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The Godfather
''The Godfather'' is a 1972 American Epic film, epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, based on Puzo's best-selling The Godfather (novel), 1969 novel. The film stars an ensemble cast including Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte and Diane Keaton. It is the first installment in The Godfather (film series), ''The Godfather'' trilogy, chronicling the Corleone family under patriarch Vito Corleone (Brando) and the transformation of his youngest son, Michael Corleone (Pacino), from reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss. Paramount Pictures obtained the rights to the novel for $80,000, before it gained popularity. Studio executives had trouble finding a director; the first few candidates turned down the position before Coppola signed on to direct the film but disagreement followed over casting several characters, in particular Vito (Brando ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gordon Willis
Gordon Hugh Willis Jr., (May 28, 1931 – May 18, 2014) was an American cinematographer and film director. He is best known for his photographic work on eight Woody Allen films (including ''Annie Hall'' and ''Manhattan''), six Alan J. Pakula films (including ''All the President's Men''), four James Bridges films, and all three films from Francis Ford Coppola's ''The Godfather'' series. Fellow cinematographer William A. Fraker called Willis's work a "milestone in visual storytelling", while one critic suggested that Willis "defined the cinematic look of the 1970s: sophisticated compositions in which bolts of light and black put the decade's moral ambiguities into stark relief".Garrett, Steven"Take Five With Gordon Willis", Time Out New York; retrieved March 4, 2011. When the International Cinematographers Guild conducted a survey in 2003, they placed Willis among the ten most influential cinematographers in history. Career Early life and beginnings Willis was born in Astoria, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mario Puzo
Mario Francis Puzo (; ; October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999) was an American author and screenwriter. He wrote crime novels about the Italian-American Mafia and Sicilian Mafia, most notably ''The Godfather (novel), The Godfather'' (1969), which he later co-adapted into a The Godfather (film series), film trilogy directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Godfather, the first film in 1972 and for ''The Godfather Part II, Part II'' in 1974. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 ''Superman (1978 film), Superman'' film and its 1980 Superman II, sequel. His final novel, ''The Family (Puzo novel), The Family'', was released posthumously in 2001. Personal life Puzo was born in the Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, Hell's Kitchen section of New York City to Italian immigrants from the Province of Avellino; his father was from Pietradefusi and his mother from Ariano Irpino. When Puzo was 12, his father, who worked as a trackm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola ( ; born April 7, 1939) is an American filmmaker. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood and one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. List of awards and nominations received by Francis Ford Coppola, Coppola is the recipient of five Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Awards, BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Palme d'Or, Palmes d'Or, in addition to nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award. Coppola was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 2010, the Kennedy Center Honors, Kennedy Center Honors in 2024, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2025. Coppola started his career directing ''The Rain People'' (1969) and co-writing ''Patton (film), Patton'' (1970), the latter of which earned him and Edmund H. North the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Coppola's reputation as a filmmaker was cemented with the release of ''The Godfather'' (1972) and ''The Godfather Part II'' (1974) which bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loew's State Theatre (New York City)
The Loew's State Theatre was a movie theater at 1540 Broadway on Times Square in New York City. Designed by Thomas Lamb in the Adam style, it opened on August 29, 1921, as part of a 16-story office building for the Loew's Theatres company, with a seating capacity of 3,200 and featuring both vaudeville and films. It was the first theater on Broadway to cost $1 million. It was initially managed by Joseph Vogel, who later became president of Loew's Inc. and then MGM. For several years it was a second-run theater featuring live acts and a feature (most often an MGM film that would have premiered at the Astor Theatre before having its initial run at the Capitol, both Loew's movie houses located just a few blocks from the State), although it also had frequent personal appearances and short subjects. Loew's became the last theater in Times Square to continue booking vaudeville acts as that medium declined in the 1930s; when it hosted its last vaudeville show on December 23, 1947 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sicily
Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4.7 million inhabitants, including 1.2 million in and around the capital city of Palermo, it is both the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea. Sicily is named after the Sicels, who inhabited the eastern part of the island during the Iron Age. Sicily has a rich and unique culture in #Art and architecture, arts, Music of Sicily, music, #Literature, literature, Sicilian cuisine, cuisine, and Sicilian Baroque, architecture. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, and one of the most active in the world, currently high. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate. It is separated from Calabria by the Strait of Messina. It is one of the five Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics, and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. With an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mafia Boss
