Almost 30 years and countless imitations later, it remains
untouchable. The secret is that it's only incidentally a gangster
film; the saga of the Corleone family plays more like King Lear or the
Oresteia than Goodfellas or Reservoir Dogs. At its heart is the tragedy
of youngest son Michael (Pacino), whose hard-won triumphs merely cast
him deeper into the moral murk suggested by Gordon Willis' ink black
cinematography; rarely since Rembrandt has so much been done with
shadows. But it's the intricate structure of characters,
relationships, hierarchies that Coppola and author Mario Puzo build
around the central story which makes The Godfather an offer you can't
refuse: a universal masterpiece.
