When he shot GF1?

Almost certainly not. If you read Harlan Lebo's "The Godfather Legacy," you'll find that, although Paramount gave Puzo an advance to finish his novel, by the time they were ready to shoot, they were very shaky about GF's chances. One of the reasons they hired Coppola to direct was that they thought he could bring the film in cheap(!!!! ) He also had great difficulties with Paramount bigwig Bob Evans and with Charlie Bluhdorn, the boss of Gulf + Western, which owned Paramount. You get the feeling reading Lebo that FFC may have felt lucky to bring in the movie at all. This is not to say that he didn't put his heart and soul into it, but I really doubt he believed it'd be the commercial and artistic blockbuster it became.

When you are a relatively unknown director, when the producers tell you which actors to cast and which not and when they are threatening to replace you with another director (see "A look inside" in the box set), you simply have no time to think whether you are making history or not.

In an interview, FFC says that the initial reaction to Godfather was not very positive. But slowly it gained popularity and before the oscars, it was well appreciated. That was the case with GF2 as well. FFC was also under a lot of stress when he made those movies. It is commendable that he still managed to make these classics.

The studio did not want Brando, it did not want Pacino, and they were breathing down FFC's neck every day. He was flying by the seat of his pants the whole time, and I dont think he had time to think about what the legacy of this picture would be.

Exactly.

FFC was too busy just trying to keep this job to think about any 'legacy' the film might be.

I love the story he tells on 'Inside the Actor's Studio'...that he was so certain they planned to fire him, that he'd fire his Assistant Director (AD) every Wednesday since the studio usually let people go on a Friday and they'd NEVER fire the Director without an AD to take over.

Apple

Of course the flip side of all this is that FFC was trying too hard to live up to his own legacy when he made GFIII. By then there was a complete role reversal. The studio was desperate to have another Godfather movie, and they paid Pacino and FFC a pretty penny to do it.

True, dt. In fact, FFC said that, for years, Paramount "pressed" him to make GFIII because of the "prestige" of the earlier two.