A crime boss, also known as a crime lord, mafia don, mob boss, kingpin, or godfather is the leader of a criminal organization. Description A crime boss has absolute or nearly absolute control over the other members of the organization and is often greatly feared or respected for being willing to use criminal means to exert their influence and gain profits from the criminal endeavors in which the organization engages.Manning, George A. '' Financial Investigation and Forensic Accounting.'' Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 2005. Some groups may only have as little as two ranks (a crime boss and their soldiers). Other groups have a more complex, structured organization with many ranks, and structure may vary with cultural background. Organized crime enterprises originating in Sicily differ in structure from those in mainland Italy. American groups may be structured differently from their European counterparts and Latino and African American gangs often have structures that vary from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Corleone
Michael Corleone is a fictional character and the protagonist of Mario Puzo's 1969 novel ''The Godfather (novel), The Godfather''. In the The Godfather (film series), three ''Godfather'' films, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Michael was portrayed by Al Pacino, for which he was twice-nominated for Academy Awards. Michael is the youngest son of Vito Corleone, a Sicilian immigrant who builds a Mafia empire. Upon his father's death, Michael succeeds him as the Crime boss, don of the Corleone family, Corleone crime family. In June 2003, Michael Corleone was recognized as the AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains, 11th most iconic villain in film history by the American Film Institute, although some critics consider him to be a tragic hero. The British film magazine ''Empire (film magazine), Empire'' selected Michael Corleone as the 11th greatest movie character, with Pacino's performance as Michael Corleone widely regarded as one of the greatest performances in cinematic histor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vito Corleone
Vito Corleone (born Vito Andolini) is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel ''The Godfather'' and in the first two of Francis Ford Coppola's film trilogy. Vito is originally portrayed by Marlon Brando in the 1972 film ''The Godfather'', and later by Oreste Baldini as a boy and by Robert De Niro as a young man in ''The Godfather Part II'' (1974). He is an orphaned Italian ( Sicilian) immigrant who builds a Mafia empire. He and his wife Carmela have four children: three sons, Santino ("Sonny"), Frederico ("Fredo") and Michael ("Mike"), and one daughter, Constanzia ("Connie"). Vito informally adopts Sonny's friend, Tom Hagen, who becomes his lawyer and '' consigliere''. Upon Vito's death, Michael succeeds him as Don of the Corleone crime family. Vito oversees a business founded on gambling, bootlegging, prostitution, and union corruption, but he is known as a kind, generous man who lives by a strict moral code of loyalty to friends and, above all, family. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corleone Family
The Corleone family are fictional characters in both the novels and the films created by Mario Puzo, first appearing in his 1969 novel, ''The Godfather''. They are an organized crime family originating from the Sicilian town of Corleone, and based in New York City. The Corleone family has drawn comparisons with the real-life Genovese and Bonanno crime families. Fictional history The fictional Corleone crime family traces its roots to 1920, when Vito Corleone assassinated Little Italy's padrone, Don Fanucci, and took over Fanucci's territory along with his friends Genco Abbandando, Peter Clemenza and Salvatore Tessio. Shortly afterward, he founded the Genco Pura Olive Oil Company which was named after his closest friend Genco. Around 1925, Vito formally organized the family, with Genco as his consigliere and Clemenza and Tessio as caporegimes. They became the most powerful crime family in New York City after defeating Salvatore Maranzano during the Olive Oil War in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Godfather (film Series)
''The Godfather'' is a trilogy of American crime films directed by Francis Ford Coppola inspired by the 1969 The Godfather (novel), novel of the same name by Italian American author Mario Puzo. The films follow the trials of the fictional Italian American American Mafia, mafia Corleone family whose patriarch, Vito Corleone, rises to be a major figure in American organized crime. His youngest son, Michael Corleone, becomes his successor. The films were distributed by Paramount Pictures and released in 1972, 1974, and 1990. The series achieved success at the box office, with the films earning between $430 and $517 million worldwide. ''The Godfather'' and ''The Godfather Part II'' are both seen by many as two of the List of films considered the best, greatest films of all time. The series is heavily awarded, winning 9 out of 28 total Academy Awards, Academy Award nominations. Film series ''The Godfather'' ''The Godfather'' was released on March 15, 1972. The feature-length film wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ensemble Cast
In a dramatic production, an ensemble cast is one that comprises many principal actors and performers who are typically assigned roughly equal amounts of screen time.Random House: ensemble acting Linked 2013-07-17 Structure In contrast to the popular model, which gives precedence to a sole protagonist, an ensemble cast leans more towards a sense of "collectivity and community". Cinema Ensemble casts in film were introduced as early as September 1916, with D. W. Griffith's silent epic film '' Intolerance'', featuring four separate though parallel plots. The film follows the lives of several characters over hundreds of years, across different cultures and time periods. The unification of different plot lines and character arcs is a key characteristic of ensemble casting in film; whether it is a location, event, or an overarching theme that ties the film and characters together. Films that feature ensembles tend to emphasize the interconnectivity of the characters, even when the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
