From Indias largest newsroom, I'm Meenal Paghel and this is the Times of India podcast. 52 years ago, one of the best films ever made in Hollywood was released. We've done this episode when the film turned 50 in 2022, and we're bringing back that episode today.
If ever there was a great example of how the best popular movies come out of a merger of commerce and art, The Godfather is it. That's Sopranos actor Edie Falco, reading from Pauline Kane's review of The Godfather in The New Yorker. This March 15th marked 50 years since Francis Ford Coppola's godfather burst on movie screen and became one of the most beloved films the world over.
The story of an aging mafia, Dawn and his family set in post Second World War America, is based on Mario Puzo's racy novel and became an enduring classic that has been called a master class in writing, acting and directing. It has led to numerous inspired lifts, including a Bollywood film called Aatanki Aatank starring Aamir Khan and Rajinikanth no less. Here's filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwani on the impact that Godfather has had on film makers
and moviegoers alike. Vikramaditya Godfather turns 50. That's proper middle age, even for films. How do you think the movie has aged? Honestly, the film hasn't aged one single bit. It is fresh, It is unique. It is, it's incredible. It's incredible. It's a master class in everything. I mean and then this is an off stair, you know, term of being a master, but it truly is.
It's a film that runs close to three hours long, but yet has a phenomenal amount of minimalism of storytelling that he just, you know, hits the right note at the right time. It's that perfect, you know, mixture of it, of it being gently paced enough, but yet there's that massive amounts of tension that are building up, you know, through the entire film until the very ending. It's a, it's really like when you watch it. The Michaels, Michael's story, Michael's character, Michael's story.
Michael's entire plot of, you know of of going from A-Z with the characters. Something that you know that as a writer, one gets very conscious of. It's something that I'm constantly telling new writers and you know, like just have your characters go from there. Hey let them go to Zed. Don't even know A to B or A to C you know like have the entire gamut of you know of a journey that's a real character's journey that goes.
And Michael who starts off as being in his army uniform as you know this guy who's like they're my family they're not me to becoming the you know you've gone full 180 over there but it's believable the 180 is believable. The 180 you're you're with him on his journey. You understand. You understand he's he's also flawed. He's also egotistical. He's also all those things. I mean, it's fast. Cold, right? Eventually. Very cold. Yeah.
Very, very cold. Eventually somebody who had warmth and had love and understood his power understood you know the you know of of and that development and there's a whole section when he goes to Italy when you're wondering kind of like OK you know you you think like why am I watching this why am I seeing Michael Jordan in Italy especially with
what is what is about. And then you realize afterwards that you know the it's it's the development of his sense of power the development of his sense of of his sense of self of his you know what he can achieve by just being who he is and how he can get what he wants by being who he is. So what was amazing was also the faith that you know Coppola and Mario Fuzzo have in the audience. I think that that is amazing and you know that that's a lesson for all of us. It's like you know trust your
audience. And the last third of the film, when, when they plot when when they've basically gone and they've played Carlo, you know like when the other like said that OK Tom Hagan is not going to be the conciliary is actually going to be you know and so and the way they've played him into
that and, you know. But when it plays out and when you realize who has been who who's betrayed who and the fact that Carlo has to has to be, you know, gotten rid of there is there is an amazing it's not like there's a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, dekho. And they've trusted the audience to get it. That's what really makes you love the film because the film makers have have given you, you know, like they've given you the keys in a certain certain sense. We are also part of the conspiracy.
You don't need to be told you're also part of the conspiracy. Get it. And that is very very. It's beautiful. It's beautiful because you you know you you you've been trusted. It was a book that was picked up by Paramount Studios, which was a kind of throwaway, let's make it for $1,000,000 kind of film. We have the rights and let's make it. So let's get Albert Ruddy, who's a producer who's known to get films in under budget. Like that's his.
His speciality is not like he can produce great movies like he can get it in under budget. Like that was a big business decision. That was a bit and because at that point of time your your big movies were working were love story was the was was the big one at that time which was like this is the film, this is the template of film that's going to be working at the box office and that kind of stuff.
So the Godfather gangster drama let's get it to we have it, let's make it sure it'll be interesting. Let's get ready to do it. Ready goes and gets Coppola. Coppola goes and gets Brando. The next thing you know the film is out there and they get better to sign a contract where if he delays the film he will pay for it. They finish two days early. I mean, all that stuff is a part
of, you know, is is folklore. Coppola has written somewhere that on the second reading, when I realized that I was going to make Godfather, and on the second reading, much of the book fell away in my mind. Revealing a story that was a metaphor for American capitalism is the tale of a great king with three sons, oldest given his passions, aggressiveness, second his sweet nature, childlike qualities, and the third is intelligence, cunning and coldness.
