The Godfather Legacy

The chance to rediscover Francis Ford Coppola's celebrated movie trilogy is not something to be squandered. Lebo (Casablanca, Citizen Kane) wisely concentrates here on the first Godfather film. He skitters a little wildly across the subject but effectively sets the stage with a succinct summary of the writing of the book and the arrangements for filming it. Highlighted are Marlon Brando's idiosyncratic portrayal of the aging Don Corleone and Coppola's determination to create his personalized vision of a popular potboiler of a novel by Mario Puzo in the face of mounting studio, union and organized-crime pressure. The finished product angered Italian Americans. Some accused it of ethnic stereotyping, but others complained that Italians should have been cast to play all the roles, while still others were unsettled by the coolly glamorous tableaux in Coppola's stylized scenes of violence. Yet several fortunes were made, because people lined up for blocks to watch a movie close to three hours long. Lebo isn't swept away by the movie's popularity. He finds fault with Al Pacino's love scenes at the start of the film, and, by reserving much smaller sections of his book for the two sequels, he makes a case that these were lesser efforts (although many critics consider the second Godfather film the best of the three). Coppola too is revealed as capable of genius but equally capable of nepotism and ego-driven overkill. The work is too fractured to be a definitive study, although many of the photographs are published here for the first time and capture unguarded moments of affection and frivolity on the sets. Lebo's book should send fans straight to the video store to bask once again in the spectacle of the don making those un-refusable offers. (Mar.)