Pacino's role is bigger but he was not a big star so Brando got top billing. I think that is what the Oscars go by.
I agree it is Pacino's performance that I remember more. Might be the best performance of his stellar career.
"I think that is what the Oscars go by. "
That doesent sound like a very fair thing to "go by"
It could also be the way the producers submitted it to the Academy.
shareBrandon was far and away the biggest star heading into this movie. He's the title character and is the central character in every scene he's in. And he got top billing. So if the producers want to submit him as the lead actor, then he is.
shareAl Pacino once said in an interview that this was "outrageous" how Brando was nominated for Best Actor and Pacino only int he supporting category. But I think he was joking around , the way he said it.
The nominations were proper. Brando WAS the big star(a legend who had not been in something good in years) and Pacino WAS the unknown.
But there is more to it than that.
Don Vito on the page gave us no clue as to how Brando would portray him in the movie. That raspy, tired croak of a voice. The rubbing of his chin. Impressionists INSTANTANEOUSLY started doing "Brando as the Godfather" on TV, and Americans the nation over did "amateur versions" of Don Vito at parties(I know; I heard a lot of these impressions.)
Rather like George C. Scott as Patton and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, Brando gave us a movie character we could all imitate and be intrigued by. (And yet: Robert Shaw's Quint in Jaws -- ALSO imitated a lot, got no nomination.)
Beyond the fact that Brando created a character everybody would know(and love?) in the story, Don Vito is omnipresent. He's running the show until he gets shot(about 1/3 in) , ailing but powerful in the middle act(as when he chides Tom Hagen "You wanted to tell me...but you needed a drink first. Well now you have your drink." And even after he is dead, he looms over the story as the legacy Michael must live up to.
Michael slowly becomes the lead in The Godfather(he becomes...the Godfather) but Don Vito lords over EVERYONE...Sonny(who fears he cannot live up to his father), Fredo(who KNOWS he cannot live up to his father), Tom Hagen(a trusted legal ally, but...still just another "son.")
I suspect that Paramount made the decision on how to nominate Brando -- but they picked right.
Pacino's Oscar lay ahead. Funny -- they gave it to him for the wrong movie. Happens.
> Al Pacino once said in an interview that this was "outrageous" how Brando was nominated for Best Actor and Pacino only int he supporting category. But I think he was joking around , the way he said it.
I just looked at IMDB's "Awards" page for The Godfather, checking on a different question. I stumbled across this:
"Pacino did not attend the [Oscars] ceremony in protest of perceived category fraud. As his performance reflected greater screen time than that of his co-star Marlon Brando, Pacino believed he should have received a nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role."
> Al Pacino once said in an interview that this was "outrageous" how Brando was nominated for Best Actor and Pacino only int he supporting category. But I think he was joking around , the way he said it.
I just looked at IMDB's "Awards" page for The Godfather, checking on a different question. I stumbled across this:
"Pacino did not attend the [Oscars] ceremony in protest of perceived category fraud. As his performance reflected greater screen time than that of his co-star Marlon Brando, Pacino believed he should have received a nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
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Hmm. So I guess he wasn't joking around. There was irony that night: Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to turn the award down.
Oh, well, back to the topic at hand.
Oscar has proven that "greater screen time" isn't necessarily determinative. Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor award (for Silence of the Lambs) for very little screen time.
I'm still in Brando's corner on this one.
Consider these scenes with Brando:
All the scenes in the dark room during the wedding. Buonasera, Johnny Fontaine, Luca Brasi..hassling Sonny("a man who doesn't spend time with his family is not a man.") Michael is not in those scenes(he's outside with Kay, running exposition.)
The first meeting with Sollozzo ("Your business is just a little bit dangerous.") Sonny and Tom and even Fredo are there. No Michael.
Sitting on the couch talking with Sonny and Tom about drugs("there's a lot of money in that white powder.") Michael isn't there.
Out in Hollywood with Woltz and his horse. Michael's not there, Vito's not there but Vito is there in spirit ("The Godfather likes to hear bad news as soon as possible.")
Getting shot at the fruit stand -- Michael's not there -- hell, FREDO's there.