So he actually found the universal story within, and perhaps you think that explains the enduring love that the audience has for Godfather. Absolutely. It's it's it is extremely relatable. The film can really take place. You watch it. It's like, well, this doesn't. Yes, it's it's part of the American capitalist dream of, you know, capitalist folklore.
But it's a it's a you could place the same story in a in a in the Shakespearean world put it back in the 18th century quite honestly in in Russia of all places or in England or anywhere else in India. I mean and and the same story the same story works it's it's it's how the power you have to use it responsibly not you know use it responsibly. It's about, you know, who of your sons in a sense, you have to be able to choose who are leading towards.
This is a, this is a tale of the ages today. What we talk about about saying the hero's journey or whether it's about a reluctant protagonist or whether you know all those things that we talk about today, which are things that are thrown around. Were these were these conscious back then or, you know, was it? Honestly, I don't know.
But it has become, you know, a part of screen writing, one-on-one in a, in a sense where you so many things from the Godfather you refer to. And that's just the storytelling part. There's also there's also the the visual you know elements of it figure.
I mean the actors are all phenomenal and you know there's there's great characters but what Gordon Willis did in in terms of if of the shooting of the film was no one had done that before to shoot a film with that sort of natural approach and and it's still it's things that we still have to fight for today to be able to sort of like say because everybody's going to come and say yeah, it's very dark and it's very busy. We can see characters, faces, we can see their eyes and you can't
have them in shadow. And 50 years ago, Gordon Willis has done that and sort of broken every rule as far as it's concerned. And I'm sure they must have had panic at that point in time. But one tends to sort of like forget the fact, yes, their godfather. It's the top of the IMDb chart. It's one of the most loved films. It's considered the greatest film of the, you know, the history of cinema, all that sort
of stuff. But you also forget that it made, when you take into account inflation has made a billion dollars at the box office. That's the same amount of money that Spider Man has made to us. You think about that. It's a huge hit. It is a massive, massive, massive hit, which gives a lot of us a lot of hope and a lot of say, yeah, if the Godfather can do 50 years ago, what are we worried about today? Why? Why You still sort of like having boundaries around you
today? In the the 1960s there was this movement away from the formulas of the studio system of Hollywood as it used to be in the class. In the great days of the studio system younger film makers partly influenced by world cinema, partly influenced by studying film for the first time formally were trying to make more personal films And and and we're trying to do things that were moving away from the old, more mannered forms of
expression in American cinema. And as as a result of that starting with say films like, you know in the late 60s films like Bonnie and Clyde. They began this whole movement and and and let's not forget that film criticism also was becoming a little more expansive around the same time. So you know, so you you had the French who had come in with this idea of the Oughtour theory around a decade earlier.
And then what happens is that this whole generation of American film makers led by Francis Ford Coppola, which which you know, the the kids with beards as they were known, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, who's who's possibly my personal favorite, Spielberg, George Lucas, they just started making these films in ways that they found interesting, working with material that they thought they could do something personal with. And and American cinema was just
changing in a big way. And I think The Godfather is probably the film that's just the fulcrum of that that era. It's, you know, right at the center of everything. It gave so many important actors to American cinema. It just brought a new aesthetic in terms of Gordon Wills and Venice's, you know, incredible cinematography which which took pulp material, Mario Puzo's pulp novel, and just turned it into something very majestic and grand looking.
That's writer and critic Jay Arjun Singh, who says Coppola almost didn't make Godfather because he wanted to move away from the Ratio B movies he had made early on in his career. I was having this conversation earlier with Vikramaditya Motwani, and I was saying the same thing. That this whole idea of adaptation, to turn it into something which is almost Shakespearean in its kind of depth, is what what great adaptations can do.
Since you bring that up, it's worth remembering that Francis von Coppola himself was very reluctant to work with that book. You know, he if you, if you know, you know his history as a filmmaker. He started off working as an assistant director with Roger Corman on B movies, and in the early 60s he directed a couple of very cheap B horror films like Dementia 13, Coppola and. And when this book came along, he was trying to do something
more overtly respectable. He was, you know, thinking of himself as as an artist who was going to do these things. And he was. He looked at the Puzo novel and like you said, it's a riveting, it's a page Turner, but it is a pot boiler essentially. And he looked at it and said, what sort of you can't make a respectable film out of this? It will be a genre film and I want to do something else.
