Sunday, September 15, 2024

Reel Adventures 8 - Part 2

It was another very special night at R.W. Norton Art Gallery for Reel Adventures 8, The Godfather!

I gave a talk that was in two separate parts. Here is part two:

In previous talks, I’ve focused on the why. Why might the director have made the choices that he made. Today, my talk is perhaps slightly more surface. I am going to focus on the what. What did Coppola do with what was on the page of Puzo’s novel as he made it into a film.

Every artistic medium is different - sculpture from painting, opera from theater, film from literature. When it comes to the five senses, you can’t taste, smell or touch in a film but you can hear and see, which you can’t do in a novel.

So let’s look at how Coppola crafts what we see and hear in The Godfather.

Here’s what was on the page:
https://drive.google.com/.../1UlEm03o2g5yyUeZF.../view... (I read aloud from "At a quarter..." to "flights of steps.")

Now let’s look at the scene and what Coppola kept in as far as what we see and hear.

SHOW SCENE 1

Inspired by Coppola’s headings in his Notebook, I approached it with three headings of my own. What did Coppola take from the book, what did he eliminate and what did he add? Let’s take a look.

By no means is this list exhaustive but my hope is that it gives you a sense of Coppola’s talents and a feel for what happens from page to screen.

https://docs.google.com/.../1Rq9wqVptS70W6MkP9MJZ.../edit... (the PowerPoint we used to accompany this section)

Coppola takes these two lines of dialogue verbatim from the book. He eliminates most of the rest of the dialogue. He also gets rid of the bit about the Don calling for Hagen.

In the book, this is all one scene in one chapter. When Coppola turns it into a film, he breaks the scene into two parts, inserting the killing of Luca Brasi and the kidnapping of Hagen, between the two sections.

Coppola then adds all these lines of dialogue, which I think are important for two reasons:

1. As Coppola mentioned in the video, “People must feel like they are seeing a real thing.” These added lines of Italian dialogue add texture to the film and help us buy into and believe that we are in a specific world of Italian-Americans.

2. And by adding these references to “Pop” and “Pa”, I would make the case that Coppola is building up something that he will pay off later in the scene. More on that in a minute.

And then lastly, Coppola makes the decision to film this entire part of the scene in one 21 second long take. For those of you who haven’t been here before, a long take is simply a shot without any cuts. The camera turns on, films the scene, and then the camera turns off.

Now let’s look at the rest of the scene. Here’s what’s on the page, and please bear with me it’s a little long.
And here’s what’s onscreen.

SHOW SCENE TWO


And then we used the same PowerPoint as before to accompany the rest of the talk:

Using the exact same process as before, Coppola kept in Puzo’s description of the Don pointing but not handling the fruit. He also, as Puzo describes, has crowds gathering around after the Don has been shot.

Coppola eliminates all the Daily News stuff that Puzo mentions; he also never shows any police or detectives arriving.

In his notebook, in the columns next to this scene, Coppola wrote how would Hitchcock design this? DESIGN CAREFULLY!

Alfred Hitchcock was known as one of the most meticulous directors ever when it came to preparing to film. Hitchcock would draw out or storyboard every shot in his films, ensuring that they communicated his vision before he even went to film them. So Coppola was looking at Hitchcock as a role model for how he should approach this scene.

Coppola adds all kinds of little touches. He adds the following bits of dialogue – “Fredo, I’m going to buy some fruit”; “Okay Pop”; “Merry Christmas. I want some fruit.” and “Papa!”

I think the emotional high point of the scene is the final beat when Fredo screams out, “Papa!” But this only works the way that it does because of John Cazale’s ability as an actor, but even more important, because Coppola has designed it that way.

In other words, Coppola earns this emotional moment because he builds up to it by scattering the different mentions of “Pop” and “Pa” throughout the scene before finally paying it off with Fredo’s “Papa” at the very end. This sense of design and use of repetition is just one of the many examples in The Godfather of Coppola’s great skill as a writer and director.

You also see his skill in some of the visual choices he makes like this shot that is not from Fredo’s POV.

This is a convention from the horror film genre, where we see a shot from an unidentified POV, alerting us to the fact that something ominous is about to happen. Which of course it does.

Or we see Coppola’s skill in how he translates Puzo’s line in the book – “Don Corleone knew immediately what was to happen” to directing this simple look of recognition on Brando’s face.

And we see his classy sense of direction in his elegant cut from the henchmen’s running feet to the shot of them running with their guns.
And we see it in his choice of the high angle shot in the scene.

Like the asterisk in the prompt book that Coppola says means something of particular importance, the high angle shot serves that purpose for Coppola here. He hardly ever uses high angle shots in
the film so when he does we notice and realize, consciously or not, that this is an important moment.

And then again there are the details that Coppola adds. The Jake LaMotta poster at the fruit stand which is another Italian-American accent that Coppola adds to the design or the addition of Fredo fumbling with the gun which is just the perfect, succinct moment of visual characterization.

Coppola’s strong sense of design isn’t limited to what we see. It’s just as evident in what we hear.

At the beginning of the scene, we hear a trumpet playing scales in the background. As the action picks up, the trumpet slowly fades away, not replaced by music but rather natural sounds – running feet, gunshots, baskets of fruit being knocked over, the Don grunting. Most directors would lean on music to heighten the action and to guide our emotions. But Coppola believes in his actors, his camerawork, his editing and his design to do the job.

Coppola lets the scene play out with nearly 30 seconds of natural sounds (no music at all) before finally bringing back Nino Rota’s haunting Godfather theme as the Don falls to the ground.

To wrap it all up, I’ll leave you with this. Many people consider The Godfather as one of the great American films and Francis Ford Coppola one of the great American filmmakers. I think nowhere is Coppola’s talent more evident than when you see what he started with, in terms of The Godfather novel, and what he chose to have us see and hear as director of the film. Thank you.



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