This is a brilliant choice and like Lynn says, great ironic counterpoint. I wish I'd thought of it. But even though I have some issues with the movies (all mafia movies really since they have trouble not uplifting the 'honor' of dishonorable people) I do think ithe dispassionate view of the violence is very very effective. I almost wanted to choose the shot of the fire hydrant -- which is the flipside "disgusting mess" you're talking about -- as sort of a 'sneak preview' of Carlo's eventual death. and because the composition is just a wonder.
but in the end i had to go with Michael because the way he is framed throughout is just fascinating to me.