In this blog post, I’ll explore why I chose ‘The Godfather’, summarize the plot, and analyze the direction, acting, and themes to explain how its appeal keeps me coming back for more.

Why I Chose ‘The Godfather’

I first saw ‘The Godfather’ when I was in the fourth grade. Back then, I didn’t understand even half of the movie. Part of it was my young age, but the dark, suggestive dialogue and the subtle narrative progression were difficult for me to follow at the time. I watched it all the way through simply because it was a famous film, but I didn’t find it particularly enjoyable.
Even after the movie ended, Al Pacino’s expressions and the film’s dark, somber atmosphere left a strong impression that I couldn’t easily shake. It wasn’t until I watched it again in high school that I truly fell under its spell, and since then, I’ve probably seen it about ten times. Every time I rewatch it, it feels fresh, and I’ve never once found it boring.
The reason I love this movie is partly because the power struggles within the mafia and the heavy atmosphere are compelling, but above all, it stems from my admiration for it as a “well-made film.” Even without the eye of a professional critic, as an audience member, I can clearly sense the high level of craftsmanship—the deep thought and intention behind every single scene.
Another joy of watching this movie repeatedly is the experience of discovering new meanings each time. As a viewer, the thrill of reinterpreting scenes and dialogue to uncover elements I previously missed is one of the greatest joys this film offers.
In fact, ‘The Godfather’ was the film that taught me the most about the joy and cinematic appeal of movies. Through this film, I developed an interest in other classic films, and it made me realize that even works made before I was born—while I’m still in my 20s—hold unique value when compared to contemporary films.
Finally, I must highlight Al Pacino’s masterful performance. Not only was the director exceptional, but the actors’ performances also stand out. In particular, the rapid transformation of Michael—who initially presents a model, clean-cut image—following the attack on his father is so astonishing that it’s hard to believe it’s the same character. I consider the scene where he eliminates two enemies in the restaurant to be the pinnacle of Al Pacino’s acting.
There are countless other strengths to the film, but I’ve highlighted the two that have had the greatest impact on me: the sheer joy of watching the movie and the actors’ exceptional performances. I don’t know how many more times I’ll watch it, but so far, ‘The Godfather’ has been a profoundly influential work for me.

Narrative Summary of the Film ‘The Godfather’

In 1947, the wedding of Vito Corleone’s youngest daughter, Connie, and Carlo is taking place at his luxurious mansion. Hailing from Sicily, Vito Corleone is a man who rose from the bottom to become the Godfather of New York’s underworld. Drawing on his immense wealth and organizational skills, he grants the requests of those who come to him with their troubles, earning him the title “Godfather.”
One day, Solazzo, the boss of a rising criminal organization, appears and asks them to get involved in the drug trade. Since the Corleone family had a strict policy against dealing in drugs, Vito refuses. In response, Solazzo brutally murders Luca Brasi and attempts to assassinate Vito.
Vito survives the ambush, and his eldest son, Sonny, vows revenge. Michael, who had previously kept his distance from his father’s business, sees his respect for his father turn to anger after his sacrifice and kills Sollozzo and the corrupt police officer McCluskey, who was in cahoots with him. Michael then flees to Sicily for his own safety.
In Sicily, Michael falls in love with Apollonia and marries her, but while Michael is preparing to return to the U.S., Apollonia is killed in an assassination plot orchestrated by another family. Meanwhile, Sonny is killed in a brutal ambush by enemy snipers while attempting to rescue his sister.
Even after his son’s death, Vito prioritizes order among the major families over impulsive revenge or investigations, and he arranges a peace conference between the five New York families. He proposes ending the cycle of retaliation on the condition that Michael, who had gone into hiding following the Sollozzo incident, be allowed to return safely—in exchange for turning a blind eye to Sollozzo’s drug operations to some extent.
Upon returning to the United States, Michael resolves to succeed his father as the heir to the Corleone family. He marries his former lover Kay and reorganizes the family, appointing Tom—the lawyer who had served as the family’s legal advisor—as his right-hand man. He also sends Carlo and Tom to Nevada to explore new business opportunities.
One day, while playing with his grandson in the garden, Vito dies of a heart attack. During the funeral, Michael recalls his father’s warning—“The insider who negotiates after my death will be a traitor”—and, after identifying the traitor, begins to eliminate him.
At the baptism where Connie and Carlo ask Michael to be the godfather of their second child, the bosses of rival families are eliminated one by one on Michael’s orders. The religious scenes of the baptism are cross-cut with the murders of the mob members, creating a chilling sequence. Later, Michael effectively confirms to Carlo the truth behind the death of his older brother Sonny, and then eliminates Carlo as well.
The film ends with a scene where Michael’s wife Kay asks him, “Did you do it?” and Michael denies it. That silence and denial force the audience to confront the cold, ruthless conclusion of revenge and the succession of power.

