the movie you can't refuse

'The Godfather' returns to the big screen restored and as relevant as ever

Harris adhered without compromise to the visual structure Willis and Coppola established in The Godfather and carried through to the next two films. Willis used what he calls "Kodachromey" colors in the exterior family scenes - the whites popped, the yellow and reds billowed - and jet-black shadows and grainy browns in the interiors, dominated by the Don's business. When studio bosses at Paramount watched the dailies 36 years ago, they couldn't believe what they were seeing, or not seeing. Coppola and Willis cunningly designed Obama's favorite scene to give Brando a theatrical entrance even though Don Vito is just sitting in a chair. With his shutters drawn to the exuberant wedding outside in the Corleone compound, the Don must conduct business, because, as his son Michael says, "No Sicilian can refuse a favor on his daughter's wedding day." Vito does it in shadows.

The standard complaint in 1972 was that "kids wouldn't be able to see it in the drive-ins." Willis responded: "The kids aren't watching in the drive-ins anyway, they're making out in the back seat." Willis' complaint about contemporary hits is that they're "video games thrown up on the big screen," just as destructive to popular taste as the Doris Day films that trained people to expect light blitzing out to every corner of a room. (Ironically, the first two Godfather films have been turned into popular video games, with a third on the way.)

Harris says consumers seduced into buying high-def TVs and Blu-ray machines with eye-candy like animated features may pop in the sometimes-grainy Godfather and wonder: "What have we bought? What's going on here?"

Those questions should fade, as they did for doubters decades ago. I doubt anyone will be asking them when I and II play at the Senator, one of Harris' favorite theaters.

The Senator has made the wise, unusual decision to play both movies on each day of the week. Seeing them back to back allows you to appreciate the scope and artistry of Coppola's accomplishment. The Godfather puts many audiences in the position of Michael Corleone's outsider wife, Kay (Diane Keaton), who can't resist her attraction to him despite her abhorrence of his world.

The script doctor behind Don Vito's famous farewell scene, Robert Towne, says, "You have to understand that in 1972, we felt families were disintegrating - there was no loyalty within families, no cohesiveness, and our national family, led by the family in the White House, was full of back-stabbing. The Corleones became this role model of a family who stuck together through thick and thin, who'd die for one another."