And he was very reluctant at first, but of course eventually he stuck with it And then he when he managed to bully Paramount into doing the things that he wanted like like getting Brando on board, getting Pacino on board. These are people who though the studio did not want at all. You know the as you might know, Brando had a reputation for being very difficult. He, you know it was perceived that his, you know that the best of his days were over.
Pacino was you know there were Paramount executives who were apparently just referring to Pacino very condescendingly as that dwarf because of his height and then and they thought he wasn't leading man material at all. Coppola stuck with that and you know through a series of decisions and and he, I think he just, he just took that novel and elevated it into something else. What do you think that Coppola did that that makes it such a
Seminole film? As lay audience, what we see, we understand quality and we are immersed in a film. But what as a filmmaker, what do you think that he did? What were the cues that he he gave to the audience? First and foremost thing he did was to just get a lot of elements together and to you know orchestrate them and to oversee them in in such a way that they really work well together. You know, you you have the actors of course the casting which you know we we we all know
about that. But but you know what to to work with Gordon Willis's cinematography to create that stygian, that dark stygian look to work with Nino Rota's score, we just you know which which which you know all of us. It is just part of our filmmaking, our film watching mythology, right, that that music score. I just found myself humming a little tune from The Godfather Part 2 a few days ago without you realizing what I was doing.
It's just there and and it immediately puts you in a certain mood, a certain frame of mind. It's also worth say worth mentioning that popular after his initial reluctance about the novel, at some point when he really did become interested in making this film, I think he brought a lot of his own personality and his his own
concerns into the film as well. You know, I was like I I, I remember reading a biography once where where there was, you know, his elder brother August Coppola, who was who was an academic and a writer himself. He was always the chosen one in the family and Francis was the younger brother was meant to be the you know the outsider figure and eventually of course he he became the big figure in in American film.
So. So that journey almost seems to in some ways parallel the rise of Michael Michaels rise and going past Sunny and in and in that context is worth mentioning that that Francis for Coppola cast his own sister in the role of Connie Pollyone Tilatalaya Shire. And I think, I think the material became very personal to
him at some point. He started relating with it and once that happened and all these other elements just came together the way they needed to Brando Pacino, you know that even the the, the smallest roles, the the grandness of, you know, the the great set pieces of the film like the the the the climactic see the scene with the with the intercutting between the baptism and the killings that then becomes a commentary on on this. You know, organized crime,
organized religion, everything. You know, a whole culture was important. Which is your favorite scene from The Godfather? Are we talking only about the 1st? Film or no, you can take, you can take though I doubt if anyone has a favorite scene from Part 3, but you can take the trilogy.
Well well well, well. I actually do have a favorite scene from from Part 3. But but you know but well having said of course that it's that it's not as good as the first two And my favorite scene is this the unabashedly melodramatic operatic finale with with with Michael's silent scream and and that great burst of music over it.
And in the Godfather part three what's sticking with the God for you know there are little little moments in the Godfather which are just so we which which actually make the bigger operatic moments even more interesting. You know so. So that that scene where where Michael is outside the hospital. His father's in hospital and suddenly there's this crisis where these men are going to come to the hospital potentially to kill to kill Vito.
And Michael has to put up that little pretence with with that friend of his who's really nervous. And that scene where Michael is lighting the cigarette and and you know and he notices it's almost like he notices that his own hands are not shaking you know he's he's up to this the other guy is nervous like anything but Michael who up to this point we've been led to believe is this innocent who who is not meant to be in this mafia business. He's found the steel in himself at that point.
Now it's it's such a small moment but it's so telling as well. Part 2 has many great favorite scene that I think some of the dissolves in Part 2 between the present and the past. When we go back to Vito's youth are are are so interestingly done.
You know the the the scene halfway through Part 2 where Vito Colione has committed a murder for the first time and he comes back to his family, sitting with his family and he takes little Michael's had fingers in his hand and says says an Italian your father loves you very much. And it's that at exactly the midpoint through the film. And it's it's a clear metaphor for for the father's, for the father tainting his, his son's hands.
It's very obvious, but it's so well done that you just look at it and say yeah, it's a great moment. He'll come to me in friendship. Then the scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if by chance, an honest man like yourself should make enemies, then he would become my enemies, and then they would fear you. Be my friend, godfather. Like you never told me you knew Giant Fontaine? Sure. You want to meet him, huh? Oh. Sure.
