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Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well is the forerunner closely studied, the style is Velázquez. The postwar Mafia scene in New York, or a storybook kingdom ruled by a papery old tortoise, "no different from any powerful man." (It comes with assorted princes and one neglected princess.) The Don is a monstre sacré, Marlon Brando gives him a stuffed jaw, a scrunched forehead and bottomless reserves of lethal courtliness. Hothead (James Caan) and weakling (John Cazale) show the polar extremes of his brood, the adopted son (Robert Duvall) is consigliere and the baby boy (Al Pacino) learns to get his hands dirty. Gangland combat, vendettas, pure extension of free-enterprise ruthlessness. "Blood is a big expense." Francis Ford Coppola's dark-toned, mythic canvas, an invocation of tradition by an experimental firebrand, cf. The Magnificent Ambersons. The cave in the palazzo, just the place to talk business during weddings. Family and capitalism and politics suggestively linked, classical Hollywood is included via a From Here to Eternity anecdote, a matter of equine splatter on satin bed sheets. "Keep it respectable." The linchpin is Pacino's extraordinary shading of youthful softness into cutthroat steel, an indelible dolly-in on his nervous visage followed by the crimson mist behind his enemy's head. Richard Conte because it's House of Strangers, Sterling Hayden as the corrupt arm of the law, a gallery of gargoyle mugs (Richard Castellano, Al Lettieri, Alex Rocco, Lenny Montana, Abe Vigoda) to rival On the Waterfront. The fusillade at the toll booth aims to outdo Bonnie and Clyde and succeeds, to piece the body back together is a job for the immigrant undertaker who believes in America. The Sicilian village's ancient desert contrasts with the new Las Vegas desert, the mighty oak topples in the tomato garden so his successor can pledge his faith in slaughter. "After all, we are not communists." The gruesome nostalgia is questioned by responses from Scorsese and De Palma and Leone, not to mention Coppola's own sequels. Cinematography by Gordon Willis. With Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, John Marley, Gianni Russo, Al Martino, Rudy Bond, Morgana King, Simonetta Stefanelli, Richard Bright, and Salvatore Corsitto.
--- Fernando F. Croce |