Expert Opinion

The film ‘The Godfather’ portrays the dual nature of humanity in a “cool” way. It neither glorifies criminals nor condemns them unconditionally, but rather presents the reality of humans and crime as it is, with cold objectivity. In this regard, the work avoids moral simplification and reveals the complex nature of human beings.
Director Coppola and author Mario Puzo view the good and evil within humans as an inseparable whole. Throughout the film, the brutal aspects of the mafia members are interwoven with their everyday, human sides. In the middle of the film, Vito is portrayed as a criminal yet a caring family man at home, and in his later years, he appears as an affectionate grandfather who plays with his grandson.
The final scene with Vito is particularly striking: as he hides a piece of orange in his mouth to play a prank on his grandson, he suddenly flashes a devilish expression, startling the child. This moment reads like a “mini-confession,” symbolizing the contradiction of a man who lived his life with two faces—tender toward his family but ruthless to the outside world.

The Baptism and the Massacre: A Shocking Contrast

At the very moment the priest is blessing Michael’s newborn nephew, Clemenza shoves Stracci and Cuneo into a hotel elevator and shoots them dead. The scene, which resembles a barrage of gunfire rather than a simple shootout, features the sound of a shotgun being fired with such force that it booms like a cannon.
At the same time, Moe Greene, who had refused to hand over the Las Vegas casino concession to the Corleone family, is shot squarely in the face and dies while comfortably receiving a massage in a massage room.
Cicci, a trusted lieutenant, continues firing from a steady position while trapping another mob boss inside a revolving door, and Rocco, a member of the strike force, unleashes a merciless hail of machine-gun fire on Tattaglia—who was with a prostitute—and those around him.
Neri, disguised as a traffic cop, massacres Barzini along with his driver and bodyguard, while the traitor Tessio is ominously led away, surrounded by Michael’s men, to be executed. It is, of course, Clemenza who wraps up the massacre, strangling Carlo with a rope from the back seat of a car. As the windshield shatters under Carlo’s thrashing feet, the car calmly drives away from the mansion.
What stands out in these scenes are the expressions of those committing the murders. With blank or bored faces, they carry out these brutal acts as if handling routine tasks. Michael stands in front of the mansion, indifferently watching his brother-in-law’s final moments, his own expression frozen in cold determination.
Amid the sound of the cathedral’s pipe organ, the solemn mass and the gunshots of the massacre swirl together on the same screen without distinction. Images of angels and demons, praise and slaughter, intertwine and overlap like an inseparable single face, while the blood-soaked crime scene alternates with seemingly expressionless religious paintings and statues of the Virgin Mary, creating a chilling effect. Some critics assess that through this scene, the director has skillfully conveyed the message that good and evil coexist within human beings.

Character Analysis: A Complex Cast of Characters

The protagonist, Michael (Al Pacino), appears early in the film as a bright, model-student-type character serving as a naval officer, but as he experiences various events, he gradually transforms into a calm and ruthless boss. Particularly from the middle of the film onward, he is intentionally positioned in the center of the frame to visually reinforce his status as the head of the organization.
Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) possesses the authoritative demeanor of a typical mafia boss, but after being shot, he reveals the image of a frail old man and his human side as a man devoted to his family. His duality is a key element that reveals the complexity of his character.
Looking at the brothers, the eldest, Sonny, is portrayed as a character brimming with confidence but lacking in composure and prone to outbursts. The second brother displays a relatively weak side, while the adopted son, Tom, possesses the strategic acumen of a lawyer and serves as Michael’s right-hand man. Michael’s girlfriend, Kay, is a down-to-earth and wholesome character who symbolizes his conflict with the dark world he inhabits.
Thus, the characters in ‘The Godfather’ are not portrayed in simple black-and-white terms. Complex personalities intertwine, such as Michael’s rapid transformation following his father’s shooting, and Vito’s display of humanity toward his family despite ordering brutal crimes. Although the film features a vast array of characters, their individual contradictions and flaws weave the overall structure tightly together.

