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1972 Best Picture:
The Godfather

 

Competition:
Caberet, Deliverance, Sounder, The Emigrants

Other Winners:
Best Actor: Marlon Brando, The Godfather 
Best Actress: Liza Minelli, Cabaret

Best Supporting Actor: Joel Grey, Cabaret
Best Supporting Actress: Eileen Heckert, Butterflies are Free
Best Director: Bob Fosse, Cabaret 

 

Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, Richard S. Castellano, James Caan, Talia Shire, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte

Storyline: Based on Mario Puzo's best selling book,   The Godfather is a story about the rise and fall of a Mafia family.  

Did it deserve to win: I'd stake my mother's life on it!  YES!  The Godfather, and its sequels, are among the best films ever, and perhaps the best work of director Francis Ford Coppola.  

The last musical to ever win a Best Picture nomination, Cabaret, was the biggest competition, supported largely by the strength of incredible performances by Liza Minelli and Joel Grey.  

Deliverance brought stardom, and an Oscar nomination, to Burt Reynolds, and the film remains an eerie cult classic to this day.

Sounder was about a black sharecropping family in Louisiana, and The Emigrants is a Swedish film about a poor Swedish family that moves to America to fulfill their dreams.  

Critique: If a marriage was to ever occur between violent gangster flicks, and epic period dramas, The Godfather had to be it.  The film fits into both genres,  and even rises above them, as a compelling story about family values, corruption and the American way.  

The film opens up with a wedding, and ends with a funeral, and in between, deals with the perils of being a part of a mafia family.  While many of the incidents are based loosely on actual events, the heart of the story is centered on the family unit.  With Brando as Don Corleone, Al Pacino and James Caan as the battling sons, and with Robert Duvall as the dutiful right hand man, you can't go wrong.  

The Godfather was rife with controversy when it was first released, particularly because of its violence.  Furthermore, this is not a glorified look at Mafioso life, but it could be easily construed as such.  

The characters, particularly Brando's have become legendary.  Lines like, "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse" have become part of everyday conversation.  

 

Behind the Scenes: The Godfather, nominated for eleven Academy Awards, and winning only three, became the most successful picture since Gone with the Wind.  It took home the Best Picture Oscar, and Brando was awarded the Best Actor Award, but it had to relent the lions share of big awards to the other big film of the year, Cabaret.  

Francis Ford Coppola shared the writing Oscar with Mario Puzo

Marlon Brando made history by refusing to accept his award.  Like George C. Scott, two years earlier, he didn't show up, but Brando went a step further, and sent Sacheen Littlefeather in his place.   Before she was booed off the stage, she announced that he would not be accepting on grounds that Hollywood was discriminatory against Native American people.  

Littlefeather was a bit of a fraud herself.  It later turned out that Littlefeather was actually Maria Cruz, a two bit actress from California.   She posed for Playboy a couple of years later, in an effort to boost her own sagging career.  

Al Pacino became a star after playing Michael Corleone.  He took the role after it was turned down by Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman.  

Paramount campaigned for the Oscar nominations, making sure that Brando was the only star to be listed in the Best Actor category.  Pacino, Caan and Duvall were listed, and eventually nominated for Best Supporting Actor.  

Brando was a sure thing for the Oscar, with competition that included Laurence Olivier for Sleuth.  Olivier was Francis Ford Coppola's other choice to play the role of Don Corleone.  Brando, who had been suffering a career low point, was cast after testing with tissue paper stuffed in his cheeks.

Al Martino played the role of Johnny, but only after Frank Sinatra was considered for the role.  Sinatra was later ruled out for the part as there were simply too many similarities between him and the character.   It was rumored that Sinatra attacked Mario Puzo in a Hollywood eatery when the book was published.  While the book is a work of fiction, the character of Johnny, the actor/singer who goes to Don Corleone for help in getting a movie role, was based loosely on Sinatra, who was always rumored to be involved with the mob.

Liza Minelli experienced, first hand, the so-called Oscar curse.  She has yet to come close to following up her success from Cabaret.  Her most notable appearances included a lead with Robert De Niro in the flop musical, New York, New York, and played a supporting role in the comedy Arthur.  

  

Sacheen Littlefeather refuses Marlon Brando's award for Best Actor, from presenters Liv Ullman and Roger Moore.  She goes on to announce that Brando is refusing to accept due to the unethical presentation and treatment of native American's in Hollywood. 

 

 

 

Murder, betrayal, and power - all in the family, as the Best Picture of 1972. 
Marlon Brando is Don Corleone, head of the family household. 
 
Al Maritno is Johnny Fontaine, Hollywood crooner, who comes to Don Corleone for a favor. 
The family assembles for a wedding photo. 
When a producer refuses to put Johnny in one of his movies, the producer is sent a strong message in the form of his own favorite horse's head.  (This head was real, by the way!)
 
Supporting Actor nominee, Al Pacino is favored son, Michael Corleone.
 
Pacino takes action when rival gangs are making attempts on his father. 
Robert Duvall is Tom Hagen, adopted into the family, as the Corleone's right hand man.
 
Michael hides out in Sicily when the heat in on back home.
 
Francis Ford Coppola's real life sister, Talia Shire is Connie, the Corleone sister who is being beaten by her husband.
 

Michael marries Apolonia, a young Sicilian girl.

 
Back home with Robert Duvall, girlfriend Kay, played by Diane Keaton, endures the stormy courtship between her and Michael.
 
Meanwhile, Talia Shire and her husband have another battle.
Off to protect his sister, brother Sonny falls into a trap, and is riddled with bullets.
Brando calls a meeting of the five families.
Pacino returns to take his place as next-in-line to the family.
Keaton and Pacino carry on their stormy relationship.
Father and son discuss the family business.
The Corleone enemies meet a bloody end.
Michael Corleone renounces his sins.