In the hospital -- Michael has big scenes there, but Vito in bed barely able to talk to his son...matters.
CONT
CONT
After Sonny gets killed -- "Well, now you've had your drink" and off to Buonasera's to collect on a debt ("Look how they massacred my boy."
At the big meeting with all the heads of family --- Tom is there, but Michael is not(he's in Italy.) Don Vito speaks both of his dead son(Sonny) and how he doesn't want his other son to die. ("If a bolt of lighting should hit him...")
In his big scene with Michael ("I wanted you to be Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone")
In the garden with his grandson. Michael's not there. But Death is...
---
Now, its easy to line up a whole bunch of Michael scenes, too, but I'm not sure they had the impact of the ones with Brando -- at the time. That voice. That film history face. Even his wedding tuxedo...
CONT
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I'll bet what burned Pacino even more than losing a Best Actor nom was being placed up for Best Supporting Actor alongside TWO other Godfather actors: Caan and Duvall. "Three brothers'; the Academy just bunched Pacino up with the other two.
Which only left room for two other Best Supporting nominees: Eddie Albert(hilarious in The Heartbreak Kid) and Joel Grey(the winner for not doing much in Cabaret except acting and looking weird.)
One more thing: the paperback of The Godfather -- a HUGE bestseller -- had Don Vito on the cover. He didn't look like Brando ,because Brando had not been cast yet, but everybody who bought that book thought: The Godfather is Don Vito.
Godfather II? Mike's got THAT one covered.
> Oscar has proven that "greater screen time" isn't necessarily determinative. Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor award (for Silence of the Lambs) for very little screen time.
Nor should it be determinative. And although I said below, in this thread, that Michael goes through the big character arc in The Godfather, that's not necessary for a best actor award either. You mentioned Patton, and I agree that George C. Scott's performance was powerful and the Academy got it right in giving him the nod ... yet Patton was the same man at the end of the movie as he was at the beginning. (Same with Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.)
I agree that Vito was a one of a kind character. I was too young to see the movie at the time but old enough to see and be part of the public's reaction. It was Vito the late night comics were imitating, not Michael. And even we schoolkids knew what "make him an offer he can't refuse" meant.
> Now, its easy to line up a whole bunch of Michael scenes, too, but I'm not sure they had the impact of the ones with Brando -- at the time.
They still don't have the impact, because Michael is such a reserved, controlled character. I think it would have improved the performance if Pacino had been a little more demonstrative. Well, it's an actor's job to do a character the way the director wants it done, so I guess Coppola gets the blame for this. Vito laughs and clowns around with his grandson (just before his fatal heart attack). In all the three Godfather movies, did Michael ever laugh about anything? I don't think so. Some of the scenes suffer for his being so reserved. When he first sees Apollonia and is hit by "the thunderbolt" I don't think the audience members who hadn't read the book could have appreciated the intensity of his reaction, how completely obsessed he was from that point until thier wedding, because it would have been out of character for Pacino to do anything other than what he did -- halt and stare.
Maybe the answer would have been to nominate both Pacino and Brando for best actor and let the Academy sort it out. I have no idea if that would have been possible, how the nominations work and that sort of thing. And I get Pacino's reason for his reaction. If not for Brando's performance, he almost certainly would have been nominated for best actor and might have got the award. But Brando can't be entirely "blamed" for that. The script, direction, et cetera were all done to make Vito a memorable and powerful character. Even though the movie is more Michael's story than Vito's, Coppola could have toned down the Vito character and highlighted Michael more, but didn't. I can only imagine that the next year, in 1973, Pacino might have ruefully sympathized with Sham -- a horse who would have been a certain Kentucky Derby winner and strong contender for the Triple Crown, except that he had the bad luck to be born in the same year as Secretariat.
The answer is, as others have pointed out, is that Brando was a big name and Pacino wasn't. Also Brando's performance was memorable, to put it mildly.
But I agree with you, in at least one sense. Michael Corleone is the main character in The Godfather. He's the one who goes through a complete character change. At the movie's beginning he's innocent, wants to have nothing to do with his father's life of crime. He also wants to be a good American -- and he did volunteer for the Marines and fight WWII, something Sonny, Fredo, and Tom never would have done. I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say that he's an American who just happens to speak Sicilian.
