hello and welcome back to film 1701 Hollywood olden ooh last week we started section 4 on the Hollywood crime film and we discussed the classical gangster film Public Enemy directed by William a Wellman in 1931 in the early years of the Great Depression this week we'll talk about the revisionist crime film and we'll examine the Godfather directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1972 40 years after the making of Public Enemy The Godfather was one of a series of hits for Paramount Pictures made under the supervision of then studio head Robert Evans who before going into show business had run a women's clothing store with his brother after a very brief stint in acting he turned to producing staking himself with the money he'd made in his clothing business and becoming extremely successful in 1967 he was hired to head Paramount Pictures which was struggling and he turned things around producing several commercial and critical hits including Rosemary's Baby directed by Roman Polanski in 1968 love story directed by Arthur Hiller in 1970 and starring Evans third wife Ali MacGraw who would leave him for action movie star Steve McQueen when they met on the getaway also produced by Evans and also Chinatown directed by Polanski in 1974 Evans became part of Hollywood legend and lore due not only to his success and multiple marriages I think eight but several scandals including a conviction for cocaine trafficking as well as the infamous Cotton Club murder which took place during the shooting of this film which he also produced and which was also directed by Francis Ford Coppola if you've ever seen the film wag the dog directed by Barry Levinson in 1997 Evans is the inspiration and model for Dustin Hoffman's character big-time Hollywood producer Stan Lee moths as for The Godfather the film was adapted from the original novel written by Mario Puzo and published in 1969 Paramount Pictures obtained the rights to the book for $80,000 before it became number one on the New York best New York Times bestseller list the studio had difficulties hiring a director as several frontrunners turned it down finally Coppola one of a new generation of Hollywood movie brats whom I'll talk about later signed on this began a contentious period of wrangling between the filmmaker in the studio about several aspects of production including who would play the lead roles of Don Vito Corleone and his son and heir Michael Coppola wanted megastar Marlon Brando the Hollywood icon of the fifties rebel who due to several failed films and a reputation for being difficult was by now considered box-office poison eventually as legend goes Brando was forced to do a screen test and the brilliance of his performance convinced the studio Coppola also wanted a little-known stage actor Al Pacino to play the role of Michael but Pacino screen test was not impressive and also he was under contract at that time to MGM it took some wrangling and perhaps even a little mob persuasion to convince MGM to free Pacino from his contract and negotiate a deal the story of The Godfather takes place in the years between 1945 and 1955 it's about a fictional family the Corleone's who are Italian immigrants and one of the five most powerful mob families in New York the patriarch of the family is Vittorio and aleni who comes to America alone as a young boy from Sicily where his escaped a bloody vendetta between rival gangs of the black hand or mafia that killed his father and put him in danger adopted by Jenko upon Dondo an olive oil importer and his family he adopts the new name of Vito Corleone taking his surname from his hometown in Sicily as he grows to maturity in the rough streets of Little Italy taking a young Italian wife and starting his own family he gets involved in petty crime and racketeering to augment his wages and support family and in time he becomes a local power player within the Sicilian immigrant community famous for his ability to resolve problems in return for timely favors he soon able to muscle in on the territory of a local mafia chieftain and forms his own small mob family with himself at the head and his two good friends from the hood Sal Tessio and Peter Clemenza as his captains each running small rackets in bootlegging prostitution betting and loan sharking as Vito's power and wolf crow he brings his eldest son Santino known as Sonny into the business Sonny a hothead is soon joined by his younger brother Fredo who's a bit of a simpleton Connie the only daughter marries one of Sonny's childhood friends who is also part of the business the baby of the family Michael is the most American the only one with an English name and the only one to go to college and to go to war where he receives the Distinguished Service Medal he is the fruition of the Dawn's ambitions to seek better opportunities for himself and his family and to achieve the American dream for that reason the dawn has tried to keep Michael out of the family business however is the novel in the film reveal this ultimately proves impossible as with all gangster films or crime films the central conflict is between law and order and crime or between the police and the criminals who at a basic level embody the conflict between order and chaos this is true of both the classical and the revisionist cycles of the John as is the construction of the gangster as an antihero and if you recall the aunt hero is the protagonist who although sympathetic and perhaps even like a blue isn't moral ethical or admirable he doesn't act in the best interests of others but whereas in the classical crime film it's clear which faction represents order and which represents chaos it's less clear in the revisionist version in fact in the revisionist gangster film which subverts the reigning social values and ideas of the day more often than not it's the forces of law and order or agents of authority who represent chaos and the criminal or gangster who provides some semblance of structure and order this gives you an idea of the depth of animosity toward the establishment and reigning structures of power that was felt by the younger generation in the 60s and 70s that in their eyes the gangster criminal can be considered officer kind of righteous rebel or revolutionary standing up against the man combatting corrupt bureaucratic institutions to fat-cat corporate elite and social justice which enforce conformity destroy individuality and freedom and basic human rights even more insidious however is the subtle acknowledgment that these criminals however revolutionary wield the power far more dangerous and corrupt than the establishment that they have overturned and that they represent a far greater peril to public safety and social morality for in fact what they bring is not truly order but Anarchy which tears the entire system down not for the good of society but again still for the criminals own game The Godfather was one in a chain of revisionist gangster movies produced in Hollywood in the late 1960s Bonnie and Clyde directed by Arthur Penn in 1967 who is a particular landmark film in the gangster genre and the new Hollywood era in general this film which broke numerous narrative and cinematic conventions making it hugely popular amongst the young generation of film goers who reveled in his groundbreaking taboo smashing scenes of sex and