I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.
I have said it already that I believe ‘The Godfather‘ is the single most influential movie ever made in this world.
To test my own belief, I started reading ‘The Godfather‘ the novel by Mario Puzo, the source material for the movie. Believe me, Mario Puzo’s novel is nothing but an extended screenplay of the movie. The novel as usual contains more detailed accounts of all the characters involved and there are some chapters dedicated to the characters that we just came across in the movie. Yet the movie went an extra mile with this source material, taking both the book and the movie to heights that were unprecedented at that time and still, it retains that aura of awing filmmakers all across the world.
Since I have watched both Part 1 and Part 2 of the series multiple times, my mind was already filled with faces for each character. And that was the best part of this reading experience I think. It accentuated many moments in the book. For example, there is a separate chapter dedicated to ‘The Rise of Don Vito Corleone‘, which makes up the flashback part in ‘The Godfather: Part 2‘. At the beginning of the chapter, my mind was occupied with the image of the child actor who plays Vito Corleone whose image gradually transferred to Robert De Niro during his early days with Clemenza and Tessio and without a hint of clue, when the chapter was over, my mind was filled with the image of Marlon Brando. I was spellbound by the quality of the writing which was also aptly transferred to the screen by Coppola&Co.
As I noticed, some of the famous lines from the movie are not there in the book. And one of my favourite lines from the movie, ‘Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli‘, was an improvisation! That once again proves my point why ‘The Godfather‘, the movie has that slight edge over the novel.
But the novel too has moments of its own that the movie didn’t consider including. One such moment was the killing of Michael’s bodyguard from Sicily who betrayed him and was responsible for the death of Apollonia.
TL;DR, if you love ‘The Godfather: Parts 1&2′, try reading the novel. You will love it even more.