My father helped him. With his career well. My plan. He did. How? I have but listen to the song. No Michael Vikramaditya Motwani advises all young film makers to watch the famous opening scene of The Godfather, which introduces the main characters and sets the scene. It's a study in masterful filmmaking, he says. It's 2025 minute in that wedding sequence, right, which starts off which establishes everything. It establishes the dawn and establishes this power.
It establishes characters. It establishes Tom, Hagan and Sunny and his relationship with Michael and Michael and Kay and Connie and the singer. I forget his name. Everybody, right. Everybody has been established in that opening sort of 2025 minutes in the film and it's all and it's and that's a master class. That's when you're like how, how beautiful and how amazing and how interesting and yes, how and yet how minimal it takes one run. I mean, and I mean just
examples. It's whether it's about, you know, the dawn saying that I will not take a photo without Mike. That moment in itself, right says so much. It doesn't you don't dispel out anything else. You're talking about a father's. The fact that is Michael the favorite son. Maybe Yes, that moment kind of does tell you, but it also gives you the power that yes is waiting for the photo to be taken. And he's like, screw it, I'm just going to walk away. You're doing so many things.
You're establishing so many things in that one small moment of him just walking away from the and with. Very few dialogues. Exactly. That's the thing. When you see, for example, Connie, when, when, when What's his name? Johnny. Fontaine. Johnny. Fontaine. Johnny Fontaine When Johnny Fontaine comes to the wedding and Connie runs, you know, from the to come and greet him at the gate and walks back with him again, it's telling you so much
about her character right there. You're talking about the fact that she's genuinely excited. She doesn't really give a shit. Part of the same point of time she so wants to show off the fact that she knows Johnny Fontaine and she can sort of like, do this and he's going to be jealous about that. Tiny things like that establish so much about character. There's, you know it, it, it really is. And that's that's a master class in writing. That's a master class in directing.
That's a master class. And so, like, knowing exactly what. So if you look at, for example, Michael's, Michael's arc, right. And Michael senses tends to feel like, OK, this guy is, you know, the he is in the end of the day the hero of the film. But if you sort of like plot his arc, there's very few scenes. He's actually, there's not like he's not there in every single scene.
He's like, OK, he's there in the wedding where you've established the fact that that this is my family, I'm not that I'm a war hero. I'm different from them. The next time you see them is after the dawn has been shot, right? And then Michael sort of sees in the newspaper and he's like, should I have to go to my father, He comes back to the father the father likes and he
needs to save the father. And then he, he has the moment in the hospital where he ends up saving the father with that guy, which is a great moment, which is his sense coming of age, of the sense that I can do this. The next time you see him And when he started talking about this is when he's when he's with and he gets punched in that scene by the by the cop.
And the next time you see him is when he's telling them exactly what should be done, forcing four scenes to establish the fact that this guy is your dawn in the week. And then of course, then there's the way Coppola does those moves. You know, the there is that sort of when when Michael is sitting in the chair and Tom is sitting behind him, and when Michael starts talking, this is that scene where he's saying this is what we should do. And Sonny's still alive. Of course Sonny's still, you
know, the potential dawn. But Michael talks, and there's a very gentle movement that goes into Michael and you land up at him and Thomas sitting behind him, and you've already told the audience that that's the dawn and that's the conciliary sitting behind them. This is what it's going to end up being that you're foreshadowing what's about to come. Until the rest. Well, in a month from now, this Hollywood big shot is going to give you what you want. It's totally they.
Start shooting in a week. I'm going to make them an offer they can't refuse. Both Mario Puzo and Coppola said that they had researched into the lives of American gangsters. Italian, American gangsters. So the gangsters were also inspired to behave in a certain way, perhaps how it happened in Satya. I want you to talk a little bit about Vikram, about the role of minor characters.
You know, like, you know, we know Luca Brazzi, we'll talk about Barzini, we know talk about Tom Hagan or Johnny Fontaine. Your films are very tight and small and contained in the sense of numbers of characters, usually as a filmmaker, when should a film have multiple characters and how? How is it that they become so alive and so memorable for the audience? It's to the purpose. I think the multiple characters in The Godfather are important because they are important and
they all, all they are. They are important to the storyline vis a vis your main characters when it comes down to it. So the The Who is a threat to the dawn and who needs to be taken care of and who's, who's a friend and who's a foe. And I think that's where the multiple characters start to become. But again I would, I would, I would give a lot of that credit to the writing, the directing and the casting and and of course I mean the end of the day the acting.
