Has anyone read The Godfather by Mario Puzo? I was watching the film with Loris last night and it got me thinking about books made in to movies... I realize that this blog is called BukNazi but I would like to make the point that the blog is written with an eye towards any entertaining art medium out there.. Well, movies and books... E- book users are encouraged also!
So anyway I was watching The Godfather and I was thinking how incredible the movie is y'know? It is close to perfect.. Although Loris, from Calabria in the South of Italy had a thing or two to say about the Sicilian dialects of some of the characters. But it is an incredible feat of film making, everything about it, the pacing, cinematography, the acting. Little things y' know? Like babies crying in the background, that kind of thing.. Every little detail taken care of.
The reason I mention all this is because I was thinking that I believe that The Godfather has to be simply the best novel to screen transition ever made. Being one of the best movies of all time does help but it's not necessarily a reason to call it the best conversion ever.
Like most people I would think, I saw the movie before reading the book. While the story runs virtually identical, I think the book has a different tone to the movie. It is harder edged, but it does give more insight into each characters motives, which is a problem a lot of movies have I believe in transferring material to screen.
I think The Godfather movie avoids this pitfall by the strength of the performances of the lead actors. Where words are needed and some narration helps things along in a written story, the likes of AL Pacino and James Caan only had to look a certain way or shrug a shoulder like so, and a picture was painted.
Another angle the book gave was the Michael Corleone transition story arc, which of course was the central element running through the whole story. Michael's descent into barbarity represented one supposes the loss of a defining morality I suppose I could call it, for his family, and for an American Underworld moving into Heroin and away from the smaller operations of racketeering.
Michael needed to become something not even his father would have been capable of becoming. It was maybe a blessing in disguise that his father passed away.
So the book goes into great detail, but not in so many words, of explaining how Michael came to prepare himself mentally whilst he was in Sicily for his return to New York. He had already begun his journey by murdering Sollozzo and the crooked cop. But Michael was not changed by that act alone. Sicily changed him, Sicily made Michael the man who would later slap his future wife across the face for aborting an unwanted child, and would kill his own brother.
Falling in love in Italy, seeing the old world and the old ways, these were what set Michael Corleone on the road to ruin.
Another thing about the book which I touched on earlier is that it is harder edged... There is a lot to digest which some might find hard to swallow. You sometimes feel it was written by a man who believed every word of what he wrote... References to women, and their perceived likes and dislikes are some examples of what might put some readers off..
The writing style also to me is perfect. Puzo writes (in my opinion), like he is speaking to someone who is a little slow or perhaps doesn't speak English so well.. I love this style, I do like my James Ellroy, sometimes the easier read is nice.....
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