In the 1960s, Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather, one of the most talked about bestsellers of the time, introduced millions of voracious readers to the world of La Cosa Nostra. The film version was inevitable, but no one was prepared for just how successful it would be. The Godfather I and II became American classics, transcending the screen and becoming not only an essential part of pop culture but part of the American vernacular as well. How many times has someone made you “an offer you can't refuse”?

Dramatis Personae

The Godfather may have been an entirely different experience if other actors considered for the roles had been cast. Imagine Frank Sinatra as Don Corleone. Often linked to the mob and the basis for the Johnny Fontaine character, Sinatra physically attacked novelist Puzo in a restaurant after the novel was published. Apparently he got over it, because a few years later he expressed interest in playing the titular don. Laurence Olivier and George C. Scott were also considered. Of course, the coveted role went to Marlon Brando, who mumbled his way to an Academy Award he refused to accept.

The Godfather also made a relatively unknown Italian from New York, Al Pacino, a star. He went on the play numerous other gangster roles, including non-Italian hoodlums in Scarface and Carlito's Way. But can you imagine Robert Redford or Ryan O'Neal as Michael Corleone? Strange indeed, but they were the producer's choices. Fortunately, director Francis Ford Cop-pola insisted on Pacino, and the rest, as they say, is Hollywood history.

The Godfather films tell the story of the Corleones, an immigrant family that achieves the American Dream through crime. But the movie is much more than just a simple crime drama. It touches on issues of sin, redemption, revenge, forgiveness, and the twisted machinations of a mob boss looking to stay one step ahead of his enemies.

The main character through the three-film epic is Michael Corleone. The audience first meets him as a returning war hero who loves his family but has no interest in the family business. Life does not always unfold as per our plans, and by the last scene of the last movie, Michael Corleone has lived and died a very different life than he planned.

Part One

In The Godfather, we first meet the Corleones. The movie is as much about an American family as it is a gangster movie. It eloquently chronicles the dark side of the immigrant experience and the American Dream. The old don is a powerful crime lord who made his fortune in the criminal underworld yet craves respectability, if not for himself then certainly for his children. The fates have other plans for him. Though he dies rather benignly of a heart attack in his garden, one son dies in a hail of gunfire, and the other becomes the new Don Corleone. He could have been Senator Corleone or Governor Corleone, but there wasn't enough time.

Several famous scenes in The Godfather are inspired by real incidents in mob lore, including the shooting of Don Corleone at a fruit stand, based on the real-life shooting of Gambino boss Frank Scalise in 1957. True, too, is the message sent to notify the Corleones of Brasi's murder — a fish wrapped in newspaper. “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes” has entered the pop culture vernacular.

Michael Corleone's fate is sealed when he assassinates the men who attempted to kill his father (resulting in the famous line “Leave the gun, take the cannoli”). From then on he is corrupted, and his destiny is an inexorable juggernaut deeper and deeper into the underworld of the Mafia and a Hades-like underworld of his own tortured soul. Even though he does evil things, such as orchestrating the murder of the heads of the five families and his own brother-in-law, he is an oddly sympathetic character. However, his behavior only gets worse in the second movie.

Part Two

The Godfather: Part II tells the parallel stories of the young Don Cor-leone, played by Robert De Niro, and Michael Corleone at the height of his power. The story follows the orphaned Vito Corleone's arrival in America at the turn of the twentieth century and his immersion into a life of crime. It counterpoints Michael Corleone's gradual descent into material and spiritual corruption.

Real events also inspired elements of the script. The mob's involvement in Cuba before Castro took over is a major element of the plot, as is the mob's involvement in Las Vegas. Corruption of senators and politicians is of course one of the hallmarks of the mob's dominance in the underworld. Another event that was captured was the congressional hearings in which Frank Pentagelli recants his previous testimony against Michael Coreleone. The colorful Jewish gangster Hyman Roth is based on the less colorful but chillingly competent real hoodlum Meyer Lansky.

Michael, who was somewhat sympathetic in the first film, becomes colder and more ruthless, finally ordering the execution of his own brother, the simple and harmless Fredo. Rival gangsters used Fredo as a dupe and Michael finds it hard to forgive, as he tells his brother, “Fredo, you broke my heart.” This is a sin of a biblical scale and Michael seems beyond redemption.

Part Three

Fredo's death weighs heavily on Michael in Part III. It is a compelling final installment in the saga of a man who took the wrong path and spent the rest of his life trying (and failing) to get back on track. The old and ill Michael Corleone is still trying to go legit, but just when he thinks he's out, they pull him back in. And just as the sins of Don Vito Corleone were visited on his offspring, Michael Corleone watches his sweet and innocent daughter murdered in front of his eyes.

The plot is somewhat convoluted but parallels the Vatican banking scandal of the late 1970s and the activities of Sicilian and American Mafiosi. The final scene, a series of assassinations occurring during an opera, was similar to the assassinations that were carried out during the baptism scene in the first movie. The Godfather: Part III brings closure to a family saga that tapped into the collective unconscious and captured the imagination of filmgoers.