But again it comes out of Coppola being able to I think make those characters memorable. I mean if you take in take the cop for example, I think Sterling Hayden was played in again two scenes, two scenes, one where he punches and one where he ends up getting sort of like short afterwards.
I mean so amazingly memorable because you just said what you've given him and how he's played it and and and and and the effect of why would you shoot his entire scene in a close up, for example versus you know, so is he important, is he not important? This is levels of information. This is the information that the director that point of time wants you to to have but it counts you know and you have to you have to even Luca Brazzi in a sense, I mean has it's it's
literally his most memorable. Yes he comes to dawn and meets him but it's the rehearsal outside which makes him like that scene makes Luca Brazzi where he is and that's the that's the I think that's the genius of sort of like you know giving giving them personality like giving them personality that you can sort of connect to and and and that you can like not not keeping them out of the book or off the pages. They come off the pages because they've been cast amazingly.
They've been given moments that really, you know, work for them. It's the same with it's the same with Fredo, you know, and John Kazal just being the phenomenal. I love a little bit of trivia. I love, I love like, sorry I took my nephew to see this, for example, who loves the godfathers as I come. We have to see it in the theater and the sort.
And he's like that Fredo. And I'm like, whoa, because I'm like, that's John because the guy did five films in his life and all five films were nominated for best Picture. They was like, that's a record I think that nobody's ever, nobody's ever had. Again, I mean, Fredo is around, right? You sense him. And again, here's the genius of of the of the writings that Fredo is always in the background for most of the film.
He comes into the foreground When it comes to Vegas, that's the moment of Fredo comes into the foreground. And again, he says one scene, you know, to to to chew up and John Casale, just being John Casale is so brilliant, but he has one scene to be able to sort of say that, my God, this guy is a threat. You know, Fredo is also a threat. He's the brother, but he's also a threat to, you know, do I trust him or do I not trust him? Fredo, you're my older brother and I love you.
But don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Few films have glorified gangsters and violence in a sense. Of course there is the the tragic arc but it's also very sexy And at the same time he then makes Apocalypse Now where which also violence is sexy. But you know, it's really the most anti war film that that one can find. How do you think Coppola has, as a filmmaker, influenced the way we look at violence in cinema?
Pretty much everything you said, you know, I mean, you know, you know, these things are subjective. I mean and I imagine there will be many viewers who would look at the the violence scenes in The Godfather and just be entirely repulsed and just you know want to move away from the screen and then you can you can make the argument that for those viewers, you know it's at a moral level it's work because it's made violence ugly. But but but I agree with you.
I mean, I I look at the the, the big set pieces, the big violent moments in in the Godfather films and I I find it thrilling. Say for instance, Tarantino, who's also very violent, but you know his violence, while fun, has a cartoonish quality that you know you can't take it seriously with Godfather if you do take it seriously. No, absolutely agree.
And I mean and you know the little things like like that that scene at the at the end of the part of the cross cutting the murders at the end of The Godfather where where the guy shot in the eye and his glasses sort of break, you know, as he's
being massaged. It's a you know it's it's a sort of thing that it's a sort of scene where you can simultaneously admire the filmmaking and say wow you know this is pretty good filmmaking and it's it's so impactful and at the same time think you know this is but this is really ugly and nasty and you know and and it sort of brings you back down to earth and says and and and you think you know all these people that we've been finding so exciting, so interesting.
These characters they are doing stuff like this which is so yeah so of course you do take it seriously. You can even even while you find the filmmaking sighting. I think the Tarantino, of course you know Kabir is part of a different generation where it's all post postmodern. And his cinema is very. Different, of course. And there's and there's always this meta commentary this is this ironic nudge winking at at films of an earlier time.
So. So so then as you see it became becomes a bit cartoonish and too self refresher. But yeah you know it's I would also agree with you that though you I think you implied it that Apocalypse Now is on balance. I think it's a more effectively unpleasant film than than the Godfather films are in the sense that it's you know again it's God set pieces it's got things that that will excite you cinematically but there's this by the end it's depressing.
So in a way that The Godfather perhaps isn't because you know, it just, you know, The Godfather leaves you with this tremendous high of, you know, you know, for the, you know, all these exciting things happening on the stream. Violence in cinema has definitely been influenced by not just by The Godfather, but also by by by those other American films being made around the same time.
