W
e watched The Godfather tonight, for Elena's first time and my...fourth time, perhaps? I have an interesting relationship with this movie. When I was young, my family repeatedly watched Steve Odekirk's Thumb Movies -- a ridiculous series of spoofs of famous films, such as Thumb Wars, Frankenthumb, and of course, The Godthumb. Because of this spoof, I was actually very familiar with a great number of the most famous scenes from The Godfather, which actually kind of ruined the film for me for a while. I remember the first time that I saw the movie, I could tell that it was "great", but it almost seemed too iconic. The scenes had been built up so much, both by silly spoofs, and simply existing in American culture, that I couldn't really lace them together into a coherent movie. It was just a bunch of iconic scenes in a row.
Basically every time I watched the film, this feeling has lessened, and this particular viewing felt very fresh. It definitely helped having a first-time viewer along for the ride, but I was just astonished at how quickly the three hour movie passed. It was just intoxicating the whole way through, and I felt like the plot really grabbed me this time.
I used to say that The Godfather Part II was what made the Godfather Part I make sense to me, and while this is still sort of true, I feel much more holistically assured in my enjoyment of Part I by itself. I'm obsessed with the very first line in The Godfather, uttered by the undertaker: "I believe in America." These two films are about what believing in America does to a person, and to a people; and about the difference between the old world and the new.