When it was released 50 years ago this week, “The Godfather” had broken all revenue records, won the Oscar for best feature film and familiarized the whole world with the mafia, its ruthless traditions and its turpitudes.
When director Francis Ford Coppola, 82 years old today, was offered to adapt this successful novel by Mario Puzo to the screen, he almost refused.
“I was deeply disappointed when I started reading it… It was really a commercial work that Mario Puzo had written to earn money for his children,” Coppola said Monday in Los Angeles, during a screening commemorating the 50th anniversary of his film.
“When they offered me the opportunity to do this, mainly because everyone else had already said no, I declined too,” said this figure in American cinema.
Luckily for him, one of his young associates named George Lucas explained to him that this was an offer he might not turn down because their small independent production company, American Zoetrope, had to be saved from bankruptcy.
“Francis, we need that money! The taxman will padlock the front door … You have to take a job like that, “said his friend, the man who would create the “Star Wars” phenomenon a few years later, Coppola said.
The sequel is legend.
“The Godfather”, released on March 24, 1972 in a large number of cinemas, became six months later the film having obtained the biggest grossing of the history, tearing this record with the emblematic “Gone with the wind”, produced in 1939.
According to experts, “The Godfather” in a way inaugurated the era of big productions, confirmed three years later by a new record set at the box office by “Jaws” by Steven Spielberg.
According to Peter Biskind in his book “The New Hollywood”, Francis Ford Coppola largely won his bet with Paramount studios, which had agreed to buy him a stretch limousine if the “Godfather”‘s receipts reached 50 million dollars. dollars. They had exceeded 130 million at the time, a sum of the order of 880 million current dollars taking inflation into account.
Coppola had thereby become one of the first star directors, with enough artistic credibility to finance all his projects.
“It was the beginning of a new era for directors,” writes Peter Biskind.
“Not at all happy”
“The Godfather” had however a priori few trumps in his sleeve to win such a success.
By 1972 gangster movies were largely out of fashion. Four years earlier, Paramount released “The Sicilian Brothers” starring Kirk Douglas, which flopped.
The studio owned the rights to Mario Puzo’s novel, which was growing in popularity, and decided to give it a shot anyway. He had had a hard time finding a candidate: Elia Kazan, Costa-Gavras and Peter Bogdanovich had in turn declined.
Francis Ford Coppola may well be the leader of the so-called “New Hollywood” movement, part of the counterculture and wanting to modernize cinematographic codes, he was far from having the notoriety of the latter.
He had no big successes to his credit and it was mainly because of his Italian origins that Paramount had approached him.
After saying “yes”, Coppola had all the same set his conditions: Paramount wanted an adaptation quickly done well, and above all cheap, but the director had asked for a bigger budget. In particular, he wanted the film to take place in 1940s New York, which involved a significant cost in terms of sets and costumes.
This meant that the $2 or $2.5 million budget “was probably going to be at least double that.” “And they weren’t happy with that at all,” recalls the director.
Coppola had also taken the beak with the production concerning the distribution.
The only star of the film, Marlon Brando, was on the return. Al Pacino, still relatively unknown, was not “the big, handsome guy” they wanted. “Al is very handsome, but in his very own way,” joked Coppola.
“All the women loved him very much. Al Pacino was very attractive to girls. I wondered why exactly, but it has always been the case,” added the filmmaker.
In the end, “The Godfather” won the flagship Oscar for best feature film, Brando was crowned best actor that year and Al Pacino was one of the three stars of the film to be nominated for the category of Best Supporting Actor.