Scorsese films, Mean Streets and Taxi Driver and and a lot of other films, even something like like Spielberg's Jaws, which which, you know, was more more cartoonish and more populist. But again, it it shows gore. It it makes certain things, you know. It it it it it introduces this thrilling music score when the shark attacks are happening. From Hitchcock's psychological violence to real physical violence. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. And that is again part of the trajectory of what was happening to American cinema between, say, the 1950s and the 1970s where suddenly, of course, you know, the censorship has been relaxed. It becomes easier to, you know, coming back to Bonnie and Clyde, which was a very important film in this whole movement with the climactic scene where where Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are just riddled with bullets and their and their bodies are dancing around like that.
It's it's all part of this this moment where where violence is being presented in this, you know, no holds barred way, at the risk of making it really exciting also and perhaps you know, increasing the the tolerance threshold for viewers. So viewers who you know who in the 1950s might have recoiled at, at a certain sort of scene now in the 70s are finding it much easier to watch really bloody really gory stuff. So the so, yeah. So the so the godfathers played
a big part in that, I think. The president of Paramount told me in these words, he says Francis, as president of Paramount Pictures, I am telling you that Marlon Brando will not be in this movie. Marlon Brando was only 47 when he played the agent Vito Corleone. He was in the midst of a career crisis with a series of flops and he was battling his reputation as a hell raising
star on set. But with Godfather, which earned him the Oscar for Best actor, Brando scripted a remarkable late career turn around, says Vikram Aditya. Marlon Brando. I mean Coppola somehow has taken him and reduces him to big parts and yet which are like so great. I mean whether it was Captain Kurds in the in the pop trips now or who comes right at the end or even in Godfather, I mean he's there but very, very few scenes.
And and Brando, I mean was also transitioning into a different phase of his career at the time like that. I mean, we have so many actors who are also transitioning and it's a tough transition to manage. One is I think it's Brando himself willingly coming on board and saying, hey, I really want to do this, right. And I think we have and we've seen a lot of actors are so unwilling to to drop a lot of their baggage and baggage is a very broad term here. They also unread.
I mean but here was Brando who was you know, saying OK fine, I'll do it. You want me to be, you know, I mean I don't it's not I don't have to be Adonis. I I I need to be. I I can sort of like, you know have the, the the jaws look that way and my hair like that look older and and all that sort of stuff. So yes, there is. And I honestly, I don't know what battles there would have been between him and Coppola and
that kind of stuff. I mean clearly he did Apocalypse Now, so obviously there was no problems. I do think The Godfather, definitely it helped him more. It it it, you know it, it brought the way De Niro and Pacino in their career, especially in the 70s, experimented with playing these kind of characters who were, you
know, great definitely. But also if you look at De Niro in De Hunter for example, I mean he's not, he's actually in a sense he is not the lead in it. But at the same point of time, he's magnificent in that film and it's not a problem you're you're you're, you know you're you're helping to sort of like do the film, helping to sell the film or whether it's De Niro and the mission or you know, it's all those kind of things like you know you see Brando having set that tone.
But specifically with Brando, yeah, he he's not. It's not a big part, definitely, but definitely it's not. You know, Michael is the hero of the self. Yeah. But when, again, when Brando's given the moments to sort of like do what he has to do, whether it's the opening scene in the wedding, whether it's the one where he shakes up Johnny Fontaine, which is so unexpected, like laughing. And then that scene, and of course the end, the last scene with Michael, which is just
incredible. He is incredible in that scene. He brings so much emotion to the bit when he's repeating himself, you know that. Remember that the one who sets up the meeting is the one who's going to betray you. I think that. Giving all the life lessons. Yeah, but the life look. But again, there's so much in that moment. You're giving life lessons. You care for your son, you're getting older. You know your memory is clearly you know it's there's those kind
of things. At the same point of time it's like you also do I know that I'm going to go is that why I'm trying to just like you know get my, get all my get all my ducks in a row am I trying to sort of like cross my DS and drop my eyes before I go and that kind of and you know and all that
sort of stuff. So again, I mean in in writing, directing, acting, you've brought in so much into one moment there which tells you so much more than than what's just on the page and he's he's brilliant in that in the film and. And and and do you think Coppola could have, should not have made Godfather 3? Not if I couldn't refuse. Today's episode is produced by Jayaraj Singh, Arun George and Sunay Marathi.
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