This tape opens with the end of a preview of a new season of Dance programmes.
Then, The Godfather. Here’s another ‘great’ movie that I don’t adore. I think I just have a blindspot when it comes to films about mobsters.They’re like the real-life analogue to Star Trek’s Klingons, just a bunch of the worst people who talk about honour like it’s something they’d recognise.
One thing I’m definitely not sure about is whether Marlon Brando’s performance is great acting, or parody. The cotton wool in the cheeks, the drawling, it feels like he’s taking the piss.
The main cast is fairly remarkable, and not all of them were big stars at the time. There’s a story told about Al Pacino’s casting as Michael, the war hero son who’s not part of his father’s business. One of the producers thought he was too short. He wanted someone like Ryan O’Neal. But Coppola wanted ‘someone who looks like us’.
Diane Keaton is Michael’s girlfriend, and we learn some of the family’s business through him explaining to her, including the film’s catchphrase “My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
Robert Duvall plays Tom Hagen, honorary son and lawyer to Vito Corleone.
James Caan is Sonny Corleone, the hothead son.
There’s a lot of stuff in this I do like. When Vito is shot in the street and almost killed, Michael goes to visit him, only to find all the police who were supposed to have been protecting him have been withdrawn by the crooked police chief, so Michael has to move Vito and protect him until help can arrive. A young baker comes to visit his father, and Michael gets him to wait outside, as if they are armed, in order to dissuade another hit on Vito.
Michael takes revenge on the men who attacked his father, thus bringing him fully in to the family business. Then he disappears to Sicily.
While he’s away, Sonny is shot. A lot.
John Cazale plays the other brother, Fredo, who’s been in Vegas since the attack, and seems to be in his element.
BBC Genome: BBC Two – 9th June 1985 – 21:00
After this, there’s a trailer for The Godfather Part II.
Then, the start of International Golf – The Dunhill British Masters, from Woburn – presented by Harry Carpenter. The tape ends during this.
VHiStory 
Remember watching a repeat of The Godfather with my cousins back in 1989 when we had nothing to do. My sister warned us saying it was a very violent film and we saw the part where Sonny got drilled to bits in his car. Still to this day, it’s a very nasty and brutal scene. Remember also the guy getting it in the eye while lying down. I taped the movie off ITV in 1997 but couldn’t be bothered watching it all. I even once sat down to watch Part II after a hard day’s work but again, couldn’t be bothered. I think you really need to be in the mood to watch these sorts of films. My cousin said he thought Robert DeNiro was excellent in Part II.
I’ve seen GoodFellas. That is a very well made, stylish and gripping movie. The characters are based on real life people and are thoroughly nasty but they eventually get what’s coming to them by the end and some of what was in the film was not exactly true but it was still watchable. Another good gangland movie is Donnie Brasco starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino about an undercover FBI agent. Very well acted and captures the ’70s feel convincingly. It was planned for production as far back as the late 1980s/early 1990s.
I saw King Of New York and Scarface on the recommendation of a friend in 1997 (the latter was premiered on BBC2 as the first in a then new season of Moviedrome). At the time, I liked them both for their mixture of compelling anti-heroes, machismo and hard action. The more I watched Scarface, the more I appreciated it as a story of the American Dream falling apart under an excess of violence, drug addiction and murder.