Plot Development and Visual Expression

The plot can be broadly divided into several phases: the period before and after Vito’s shooting; the crisis within the organization and Michael’s quest for revenge; his life in hiding in Sicily and Sonny’s death; and the final phase where Michael, as the boss of the organization, eliminates all his enemies. Overall, the film maintains a slow and heavy tone, but the plot unfolds in a condensed manner, delivering key scenes with a sense of urgency while omitting unnecessary exposition.
The film features minimal dialogue and conveys a great deal of information concisely through just a few scenes. A prime example of this narrative style is the scene where a horse’s head is placed on the film producer’s bed the day after he is threatened, effectively completing the message with a single shot. This editing style maintains suspense while minimizing any sense of dragging.
Visual imagery is also a crucial narrative tool. The film employs a generally dark tone, with a yellowish tint added to daytime scenes to emphasize the contrast between light and shadow on the characters. These lighting and color choices reinforce the film noir atmosphere and effectively convey the film’s heavy emotional tone. In particular, the contrast between excessive gunfire and a quiet atmosphere—as seen in the scene where Sonny is murdered—maximizes the sense of brutality.

Thematic Analysis: Mafia Narratives and American Society

On the surface, the themes of ‘The Godfather’ are revenge and family loyalty within the mafia world, but on a broader level, it is also a work that metaphorically depicts the dark underbelly of American capitalist society. This becomes even clearer when connecting the first film with its sequels (especially the second).
Part II reveals Vito Corleone’s youth and his immigrant background; his narrative as a Sicilian immigrant symbolizes the archetypal immigrant in American society. America, as the land of freedom and opportunity—the “American Dream”—offered opportunities to many immigrants, but in the process, competition, violence, and the logic of power came into play.
Vito and Michael achieve success within the logic of capital and power, but at the cost of familial bonds and personal ethics, which gradually erode or disintegrate. In Part II, Michael escapes crises by any means necessary but ultimately loses his wife and becomes lonely. Michael’s fate—even going so far as to eliminate his own brothers—dramatically illustrates the collapse of the family.
The film’s depiction of the collusion between criminal organizations and political circles evokes the dark side of American society. Furthermore, the director seems intent on showing that the logic of competition and survival of the fittest in American capitalism mirrors the Mafia’s logic of violence and power. The violence, sacrifice, and personal loss lurking behind the façade of a prosperous society are intertwined with the fate of the Corleone family.

Frame Analysis: Cross-Cutting Between the Baptism and the Assassinations

While the film is filled with memorable scenes, the sequence in the latter half—where the baptism scene is cross-cut with the assassinations of various family bosses—is particularly masterful. As solemn organ music fills the church and the priest conducts the ceremony, scenes of assassinations carried out on Michael’s orders are intercut.
Specifically, the priest’s pronouncements, the organ music, Michael’s expressionless face, and execution scenes taking place at five different locations are shown in alternating cuts. This interweaving of the holiest ritual and the most heinous murder—each amplifying the other—conveys extreme contradiction and shock to the audience.
In particular, the close-up of glasses shattering at the moment of the gunshot, and the alternating close-ups of Michael’s face and the baby’s face, maximize the cruelty and irony. This contrast and interweaving of images goes beyond mere entertainment to powerfully imprint the ethical and aesthetic messages the film seeks to convey.

Conclusion

It is no coincidence that ‘The Godfather’ consistently appears on lists of the greatest films in newspapers and various surveys. Analyzing this work, which has garnered both commercial success and critical acclaim, reaffirms its greatness.
The process of examining this film has also provided me with much personal reflection. Its vast narrative, intricate imagery, and complex characterization leave room for reinterpretation from various perspectives for a long time to come. For me, how “The Godfather” will resonate with me at different moments in my life, and the nature of its appeal, remains a source of curiosity and fascination.