The Godfather

[Barry Admin]

I'll likely bolt from this thread until I finish the book, but I had to start it as my heart is racing with anticipation and I'm just loving it so much!

Took a while for me to really get the film, I found it kind of over-rated and dull as a kid, I think, but grew into it, and started to understand all the plaudits. So I'd always wondered how the book  compares.

Luckily, given my terrible memory and the fact I don't watch or rewatch many films, I'm reasonably sketchy on proceedings, but bits are coming back to me as the story unfolds.

Michael has just arrived at the hospital and called Sonny. I can't remember the details of what happened next, and I'm so excited.

What strikes me is how kind of likeable a lot of them are, in a weird way which has obviously become more common since. The focus on respect and traditional family values and such makes the Don particularly fascinating. These mobsters are so human, yet can just spin and carry out cold-blooded murder without a second thought. And for all the focus on families and blood ties, that then can get quickly cast aside for business concerns.

Right, back to it. What did you lot make of the book?

[bgmnts]

All I remember about it is the subplot where Lucy Mancini's vagina is too big and that's why she's shagging Santino.

Beyond that I don't remember much.

[poloniusmonk]

It's a long time since I read it, but I remember being utterly underwhelmed. It's kind of fine, but to make two pretty great films out of it was very good work indeed.

[Keebleman]

Puzo said with The Godfather he wrote "below my gifts" such was his desperation to have a hit after his first two more high-brow books had both stiffed.

I read it years ago and quite enjoyed it, but have never felt the need to give it another look.  The 'big vagina' storyline is ludicrously unpleasant, but a good example of the X-rated stuff that mainstream literature of the time, dizzy with permissiveness, loved to include.

[Sin Agog]

Read it during that muddy Glastonbury festival where everyone was getting trenchfoot.  There was fuck all else to do.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Read it during that muddy Glastonbury festival where everyone was getting trenchfoot.  There was fuck all else to do.

They had bands on. You could have gone and watched them.

[Sin Agog]

They had bands on. You could have gone and watched them.

I did that once that year.  It took about six hours to get back to the van again through the three feet of wet clay.  That was enough of this 'band watching' for one festival.  Godfather it was.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

You lack grit and resolve.

[ToneLa]

Remember in my last go-round here nattering on about it having to pull up bgmnts for overstating the apparent devotion given to fanny and cock sizes. Sure, that's vivid and only vaguely relevant to the plot (like the Johnny Fontane stuff isn't worse), but let this be the end of it because if that's all you take from The Godfather you're fucking yourself over.

The prose can be bit dry and occasionally cringeworthy. Though almost always effective - I think the declarative reporter-style of Puzo here lends to the proceedings quite well; the real marvel of the book is the plotting, the cause-and-effect, the sheer fucking drive of the thing - it's a proper old pageturner, moving along at a fair clip. One can see why it became such an effective film - which, yes, the book improves, via backstory and explanation. There's a real logic to the thrust of events, if not always a logic to where Puzo's attention lingers.

I think the element that remains strongest for me is the actual depiction of the Godfather himself - Puzo really conveys his gravitas, his likeability, the dialogue is seriously astute (I am thinking of some stuff late on, it's not terrific, Shakespearean stuff but great in what the character should be saying in his circumstances and how he puts things). I'm left believing in him, in his world, and his familia - which means, surely, that it is successful.

[Shit Good Nose]

I did that once that year.  It took about six hours to get back to the van again through the three feet of wet clay.  That was enough of this 'band watching' for one festival.  Godfather it was.

Think I'd rather spend six hours getting back to the van - AND subsequently suffering from trenchfoot - than read The Godfather again.

Not a fan.  If it wasn't obvious.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I like the book enough to have read it a few times, but glad that some elements that have already been mentioned were excised for the film.

Worth downloading one of the chronological versions of The Godfather that were put together for television broadcast, purely for the 75 minutes of extra scenes which aren't in the regular versions and many of which were in the novel. The Godfather Epic being the best choice as it was aired on HBO and doesn't have anything censored.

List of scenes here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Godfather_Saga

There is a scene in the novel where Michael sends someone to assassinate Apollonia's killer Fabrizio with a shotgun. In the TV version/deleted scene he blows up his car, but they also filmed a version with Michael himself doing the killing with a shotgun, but the footage was lost bar this one still. The fact that she's pregnant in the novel adds more weight to his desire for retribution and general character development.

[JamesTC]

The vagina tightening surgery bit came as a surprise.

[FredNurke]

Especially after Michael wouldn't even get his cheek fixed.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

YOU'RE STILL MY BWUVVER FWEDO