The Godfather

          For my movie blog I chose The Godfather, because I have never seen it and I've always been told to watch it because it is a phenomenal movie. This year is also the 40^th anniversary of The Godfather. The movie begins at the wedding reception of mafia boss Don Corleone's daughter, known as “The Godfather”. I really enjoyed this movie because it had my attention the entire time. I wasn't expecting to enjoy this movie as much as I did. I believe this movie deserves to be on AFI's greatest films list. The entire movie has impressive use of camera work and dark lighting in most of the scenes. In my opinion the cast used in this film makes it feel so realistic and makes the film a masterpiece. It was hard to chose just one scene to convey the entire plot of the movie. I chose two scenes in the movie because I felt the first scene in the movie really helped portray what the rest of the movie was going to lead into. “I Believe in America”, about 6 minutes long, shows immediately, the main character, Don Vito Corleone is a very important person to the plot. The director uses dark lighting to convey a serious conversation between the two characters, the lighting only shows the two characters with no background scenery. The Godfather and Tom Hagen, the family lawyer, are hearing requests for favors because, according to tradition, "no Sicilian can refuse a request on his daughter's wedding day." One of the men who asks Corleone for a favor is Amerigo Bonasera, an old family friend, whose daughter was beaten by two young men who received minimal punishment. Don Corleone is mostly disappointed in Bonasera, who'd avoided contact with him for so long.  He agrees to have his men punish the young men responsible. The second scene I chose was scene 6 of 23, “The Shooting of Don Corleone”. The scene begins with two characters joining together against the Corleone family, Sollozzo and Luca Brasi. Sollozzo stabs and kills Luca Brasi after joining together. I chose this scene because the director conveys the meaning through camera angles and sound. There is no dialogue in the scene, you hear footsteps coming and see Don Corleone's reaction to the footsteps. After he gets shot several times, you see the emotions coming from his son Fredo who was the driver and people on the streets. The next part of the scene shows his son Michael, reading the newspaper and finds out about his father and they do not know if he's dead or alive. The purpose of this scene was to show Sollozzo's assassination attempt against Don Corleone, due to him not accepting his offer to help finance his narcotics smuggling operations.