Region 1 Paramount (USA)
NTSC, 1.85:1 16x9 enhanced
177/202/170 minutes
Audio: DD 5.1 English, DD 2.0 mono English, DD 5.1 French
Subtitles: Optional English, French, Spanish
Extras: audio commentaries by Francis Ford Coppola; deleted scenes; featurettes; The Corleone Family Tree; The Music of The Godfather; timeline; filmmakers’ profiles; photo galleries; storyboards; trailers; Easter Eggs; Godfather World; The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn’t; When the Shooting Stopped; Emulsional Rescue: Revealing The Godfather; The Godfather on the Red Carpet; Four Short Films on The Godfather
Released: 23 September 2008
slim keepcases in a cardboard box
Most of the time, I roll my eyes when I see or hear a mention of the Godfather movies. They’ve become so used in the vernacular that I simply have Godfather Fatigue. Yet, whenever I sit down to watch any of them, I become mesmerized and completely absorbed. The visual style makes one feel nostalgic even though the characters aren’t our relatives. The scripts’ charting of Michael Corleone’s rise and fall as a Mafia boss is both chilling and heartbreaking. Given Vito Corleone’s rough beginnings, the characters’ descent into illegal activities elicits sympathy; it’s almost acceptable for the protagonists to do very bad things since they’re surrounded by genuine scum. I even enjoy Part III as much as the first two since the finale shows how one man can’t control a sprawling family with too many goals and ambitions.
Recently, I’ve become worn out by today’s gun-and-edit movies like The Dark Knight, which are frequently visually incoherent. When done well, gun-and-edit can be a highly effective method (see Paul Greengrass’s oeuvre). However, while re-watching the Godfather movies, I noticed how much detail can be absorbed by the viewer’s eyes when a camera just sits there and records people sitting and talking or dancing slowly. As with the best of Akira Kurosawa’s movies, the Godfather Trilogy is a prime example of how much better a locked-down camera is compared to cameras flying all over the place for the sake of fake kineticism. I’ll take Al Pacino’s tightly-wound silent smoldering over one-second average-shot-length features any day.
Video:
Back when these movies were first released on DVD, my good friend John Puccio wrote about how surprisingly soft and murky they looked. He and I were shocked that the movies were released at all if that was the best that could be done. John even got a few communiqués from someone who was involved with the DVD transfers; that fellow told John that there was nothing wrong with the video.
Well...here we are with The Coppola Restoration, which clearly proves that John and I were right. The previous DVD versions look terrible by most measures. The new 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen images have the proper blacks, orange glows, and general clean-ups that the previous discs lacked. The Godfather movies aren’t stylized in the same manner as, say, Sin City or 300, but were created with a specific look in mind. The movies still look like old photographs, which is appropriate when considering how the visuals impart an oppressive gloom.
Audio:
As before, the movies are presented with DD 5.1 English tracks as the default audio. Since the movies were mixed before sound engineers took full advantage of extremely wide dynamic ranges and became creative with the use of surround effects beyond the usual pans, the audio is very straightforward in nature. You get dialogue coming out of the center and some front spread for the music scores. The rear channels exhibit some activity but are mostly silent. Gunshots sound muted and hollow, though a scene with a helicopter assault in Part III has a powerful kick.
The first two movies also have their original mono tracks presented as DD 2.0 mono English encodes. While dynamically restricted and less enveloping than the 5.1 re-mixes, the mono tracks are valuable inclusions in that they allow purists to re-create the ambience of watching the movies “back in the day”.
You can also watch the movie with DD 5.1 French dubs. Optional English, French, and Spanish subtitles as well as optional English closed captions support the audio.
Extras:
--Discs 1, 2, 3--
You get the same audio commentaries that Francis Ford Coppola recorded for the previous DVD editions.
Here’s the tricky part. Discs 4 and 5 are mis-labeled. The packaging states that Disc 4 has the extras from the previous box set while Disc 5 has the new extras. However, Disc 4 actually has the new extras while Disc 5 has the old extras. This is yet another Paramount Quality Control snafu following in the footsteps of Star Trek: Generations--Special Collector’s Edition, the Jack Ryan HD DVDs, and the various Star Trek TV shows with flimsy plastic cases and trays.
--Disc 4--
“The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn’t” is a re-tread of materials that are already familiar to fans (i.e. Coppola thought that he’d be fired every day he approached the set). “When the Shooting Stopped” features anecdotes about the movie’s post-production processes.
“Emulsional Rescue: Revealing The Godfather” is a featurette about restoring the movies, similar to featurettes on Warner special editions for movies like Gone With the Wind and Singin’ in the Rain. The big reveal is that Steven Spielberg shows up to claim that his first official order of business after Paramount bought DreamWorks was to ask his new bosses to cough up the dough to restore the first two movies and at least re-master the third one.
In “Godfather World”, various filmmakers talk about how the series influenced their lives and works.
“The Godfather on the Red Carpet” is an assemblage of interviews with people attending the premiere of Cloverfield (another Paramount release). I suppose this was intended to make the Godfather movies seem cool to the youth crowd, but if you’ve already bought the set, then do you really need to be told that the movies are cool?
Finally, “Four Short Films on The Godfather” is a collection of interview bits that didn’t fit anywhere else.
--Disc 5--
Disc 5 offers the same deleted scenes, featurettes, “The Corleone Family Tree”, “The Music of The Godfather”, timeline, filmmakers’ profiles, photo galleries, storyboards, trailers, TV clips, Easter Eggs, etc. as the Supplements Disc in the previous box set.
--Miscellaneous--
My copy includes a small booklet that advertises Paramount’s Blu-ray titles.
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