A Day to Toast ‘The Godfather,’ and New York
By CLYDE HABERMAN
Some of you may consider this an offer
you can refuse, but others will want to note an event of enduring
cultural import that took place 40 years ago Thursday. “The Godfather,” a film as firmly rooted in New York as Manhattan schist, opened that day in five theaters around the city.
Ever since, a significant portion of the American population,
certainly the male component, has gone around talking about how it’s
time to go to the mattresses; how this or that is strictly business, not
personal; and how it’s advisable to leave the gun and take the cannoli.
Catch phrases aside, the anniversary of the 1972 Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece is a moment to appreciate New York’s centrality in American cinema. No other place compares, not by a long shot.
Relying on the collective judgment of movie historians and critics, the American Film Institute compiled what it calls the 100 greatest movies ever. Lists of this sort always provide fuel for barroom and dining-table arguments. Nonetheless, more than a quarter of the movies, 27, were set in this city, entirely or in part. They include three of the top four: “Citizen Kane” (eternally No. 1), “The Godfather” (No. 2) and “Raging Bull” (No. 4).
(No. 3 is “Casablanca,” which is being revived for its 70th anniversary. Some 500 theaters across the country, including several in the city, plan special showings next Wednesday. Though set in Morocco, it has its own New York element — when the Bogart character tells a Nazi officer, “There are certain sections of New York, major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.” It was sound advice in 1942. Still is.)
Some of the 27 films set in the city were produced on sound stages, but most were shot on location. Our streets are visually irresistible, even as all too many of them become Duane Readed, Starbucksed and Chase Banked.
Mr. Coppola certainly used them to advantage.
The Corleone family compound, supposedly on Long Island, was actually in the Emerson Hill section of Staten Island. Luca Brasi, he who winds up sleeping with the you-know-what, is stabbed in the Edison Hotel. Michael Corleone makes his bones as a hitman at a restaurant in the Bronx. He and Kay stay at the St. Regis Hotel. There are shots of East Harlem, Mott Street, Radio City Music Hall and the old Best & Co. store on Fifth Avenue.
For sure, not everyone loves “The Godfather.” Some Italian-American groups hate it for having given rise to a deluge of Mafia-themed movies and television shows that, they say, defame everyone of Italian origin. Even 40 years ago, feelings of that sort were voiced by plenty of New York politicians and businessmen. They almost sank the Coppola film.
Those people wanted you to believe that the Mafia didn’t exist, that it was an invention of law enforcement, Hollywood and the news media. No group pushed that line harder than the Italian-American Civil Rights League, an organization that embodied public-relations genius. Civil-rights league? It was the creation of Joseph A. Colombo Sr., boss of one of New York’s five Mafia families.
Mr. Colombo, who was later shot while leading a league rally in 1971, made life impossible for the movie’s producers — that is, until certain unrefusable offers were made and deals were struck. The filmmakers eliminated terms like “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra.” Colombo loyalists were signed on as extras and bit players. Presto change-o, the producers’ troubles were over.
The writer Nicholas Pileggi recounted how weird things became at times. Some “Godfather” actors began to think they were Mafiosi, while a few mobsters thought of themselves as actors.
“One supporting player,” Mr. Pileggi wrote in an absorbing article in The New York Times in 1971, “got so confused about who he was that he joined a carload of enforcers on a trip to Jersey to beat up scabs in a labor dispute (as it turned out, they had the wrong address and couldn’t find the strikebreakers).”
Even so, the final product was a New York-based classic. If you want to toast it, Thursday is the day to do so. It’s one bit of business that will definitely be personal.
Catch phrases aside, the anniversary of the 1972 Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece is a moment to appreciate New York’s centrality in American cinema. No other place compares, not by a long shot.
Relying on the collective judgment of movie historians and critics, the American Film Institute compiled what it calls the 100 greatest movies ever. Lists of this sort always provide fuel for barroom and dining-table arguments. Nonetheless, more than a quarter of the movies, 27, were set in this city, entirely or in part. They include three of the top four: “Citizen Kane” (eternally No. 1), “The Godfather” (No. 2) and “Raging Bull” (No. 4).
(No. 3 is “Casablanca,” which is being revived for its 70th anniversary. Some 500 theaters across the country, including several in the city, plan special showings next Wednesday. Though set in Morocco, it has its own New York element — when the Bogart character tells a Nazi officer, “There are certain sections of New York, major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.” It was sound advice in 1942. Still is.)
Some of the 27 films set in the city were produced on sound stages, but most were shot on location. Our streets are visually irresistible, even as all too many of them become Duane Readed, Starbucksed and Chase Banked.
Mr. Coppola certainly used them to advantage.
The Corleone family compound, supposedly on Long Island, was actually in the Emerson Hill section of Staten Island. Luca Brasi, he who winds up sleeping with the you-know-what, is stabbed in the Edison Hotel. Michael Corleone makes his bones as a hitman at a restaurant in the Bronx. He and Kay stay at the St. Regis Hotel. There are shots of East Harlem, Mott Street, Radio City Music Hall and the old Best & Co. store on Fifth Avenue.
For sure, not everyone loves “The Godfather.” Some Italian-American groups hate it for having given rise to a deluge of Mafia-themed movies and television shows that, they say, defame everyone of Italian origin. Even 40 years ago, feelings of that sort were voiced by plenty of New York politicians and businessmen. They almost sank the Coppola film.
Those people wanted you to believe that the Mafia didn’t exist, that it was an invention of law enforcement, Hollywood and the news media. No group pushed that line harder than the Italian-American Civil Rights League, an organization that embodied public-relations genius. Civil-rights league? It was the creation of Joseph A. Colombo Sr., boss of one of New York’s five Mafia families.
Mr. Colombo, who was later shot while leading a league rally in 1971, made life impossible for the movie’s producers — that is, until certain unrefusable offers were made and deals were struck. The filmmakers eliminated terms like “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra.” Colombo loyalists were signed on as extras and bit players. Presto change-o, the producers’ troubles were over.
The writer Nicholas Pileggi recounted how weird things became at times. Some “Godfather” actors began to think they were Mafiosi, while a few mobsters thought of themselves as actors.
“One supporting player,” Mr. Pileggi wrote in an absorbing article in The New York Times in 1971, “got so confused about who he was that he joined a carload of enforcers on a trip to Jersey to beat up scabs in a labor dispute (as it turned out, they had the wrong address and couldn’t find the strikebreakers).”
Even so, the final product was a New York-based classic. If you want to toast it, Thursday is the day to do so. It’s one bit of business that will definitely be personal.
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