Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Stanley J. Solomon

Critical Essay by Stanley J. Solomon

Coppola's insight into the [crime film] genre reveals itself in his handling of the film's structure, which features a gallery of criminal types with wit, charm, courage, and heroic stature (who never change or develop)—an achievement that can only by accomplished by limiting the film's sphere of life to the criminal element. Coppola certainly understood that if the world of crime obtruded into the realm of society's ordinary activities—if, for instance, the general citizenry were shot at—ordinary moral concerns would dominate our relationship to the figures in the film. But The Godfather is populated only by criminals and their relatives or by people corrupt enough to belong to their world…. The Godfather's power struggles and economic and social conflicts take place in the world of the gutter, but like most films depicting microcosms, the film also operates in the abstract realm, where the believers confront the pagans, and the upholders...
(read more)