The DVD Report #74

Since the introduction of the high-end of high definition, now the exclusive purview of Blu-ray, we have seen films that already looked and sounded great on standard DVD look even better in the new format. Now, we are seeing films that were in dire need of restoration being restored for release in the new format with concurrent releases in standard DVD for those who have not yet made the upgrade. The worm has turned, as they say. There is no better representation of this than The Godfather – The Coppola Restoration.

When Dreamworks, the company co-founded by Steven Spielberg, became part of Paramount, Francis Ford Coppola approached Spielberg about looking into the restoration of The Godfather , a film whose negative had been run through the sprockets so many times to produce release prints in the early 1970s that no one, not even Coppola himself, could remember how vibrantly the film originally looked.

Paramount had been one of the top studios from the 1930s through the early 1960s, but by the time it was purchased by conglomerate Gulf and Western in 1969, it had become the least relevant of the then-eight major studios in Hollywood. Questions were raised as to whether it would even continue to produce films for much longer. Somehow Production Chief Bob Evans was able to convince the corporate giant to allow him to continue with his already planned projects, most importantly: Love Story and The Godfather.

Both Love Story and The Godfather were commissioned by Evans and company to be written as novels and then made into films for his studio. Love Story, released in December 1970, was the first film to be released while it was still a number one best seller. It became a smash hit and single-handedly established Paramount as the hottest studio in town. Evans was allowed to go forward with other projects including The Godfather with the proviso that it be made as cheaply as possible by having the story updated from the 1940s to the then-present and filmed on location in Kansas City rather than New York.

By this time, however, numerous directors including Richard Brooks and Elia Kazan had turned down the project. Francis Ford Coppola, who had made one of Paramount’s biggest recent flops, 1968’s Finian’s Rainbow, agreed to make the film under certain conditions. He had read the novel and hated it. Even more, he hated the depiction of Italian-Americans in gangster movies and TV shows from Scarface to The Untouchables. He wanted to change the focus of the story from its emphasis on crime to a family saga in which the family business just happened to be crime, making it into a metaphor for American capitalism. He also insisted that the film be set in the 1940s and filmed in New York, the only two aspects of the novel he really liked. Paramount caved in and Coppola co-wrote the screenplay with the book’s author, Mario Puzo.

Coppola’s biggest hurdle was with the casting. Paramount objected to all of his choices, particularly Marlon Brando, whose career had long been in decline and short, scrappy Al Pacino. The character of Michael, which Pacino was to play, was written with Robert Redford in mind, and Paramount really wanted Redford to play the part. They relented, however, after seeing both actors’ screen tests – yes, the legendary Brando had to be tested just like any other actor for the role of Mafia chief Don Corleone.

Paramount kept a close watch on the filming. Seeing the rushes, they were dismayed by the look and pacing of the film, and had secretly negotiated with a more action-oriented director to take over filming. That was until Coppola showed them the pivotal restaurant assassination scene in which Pacino’s character proves he has the stuff to be the next Godfather. The director waiting in the wings was let go and Coppola was allowed to continue making the film.

The film was so highly publicized that by the time it was completed Paramount knew they had a phenomenon on their hands and a sequel was planned. When it was released in March 1972, it had become the most highly anticipated film since Gone with the Wind. Reviews were ecstatic and lines went around the corner at theatres everywhere. Those long, sustained lines signifying intense interest in the film were what forced the studio to strike many more prints of the film than had been intended, causing early deterioration of the film, which has now been digitally corrected.

The restorers sought the advice not only of Coppola, but also of his legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis and others. The results are stunning, no more so than in that fabled restaurant assassination scene where you can now see that Pacino’s acting is all in the eyes.

The film went into the Oscar race with 11 Oscar nominations, which was reduced to 10 when it was discovered that Nino Rota had used elements of one of his own previous scores in composing the film’s main themes. It went on to win 3 Oscars for Best Picture, Actor (Brando) and Screenplay, losing most of its nods to the year’s other phenomenon Cabaret.

Coppola’s second film in his eventual trilogy, The Godfather Part II, opened in December 1974. Structured to contrast the life of the new Godfather (Pacino’s character) with that of his father at the same age, the film went back and forth numerous times before finally settling in the 1950s for most of its screen time. Robert De Niro, speaking almost entirely in Italian, starred as the young Vito Corelone, the character played by Marlon Brando in the original. Though in better condition than the original, it too had to be restored. The results are once again, stunning.