Then he goes through three major character changes. First, he regretfully decides to be the person to kill Sollozzo and McCluskey. He doesn't want to, he does it because he has no choice. But he understands that he is now part of the Mafia.
Second, Apollonia. I said elsewhere that after the thunderbolt with her, he'd never look at Kay quite the same way again. But it's more than that. We mostly hear about being a Sicilian in how that relates to the Mafia, but by the time he returns home he has become a Sicilian in every way, good and bad, and his relationship with Apollonia is an important part of that "Sicilianization," if that's even a word.
Third, Apollonia's death. There was a scene in the movie which was deleted. In that scene, and in the novel, when he regains consciousness after the car bomb explosion, the very first thing he does is say, get me Fabrizio. And he certainly doesn't mean, help the police find and arrest him. Until then he's viewed the Mafia power as something he'll simply have to wield as part of the life he's now in, and the things he'll have to do as regrettable but necessary. Now he wants and embraces that power.
So that's Michael. He goes from being a decent guy who wants to be a math professor to a scheming, murdering Mafia Don. And quite apart from morality, the transformation is probably complete in other cultural aspects. At the beginning he's the sort who might consider a fun time to be watching a baseball game while munching a hot dog; at the end he'd probably prefer eating a taralli while watching boccie.
Vito, by contrast, is a stable, unchanging character. To put in fiction writer's parlance, Vito and Michael are "flat" and "round" characters respectively. And even though Vito went through some changes in GF2, they're nothing compared to the magnitude of what Michael went through here. Furthermore, that's true of all the other characters in The Godfather. Apart from the fact that some of them die -- whether by natural or unnatural causes -- nobody else's character changes in The Godfather. It's true that some people's relationships to the Mafia change -- Woltz, and later Signor Roberto in GF2 -- but they're still the same people they were before.
Only Kay in this movie and Tom in GF2 come close to any real character change, but even that is because of their relationships to Michael. In the final moments of GF1, Kay finally completely "gets it" about Michael and loses her last few illusions. Over the course of GF2, Tom, who loves Michael as a brother, comes to understand that his affection is not returned at all. They're both sadder and wiser, sure, but they're still essentially the same people.
So yeah, I agree with you. Sure, in terms of screen presence, Vito is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. But this is Michael's movie.
I had no idea that they shot that scene after Apollonia's death. It would have been great of they kept that in. That would have seemed like a nice way to show his transition.
Now that you mention it, the entire movie seems like The Michael Corleone Story. It's all one big character arch.
> I had no idea that they shot that scene after Apollonia's death. It would have been great of they kept that in. That would have seemed like a nice way to show his transition.
It would have been good for another reason too. The next time we see Michael, he's back in the US and tells Kay he's been back over a year. So what's he gone through, emotionally, in the interval? If I were in his shoes, I'd understand that Mafia types do not attack other Mafia members' spouses and other family members. Everyone is far too vulnerable to retaliation in kind. I'd know with certainty that what had happened to Apollonia was an accident. But I'd also understand that I had known all along that accidents are possible and that by marrying her I had put her at risk. I'd have moments of searing self-recrimination -- "I loved her, so I should have stayed the hell away from her. Instead, I selfishly married her, and now because of that she's dead."
In the novel, Michael never is seen having a moment like that; and indeed, the point is made more strongly in that when his first thoughts are of revenge, the people around him -- Mafiosi -- are relieved. It's not stated but they're thinking, good, he's all right, he's got his head on straight and is acting like he's supposed to. In the movie, we really can't say. For all we know, he might have gone through a deep depression including feelings like that, then come to terms with it, and is now approaching Kay to resume his life. There's absolutely nothing to indicate against that possibility, and it's been over a year. Well, for all we know he might have done that in the book too, at times when he's "off stage." But showing that his very first reaction when learning of her death is not grief or shock but revenge implies that whatever such regrets he may have had of that sort were few and far between. Yes, they should have kept that in the movie.
I always felt that there was a huge jump in that part of the movie. If I recall correctly, I believe the season changes. That part of the movie always seemed like there was a chunk missing.
share> If I recall correctly, I believe the season changes.
