Film Review; Xander Fraser reviews this years box office smash hits; Bruce Lee enters a dragon, Marlon Brandosimmers as the godfather and Liza Minnelli gives us a cabaret in Decadent Germany
This is a masterpiece. A timeless masterpiece.
It could be argued that Francis Ford Coppola's film of Mario Puzo's bestseller, at once an art movie and a commercial blockbuster, marked the dawn of the age of the mega-movie. Appropriately, the film is about a similar transition in organised crime, as the gentlemanly but sinister world of Don Vito (Brando) is eclipsed by the more brutal and expedient organisation represented by the doomed Sonny (Caan) and the calculating Michael (Pacino).
The old gangster movie is represented by Richard Conte and Sterling Hayden in bit parts, while Brando's cotton-cheeked patriarch represents everything about old Hollywood that Coppola aspired to. The younger generation is represented by the then fresh, exciting talents who remain respected names in their profession (Pacino, Robert Duvall, Caan, Diane Keaton). This is a film that has entered popular culture: even if you've never seen it, you know the lines ("Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes"), and some of the scenes (the horse's head). But there's more to it than moments imprinted on the psyche.
With a period setting evoked by amber-tinted photography and Nino Rota's elegantly decadent score, The Godfather has dated a lot less than most films of the early 70s. It paces itself deliberately, making its moments of action and horror more telling for the leisurely paths it weaves between them. With performances, style and substance to savour, this shows how it is possible to smash box office records without being mindless.
A well of playground and popular myth, due to Bruce Lee's subsequent demise, his final film now resides in cinema history a few notches above where its quality level actually warrants – and while this showcases his legendary abilities, it is lacking by most traditional standards.
Not much more than a Hollywood attempt to muscle in on the Hong Kong kung-fu scene, it's a daft hybrid of martial arts, Our Man Flint and Bondian excess. Nonetheless, Lee is still a wonder to watch and there's a rich visual taste from director Robert Clouse (the mirror duel is sensational) which ensures it's still more than worthy of merit.
"Cabaret" explores some of the same kinky territory celebrated in Visconti's "The Damned." Both movies share the general idea that the rise of the Nazi party in Germany was accompanied by a rise in bisexuality, homosexuality, sadomasochism, and assorted other activities. Taken as a generalization about a national movement, this is certainly extreme oversimplification. But taken as one approach to the darker recesses of Nazism, it may come pretty close to the mark. The Nazi gimmicks like boots and leather and muscles and racial superiority and outdoor rallies and Aryan comradeship offered an array of machismo-for-rent that had (and has) a special appeal to some kinds of impotent people.