The Godfather at 50The New York Times by Dave Itzkoff March 9, 2022
I haven't gone through everything! If it is of interest! and anybody finds anything interesting, Please do share! Thanks
Al Pacino on The Godfather: "It’s Taken Me a Lifetime to Accept It and Move On"
Fifty years later, the actor looks back on his breakthrough role: how he was cast, why he skipped the Oscars and what it all means to him now
It’s hard to imagine “The Godfather” without Al Pacino. His understated performance as Michael Corleone, who became a respectable war hero despite his corrupt family, goes almost unnoticed for the first hour of the film — until at last he asserts himself, gradually taking control of the Corleone criminal operation and the film along with it
But there would be no Al Pacino without “The Godfather,” either. The actor was a rising star of New York theater with just one movie role, in the 1971 drug drama “The Panic in Needle Park,” when Francis Ford Coppola fought for him, against the wishes of Paramount Pictures, to play the ruminative prince of his Mafia epic. A half-century’s worth of pivotal cinematic roles followed, including two more turns as Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Part II” and “Part III.”
“The Godfather” premiered in New York on March 15, 1972, and 50 years later, you can imagine all the reasons Pacino wouldn’t want to talk about it anymore. Maybe he’d be embarrassed or annoyed about how this one performance, from the outset of his movie career, still dominates his
résumé or perhaps he has said all there is to say about it
But in a telephone
interview last month, Pacino, now 81, was quite philosophical, even whimsical, about discussing the film. He remains an ardent admirer of the movie and of the lengths that Coppola and his co-stars went to support him, and he is still awe-struck about how it single-handedly gave him his career
“I’m here because I did ‘The Godfather,’” Pacino said, speaking from his home in Los Angeles. “For an actor, that’s like winning the lottery. When it comes right down to it, I had nothing to do with the film but play the part.”
As Coppola recalled it, Pacino was who he saw in the role all along and a candidate worth going to the mattresses for, despite his lack of a track record
“When I actually read the ‘Godfather’ book, I kept imagining him,” Coppola said in a separate interview. “And I didn’t have a second choice. It was, for me, always Al Pacino. That’s the reason why I was so tenacious about getting him to play Michael. That was my problem.”
But for the actor, delivering the performance of a lifetime brought its own burdens, as he would learn in the years that followed
“It’s hard to explain in today’s world — to explain who I was at that time and the bolt of lightning that it was,” Pacino said. “I felt like, all of a sudden, some veil was lifted and all eyes were on me. Of course, they were on others in the film. But ‘The Godfather’ gave me a new identity that was hard for me to cope with.”
Pacino spoke further about getting hired for and making “The Godfather,” the weight of its legacy and why he never played another film character like Michael Corleone after it. These are edited excerpts from our conversation
- When you get a call asking you to talk about “The Godfather,” is there some part of you that thinks, oh God, not again? Does it ever become tedious?
- How did the role of Michael Corleone first come up?
- When did you and Coppola meet?
- You didn’t think it was possible that he was making it? Paramount was famously opposed to the idea of your playing the role
- I recently watched some of your “Godfather” screen tests and you seemed to have this hangdog look on your face as you are asked to go through it again and again
- But you were not exactly a nobody. You had already won a Tony Award
- When you got into the filming of “The Godfather,” working alongside people like Caan and Duvall, who had quite a lot more moviemaking experience, and Brando, who you admired a great deal, how did you hold your own?
- Meaning, Michael was being underestimated and that was something you could connect to and use to your advantage?
- Was there ever a moment during the making of “The Godfather” that you realized it was going to be as great as it is?
- Have you rewatched the film recently?
- Do you get self-conscious about watching your own films?
- You’re encountering people who are aware of “The Godfather” as a cultural phenomenon but haven’t actually watched it?
- Is there anything about your performance that you wish you could change now?
- Who from the movie doesn’t get enough credit for their contribution?
- There is an intense quietness to how you play Michael in “The Godfather” that I don’t think I ever saw again in your other film performances, even the later times you played him. Was that a part of yourself that went away or was it just the nature of the character that called for it?
- But compared to other characters you’re also closely associated with, like Tony Montana in “Scarface” ——
- You received your first Academy Award nomination for “The Godfather,” yet you didn’t attend the ceremony that year. Were you protesting because you were nominated as a supporting actor and not as a lead?
- So all of this is contributing to your feelings at the time about your rising fame?
- When you did win an Oscar for “Scent of a Woman,” was there some part of you that still wished you’d won it for playing Michael Corleone?
- So you’re comfortable now with the praise you received — and continue to receive — for your performance in “The Godfather”?
- Do you have any kind of metric you allow yourself to use to rank your own films?