Although passed over in the early awards, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Golden Globes and others, it went on to win 11 Oscar nominations and took home 6, including Best Picture, Supporting Actor (De Niro) and Director. It became the first sequel to win an Oscar and Brando and De Niro became the first, and so far only, actors to win for playing the same character in two different films.

It would be another sixteen years before the long-anticipated third film, The Godfather Part III, would make it to the big screen.

Released in December 1990 to mixed reviews, the film was nevertheless nominated for 7 Oscars, though it didn’t win any. Pacino, who was once again the best thing about the film, failed to pick up his third nomination for playing Michael Corleone, though Andy Garcia did receive one for playing his nephew, Vincent Mancini.

For years there was speculation that there would be a fourth Godfather featuring Garcia’s character, but as the years go by and the films pass further into myth, that seems very unlikely. The title family of TV’s The Sopranos, which included myriad quotes from the Godfather films, has now surpassed the Corleones as the Italian-American crime family to whom most filmgoers and TV watchers relate.

The Godfather Part III did not require restoration, but has been digitally re-mastered for Blu-ray and the results are also stunning.

The set is also available on standard DVD.

Crooked cops, murder and mayhem in the L.A. and Hollywood of the early 1950s is the background for Curtis Hanson’s 1997 masterpiece L.A. Confidential from the novel by James Ellroy. Having been one of the first films to be released on standard DVD ten years ago, it, too, was an obvious candidate for a Blu-ray upgrade and has gotten one from Warner Bros.

Budget constraints kept the film from being cast with box office names and therein lies the film’s strength with the masterful casting of Australians Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe as the male leads, and the thought-she-had-retired Kim Basinger as the female lead, along with a stellar supporting cast including Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, James Cromwell, David Strathairn, Ron Rifkin, Graham Beckel, Jim Metzler and Simon Baker.

The film won 70 international awards including Oscars for its screenplay and Basinger’s performance as a Veronica Lake lookalike hooker. It was nominated for another 7 Oscars, but lost them all of them to the juggernaut that was Titanic.

Loads of extras include several making-of documentaries and the pilot for a TV series shot in 2000 and aired in 2003. Kiefer Sutherland had the lead in the Kevin Spacey role, with Josh Hopkins in the Russell Crowe role, David Conrad in the Guy Pearce role, Taylor Pruitt Vance in the Danny DeVito role, Melissa George in the Kim Basinger role, Tom Nowicki in the James Cromwell role, and Eric Roberts in the David Strathairn role. It was nowhere near as compelling as the film.

L.A. Confidential has also been reissued on standard DVD.

Also newly released on Blu-ray and standard DVD is the 25th Anniversary Edition of Risky Business, the film for which Tom Cruise won the first of six Golden Globes to date.

The film has a number of fun set pieces, not the least of which is the classic scene featuring Cruise dancing in his underwear to Bob Seger’s recording of Old Time Rock & Roll.

Cruise is so affable as the wayward teen that the moral repugnance of the film defies scrutiny. He plays a high school kid who, after having sex with a hooker, becomes her pimp and tangles with the gangsters who control her. Meanwhile, he’s obsessed with the need to get into the right college and finding a replacement for his mother’s Faberge egg, broken in a free-for-all party while she was away.

The film’s emphasis on consumerism set the standard for just about every Hollywood comedy since in which material goods have become the Holy Grail for movie characters in search of what is missing in their lives.

For affirmation as to how little we have progressed in Hollywood comedies since, look no further than Sex and the City, the recent hit movie continuation of the long-running TV series, also out now on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Though I was never a habitual viewer of the TV series, I did manage to watch several episodes over the years, any one of which had more character development in its thirty minute running time than the film has in all of its two hours and thirty minutes.

The film is an ode to consumerism and greed. All connected with should be ashamed of it. There are no redeeming qualities about the film whatsoever. Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Cynthia Nixon all dump their lovers for no apparent reason other than for their characters to have something to do other than eat and shop. Kristin Davis has diarrhea, a perfect metaphor for the film.

Candice Bergen gets star billing for a one-scene nothing performance, and recent Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson is totally wasted as Parker’s assistant. Be smarter than them, don’t waste your time.

-Peter J. Patrick (September 30, 2008)