bloody nihilistic violence was a crowd favorite if you haven't seen it the final sequence of the film was considered for its time the most gruesome death scene in film history that same year Hollywood released in cold blood a chilling crime spree film directed by Richard Brooks and based on the best-selling novel by Truman Capote as well as the st. Valentine's Day Massacre by horse lock Meister director Roger Corman the Boston Strangler directed by Richard Fleischer in 1968 the first of the serial killer profiler films and bloody mama also directed by Roger Corman in 1970 starring Shelley Winters as real-life 1930s criminal Ma Barker matriarch of a family of violent deranged bank robbers we also have the Brotherhood directed by Martin Ritt in 1968 and starring Kirk Douglas which priests ages The Godfather in its story about the son of a powerful mafia Don who returns from the war in Vietnam and just wants to live his own life but has pulled back in by his older brother into the family business now we've established that the revisionist cycle of vision questions or challenges the values and ideals established and reinforced in the classical phase of the jar and that it also toys with the cinematic inventions which frequently are linked to underlying ideologies or can conventional points of view that the audience is intended to share but here's the question how can I gangster from be revisionist particularly if the whole whole gangster genre is itself challenging the values and ideals and ideologies reinforced in classical Hollywood narrative the gangster is a rebellious character who breaks the law and resists social conventions the gangster film also inverts certain ideologies like the American Dream or the democratic capitalist ideal by exploiting or perverting their aims so then is the gangster Jean already inherently revisionist and if so can it have its own revisionist cycle here's the issue as mentioned in our discussion of the Public Enemy well the gangster himself is considered a transgressive character because he breaks the law and perverts important social values and ideals he gets punished fell'd or at least that's what happens in the classical cycle while we enjoy watching him raise hell and make his way to the top the end does not justify the means his methods are not OK and the classic gangster film clearly signal signals that are only by the conclusion of the film in which the gangsters apprehended and incarcerated or killed but also by the way in which he is represented throughout the film shows us that though he may be charismatic and even engaging he is always the antihero and beyond that there's always something about him that we find repugnant and turns us off maybe it's his roughness toward women or his ruthlessness and his business dealings or the sadistic pleasure he takes in hurting or killing others Mayson maybe it's the fact that he sometimes portrayed is foreign or alien with a thick accent or dark complexion or perhaps because there's something animalistic or bestial in his manners and behavior take a look at the extracts I've posted one from Scarface in which Tony has a creepy exchange with his younger sister Francesca and one from the Public Enemy from the scene I mentioned in last week's lecture in which gangster Tom powers played by Hollywood tough-guy James Cagney responds to his girlfriend's complaints by mashing a grapefruit in her face in the classical cycle of the genre the gangster is usually portrayed as a sociopath sometimes even a psychopath and it makes us uncomfortable we don't want to get too close to that that essentially is the ideological framework in operation make it clear that however charismatic the gangster maybe he is transgressing the law he is the embodiment of chaos which threatens the social order and we as social citizens have no choice but to come out against him never at any time did we really root for them or hope that he gets away or feel sorry for him when he is caught and punished because even at that point he exhibits some form of behavior whether cowardly or pathetic that destroys what might be any lingering empathy for him in the revisionist cycle the gangster though perhaps still a sociopath nonetheless strikes out at all those rules and conventions that drive us all crazy as well as against all the hypocrisy and elements of social and political corruption by which we are all so oppressed on a daily basis so that's a big difference while the gangster on both cycles is a victim and an agent of oppression robbing from the rich and the poor taking advantage of the system for his own benefit in the reverse signal cycle the gangster is glorified not for his crime up the ladder of success but for his struggle against the system and his efforts to dismantle it altogether and so that's one of the two marks of the revisionism even in the gangster film this ability to interrogate or critique the reigning ideology and show its inherent flaws as well as the collateral damage within the surrounding society the classical gangster wants to be part of the establishment to belong he is the consummate capitalist some ways but in others the consummate fascist but the revisionist gangster has no respect for the establishment and so to some degree has more of a populist Sensibility the classical gangster wants to rise above his station change his appearance his accent his name in order to belong or fit in after all the classical gangster emerged during successive waves of immigration to America his story in many ways echoes those of the Greeners who came to America looking for better opportunities and a place to belong but the revisionist gangster is one of the people as a social rebel he is a clear sense of who he is and has no desire to change that nor does he want to be like anybody else after all the revisionist gangster emerges during the age of identity politics when it was okay to be different and when you didn't have to conform I know the ultimate aim is to be American and to have American children it's not only about belonging but also about blending in as the means of masking or legitimizing his criminal operations so the answer to that question can the crime film which is inherently a revision as y'all have its own revisionist cycle the answer is yes both in terms of its narrative and cinematic conventions in the classical cycle a central theme is still the American Dream and reigning social values and ideals which though perverted by the criminal are desirable to him though regular avenues of upward socio-economic mobility may be barred to him because of his criminal activities he still aspires to it and although he's excluded because he's an immigrant and considered non-white he is desperate to belong in the revisionist cycle that dream and those values and ideals become suspect they're no longer golden standards of success and achievement in America but the revisionist gangster cycle shows us as how the establishment and not the criminals had perverted and destroyed those values the former good guys have become the bad guys the true villains of the piece by the same token the revisionist gangster though he may be able to infiltrate American society doesn't necessarily want to belong to it he has nothing but contempt for it and only engages with it insofar as it suits his own ends you