Yeah, dead leaves are blowing around, everyone's dressed for cool weather; it's autumn. They made it clear there's a jump forward in time but did nothing to indicate what had happened in that interval.
> That part of the movie always seemed like there was a chunk missing.
Yeah, it felt that way to me too. As I recall, when he's told Apollonia is dead, after saying he wants revenge he also says, "Tell my father to get me home. Tell him I wish to be his son." Puzo doesn't beat the readers over the head with it but it's clearly a turning point for him. I don't think the deleted movie scene included that line but it should have. The full scene would have been about one minute long and would have made things more clear.
There's an interesting part in the book that didn't make it into any of the movies. The Bocchicchio clan is part of the underworld, but they're not quite smart enough to compete on equal terms with the other players. They do have one powerful asset, though -- when wronged, they're more hell-bent for vengeance than anyone else around. If they decide you're to die, nothing will stop them from getting you. So they hire themselves out as hostages. For example, when Sollozzo and Michael met, Sollozzo paid for a Bocchichio hostage to be held by the Corleones, to guarantee Mike's safety. Had Michael been killed, the Corleones would have killed the hostage. The Bocchicchios would have then blamed Sollozzo for their kinsman's death and gone after him. (Sollozzo did not ask for and did not get a hostage to guarantee his safety; after attempting to kill Vito he knew there was no point.)
Anyway, there's one guy, Felix Bocchicchio, who is kind of the laughing stock of the family, because he's gone straight. IIRC he got a law degree and was practicing with a partner, whom he discovered was ripping him off. I'm hazy on the details and don't have the book here ... but someone was screwing this guy, that I do remember. He showed he was a real Bocchicchio after all, gunned the man down. But being a Bocchicchio he went about it clumsily and was caught, with such overwhelming evidence against him that there was no hope of avoiding conviction and execution, whether by legal defense or by corrupt influence. So this guy is now sitting on Death Row, and the Corleones made him an offer. Confess to the murders of Sollozzo and McCluskey and your widow will never have to worry about money again. It took some work, the Bocchicchios had to be convinced there was absolutely no hope for Felix, but he confessed. Even then, Vito waited until Felix was executed before bringing Michael back -- but with that confession, Michael was in the clear on those murders.
I wonder if they filmed any of this and it just never made the final cut. 4 1/2 hours seems accurate.
shareI'm going by the script, on this page: http://www.thegodfathertrilogy.com/gf1/transcript/gf1transcript.html
It's unofficial but seems generally accurate. According to that, the only deleted scene is a brief one -- he regains consciousness, asks what happened to Apollonia, is told she's dead, then he says, "get me Fabrizio." Also, I've got the DVD set which includes deleted scenes. It's been a while since I looked but I'm sure there's nothing about the Bocchicchios in the deleted scenes. Now, for all we know, there might be some "deleted deleted scenes" which never made it off the cutting room floor, but that's what I can tell you.
all the more reason to ignore them and their decisions. Its run by idiots.
shareYou answered your own question: the Oscars make no sense
Oscars are political awards. Studios campaign for them and accordingly strategize to shift the odds in their favor
Pacino getting billed as a supporting actor is far from the only case of questionable categorization in Oscar history. Just recently, Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield both got nominated under the Best Supporting Actor category lol. Think about that... the two main actors in a movie, who between them probably appeared in every single scene, both got categorized as SUPPORTING actors. The fucking movie title itself directly references these two characters. Realistically, they were both co-leads
Kaluuya put on a great performance, no doubt. But it's just one example of the shit studios pull in order to win Oscars
I definitely agree about Kaluuya.
shareI just thought that I would add ...in support of Brando as the Best Actor nominee...
..that many print ads for The Godfather used a pull quote from some review: "Marlon Brando IS the Godfather!"
It's possible they had that in mind, but movie producers usually do the campaigning.
shareYes. Oscar history is filled with producer/studio decisions on who to put up for which award.
Recently, Leo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt had "co-leads" in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but they put up Leo for Best Actor, and Brad for Best Supporting. Brad won(Leo already had an Oscar.)
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Tatum O'Neal won a supporting actress Oscar and she's in every scene.
share