From longtime Biden aide Anita Dunn on how The Godfather can teach youngsters about the uses of power:
Some very invaluable lessons in it that I just thought people should carry forward and the most surprising — and very upsetting — thing was how many people on this staff had never seen the movie.
It's very upsetting that so many aspiring young Machiavellis have never seen The Godfather! Hell yes.
Kill the family to the last child is a lesson that needs to carried forward?!
Ugh. I hate The Godfather. It's a very thorough whitewashing of the mob. It never really gets into how the Mafia makes its money, beyond running some gambling operations. No hijacking. No drug smuggling. No protection rackets. No extortion. No leg breaking. No loansharking.
If the movie was all you had to go on, you'd draw the conclusion that the various Mafia families were killing each other over the right to do favors for the common people.
And that's exactly why conservatives think it's the full picture of how society operates.
Interesting point of view. Well, the "point" of the Godfather, which very few seem to pick up on, is that the idealistic youngest son (the Al Pacino character), inexorably becomes the most amoral killer of the bunch, to the point that he kills his brother (at the end of Part 2).
But so many love the movie because they think it's "cool".
You can't understand conservatives, or the people who vote for Republicans, without watching the Godfather. Not only is it key movie for American cinema, it's almost exclusively the key movie for understanding how conservatives see the world and society and their place in it.
If they aren't interested in film history why would they look back? There is so much information coming at them these days they don't have enough time to take in all there is. I'm old and information came from a daily paper, 5 minutes of news on the hour on the radio and early tv had so much space to fill they showed every old movie they could get their hands on. Try to find old movies on Netflix. Very few. Which is why I'm dropping it. There's plenty of new stuff but that's for younger people. And I'm not interested in that.
If you want old movies, The Criterion Channel is a great place to find old Hollywood classics as well as classic films in general.
I love TCM. Whenever I’m flipping through channels I always check that out and see what’s on. Love the old movies.
I don't think I need to watch The Godfather to understand how modern politics works.
I never saw the point of it and at this point I won't watch it simply on principle. It might be good (it probably is!), but the fetishization and worship of it is weird and off-putting, so no thanks.
It's basically always fetishized by white men, by the way. Don't think a single person who's raved to me about The Godfather has been non-white.
It might be good (it probably is!)
It's a technical masterpiece with no soul.
You need to watch The Godfather in order to get the many parodies referencing scenes from the movie that are out there. Sort of like you have to see the early James Bond movies in order to get Austin Powers.
To be fair, the many parodies of The Godfather (and James Bond) are very easy to get without having watched the original movies. Even if you don't have the exact original scene as reference, you still get it.
"Sort of like you have to see the early James Bond movies in order to get Austin Powers"
The last Austin Powers movie came out 22 years ago, so I'd note that there is similarly little reason for young people today to know or care about either Bond or Powers as there is for them to know or care about The Godfather. At end, these are just pieces of entertainment; like what you like, but don't pretend that liking them makes them Important Cultural Knowledge.
(And the AP films weren't exactly difficult to "get" movies. A dim familiarity with a pastiche of Bond elements--British, spy who uses his own name, womanizing, fights vaguely supervillain types, from the 1960s, etc.--were more than enough armature to frame the SNL-esque extended joke of Mike Myers Does Goofy Accents With Oh So Hilarious Fake English Teeth)
I disagree - I understand the cultural references just fine. Therefore, I don't need to watch it.
At the DNC, pins mimicking the black and white Godfather poster were circulating with Nancy Pelosi's silhouette in place of Don Corleone's.
Those who haven't seen The Godfather will misinterpret this as a knock on Pelosi for taking out Biden, while the rest of us would know that this is a paean to one who held great power and carefully exercised it to maximum effectiveness.
Yes. Not knowing the reference in a meme means that somebody will likely miss the reference in a meme.
Still fundamentally unimportant, though.
I think the movie accurately describes the current middle east cauldron of conflict and hatred... revenge and exploitation. The "families" are terrorist organizations and illegitimate governments. And there's even a thoroughly corrupt religious basis for it all! I'm seeing it in a whole different light.
Meanwhile, this terrorist gang war in the middle east has similar features here in the USA. On July 4, 2024:
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/1-killed-4-others-hurt-in-chicago-south-side-shooting/
"Two women and a child were killed, and two other children were critically hurt after a mass shooting in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood Thursday morning, according to Chicago police. Two cars pulled into the area. Several people got out and fired shots from a rifle and handgun at the home. The shooters fled the scene in an unknown direction, and no one is in custody." Still no one arrested as near as I can tell. They don't want justice so they don't talk. They want revenge.
These are the Palestinians and the Israelis; the Corleone and the other "families". It's all the same. These gang killings in Chicago on July 4 are motivated by the same reckless criminal minds which are causing trouble in the middle east and Sudan and dozens of other places. Those protesters in Chicago don't care about this local gang war, but they should.
Honor and shame are two key ideals in conservative thinking. If you want to return to "traditional values" then you put these both on a pedestal. The Godfather represents these ideals in American popular culture. It's a pretty important film, and the book, which the film followed closely, is important, too. It ain't the Great Gatsby, but it's important. It's not just a lesson in Machiavellianism.
PS: Why shame should be so important to conservatives who have elevated Trump -- who has no shame --remains a mystery to me. Perhaps he experienced some kind of immaculate conception.
The Godfather is one of those movies that "guys" (almost universally white guys) hold up as iconic that I've never gotten around to watching (even as a middle aged white guy). Braveheart and Gladiator are on that list as well. They might be great. Maybe someday I'll get around to watching them.
This is an old old old movie. It's as relevant to young voters today as It Happened One Night is to my generation. Which is to say: Not even a little bit, and among my cohort, only hardcore film nerds will even recognize the title.
Fred Ott's Sneeze is an old old old movie.
The first two Godfather movies are a central classic of American cinema on the order of Citizen Kane.
Well, I'm pretty sure all those youngsters watched Game of Thrones. Kinda the same themes, I would think.
If something is really good, they will find it. But maybe it was only good at that time and place, and not so good now.
I haven't seen The Godfather and that's my generation. I find mob movies boring.