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Favourite film scene

The Godfather Dir. Francis Ford Coppola (1972)

Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a composer and musician. His mother, Italia Coppola, had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated with a degree in drama from Hofstra University, and did graduate work at UCLA in filmmaking. He was training as assistant with filmmaker Roger Corman, working in such capacities as sound-man, dialogue director, associate producer and, eventually, director of Dementia 13 (1963), Coppola's first feature film. In 1966, Coppola's 2nd film brought him critical acclaim and a Master of Fine Arts degree. In 1969, Coppola and George Lucas established American Zoetrope, an independent film production company based in San Francisco. The company's first project was THX 1138 (1971), produced by Coppola and directed by Lucas. Coppola also produced the second film that Lucas directed, American Graffiti(1973), in 1973. This movie got five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. In 1971, Coppola's film The Godfather (1972) became one of the highest- grossing movies in history and brought him an Oscar for writing the screenplay with Mario Puzo The film was a Best Picture Academy Award-winner, and also brought Coppola a Best Director Oscar nomination. Following his work on the screenplay for The Great Gatsby (1974), Coppola's next film was The Conversation (1974), which was honoured with the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and brought Coppola Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominations. Also released that year, The Godfather: Part II (1974), rivaled the success of The Godfather (1972), and won six Academy Awards, bringing Coppola Oscars as a producer, director and writer.

Francis Ford Coppola IMDb

My favourite scene from The Godfather is one of the opening scene when Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando, is sat in his office with three other men. Two of the men are apart of Vito's mob, the other guy is someone asking a for a favour on the wedding day of Vito's daughter. The Godfather, is an American crime film from 1972. It stars Marlon Brando and Al Pacino as the leaders of a fictional New York crime family. The story, spanning 1945 to 1955, chronicles the family under the patriarch Vito Corleone, focusing on the transformation of Michael Corleone from reluctant family outsider to ruthless Mafia boss.

The lighting this scene is partly bright and dark. The lighting is used to connote the topic of the conversation and it is used to connote Vito and his background. The use of the darkness in the corner and behind Vito, is used to connote the dark matter of the conversation and what Vito, is capable deep down. The darkness represents him hiding his bad and dark-side from everyone, that only appears when it is necessary. The lighting is used to represent Vito's good nature and the kind side to him. The good nature is him kindly agreeing to fulfil the mans favour, the darkness represents the bad side of him which is him agreeing to killed someone for the man. In the opening scene, the lighting shows the audience a lot about the background of Vito and foreshadows his death at the end of the film.

The use of sound in this scene is very important. When the two men are talking, there is no background noise; the only noise we hear throughout the scene is Vito's cat 'Meowing'. The lack of background noise shows that the conversation is very important and we need to pay close attention to it. The exclusion of background noise also connotes that, when Vito goes to kill the person the other man needs killed, there should be no witnesses so no one finds out about it. Also at the start of the scene, we hear a loud dramatic sound that sounds like a trumpet. This is non-diegetic, as the actors in the scene cannot hear it when it is done, it is just for the audience to hear and it is used as an introduction to the movie, to grab the attention of the audience.

The movie starts with a black screen, there is an absence of light, but hear a man start talking, then the black screen fades in and we get a close-up of the mans face. The use of a close-up camera shot shows the mans emotions when he speaks. This helps to give us an idea of what is going on. The absence of light behind him helps to reinforce the matter at hand and what sort of conversation is going on. As the man continues talking, the camera slowly zooms out, and changes from a close-up to a mid-shot, which is also used as an establishing shot. The mid-shot enables us to see more of the man talking and we get to see his body language while he talks to Vito. We see the establishing shot when the camera zooms out from the close-up and when the camera switches to then angle in the picture above. The use of the establishing shot shows us where the conversation is taking place and everything within the shot. The establishing shot from the other camera is also a long shot, we see Vito Corleone siting in his chair behind his desk, his body language, and we see two other men in the room who we assume are Vito's mob members.

In the opening scene, there is a lot to say about the performance. When we first see Vito and hear him speak, he has a fairly raspy voice and is made to look like a vulnerable old man by Coppola, but in actual fact, despite the fact he is old, he is still very powerful, and we see this when he makes the man kiss his hand as a sign of respect. His body expressions and body language connotes to us that he is a very calm and collected person no matter what is happening. The man he is talking to wants him to kill another man, and Vito is calmly sitting there, playing with his cat while talking to him. Also, when he is talking, he talks very softly and quietly, this could connote to us that he is a very relaxed person, and is very warm and loving.  This is contradicted by his behaviour, as he agrees to kill a person he doesn’t know as a gift to somebody the day of his daughter's wedding. We see Vito has a close link to his family, and thinks family is very important when he says "You come into my house, on the day of my daughter's wedding, and ask me to commit a murder, for money". When he says this he uses hand movements to help show that he is annoyed with the man because of what he sees's as disrespect. The two men talk calmly and respectfully towards each other and as they are not friends before the conversation and are complete strangers but become friends once Vito put his arm around the guy, and tells him he will kill the guy for him as a gift on the day of his daughter's wedding.