Film Forum

U.S., 1972
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Based on Mario Puzo’s The Godfather
Starring Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, John Cazale, James Caan, Diane Keaton
Music by Nino Rota
WINNER Academy Awards® – Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), Best Adapted Screenplay, 1973
Approx. 175 min. 4K DCP.

“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone is back from WWII and opting out of The Family, until an attempted hit on dad Marlon Brando pulls him back in. Oscars® for Best Picture, Screenplay, and Actor — to Brando, though Supporting Actor-nominated Pacino’s part is bigger.

Presented with support from the Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film

Reviews

“John Cazale’s mythic career has been defined by his performance as the heartbreakingly inept Fredo in Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster epic. And what a Fredo he was. His face alone was striking—the dark, heavy brow, the wavy moon of his hairline, the exhausted eyes. Cazale’s face cast a constant shadow over itself, a brooding canvas for Gordon Willis’s inky cinematography.”
– Yohana Desta, Vanity Fair

“One of the most brutal and moving chronicles of American life ever designed within the limits of popular entertainment.”
– Andrew Sarris, The New York Times

“An obscene nightmare image of American free enterprise.”
– Pauline Kael

“In its blending of new depth with an old genre, it becomes that rarity, a mass entertainment that is also great movie art.”
– Jay Cocks, TIME